The Effect of Sensorimotor Training on the Postural Stability of Visually Impaired Women Over 50 Years of Age

Previous studies indicated that blind and visually impaired people are a group with greater risk of falls. Postmenopausal changes significantly decrease physical efficiency and impair the body’s mechanisms for maintaining postural stability. In addition, the frequency of falls among women is much higher than in men. The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of sensorimotor exercise on changes in postural stability of visually impaired women over 50 years of age. Visually impaired women from group E showed a lower level of postural stability measured with EO compared to the healthy women. After completing the exercise, a more pronounced improvement in the level of postural stability was observed in group E.     

Exploring the impact of clinical placement models on undergraduate midwifery students

BackgroundLearning undertaken through clinical placements provides up to 50% of the educational experience for students in pre-registration midwifery courses. However little is known about of the impact various models of clinical placement have on the learning experiences of undergraduate midwifery students. Two clinical placement models have been employed for undergraduate midwifery students at Monash University, including the block placement model and the continuous two days per week model.ObjectiveThis project sought to explore the learning experiences of students in these two models of placement.MethodFocus groups were held on two campuses with a total of 17 students from different cohorts and programs.DiscussionNo one type of placement was favoured over another both had benefits and disadvantages. Further, this study found that regardless of program and clinical placement model the major learning impact for students was related to the midwife they worked with each day on placement rather than to the model.ConclusionNo one type of placement was favoured over another both had benefits and disadvantages. Further, this study found that regardless of program and clinical placement model the major learning impact for students was related to the midwife they worked with each day on placement rather than to the model.     

Melancholia,Ambivalent Presence and the Cost of Gender Commentary on Paper by Meg Jay

I would like to engage three aspects of Jay's argument: first, I want to suggest that there is an important distinction to be made between melancholia and depression, and that Butler's melancholy gender depends on this distinction, which emphasizes the social and political dimensions of melancholia. Second, Jay diagnoses the theory of melancholy gender with a troubling ambivalence; I contend that this ambivalence is central to the logic of Butler's argument, and to the processes of melancholia and gendered identification, and that this ambivalence is also purposefully manifest in Freud's text. Third, Jay's piece makes a call for conceptual disarticulation in the register of foreclosure as it relates to prohibited homosexual object choice. This desire for disarticulation and anxiety about homosexual undecidability leads to the collapse of gender, sex and sexual orientation, and the result of this collapse is an ambiguous subject who emerges as reheterosexualized and normatively gendered.     

Social Work and Transitions of Care: Observations from an Intervention for Older Adults

Making the transition from hospital to home can be challenging for many older adults. This article presents practice perspectives on these transitions, based on a social work intervention for older adults discharged from an acute care setting to home. An analysis of interviews with clinical social workers who managed 356 cases (n?=?3) and a review of their clinical notes (n?=?581) were used to identify salient themes relevant to care transitions. Concepts developed and discussed identify the role of surprises after discharge, an expanded view of the client system, and relationship building as instrumental in carrying out effective care transitions.     

Foundations as investment managers part 1: The process

Foundations in the United States manage more than $130 billion in investment resources. In managing these assets, foundations must balance the competing goals of promoting charitable good deeds through the distribution of grants and stewarding the assets that can support such grants in the future. This paper examines how foundations perform the function of managing their financial assets and whether they follow modern practices of portfolio management in doing so. The data presented here provide reason to suspect that many foundations are giving insufficient attention to preserving and enhancing the available philanthropic resources under their control. Analysis of actual investment performance is the subject of a sequel article in the next issue of Nonprofit Management and Leadership.     

In search of the non-profit sector. I: The question of definitions

In this paper we argue that the lack of attention to the third sector historically is primarily a result of the weakness and limitations of the concepts that are used to define and describe it. The purpose of this article is to remedy this situation by developing a general definition of the sector that can be used in comparative research. To do so, the article first identifies four alternative types of definitions that are potentially available and evaluates each in terms of three basic criteria. On this basis it concludes that the most useful definition is the structural/operational one, which includes in the non-profit sector organisations that share five basic characteristics. These are: formal, private, non-profit-distributing, self-governing and voluntary. The basic definition is then tested against the realities of three disparate countries and found to perform quite well. On this basis we recommend the structural/operational definition, particularly for comparative, crossnational research.Lester Salamon is Professor at the Johns Hopkins University,Baltimore, Maryland 21218 and Director of the Institute for Policy Studies there.Helmut Anheier is Research Scientist at the Institute for Policy Studies at the Johns Hopkins University and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 08903. He is co-editor ofVoluntas.     

On the Receiving End: Women,Caring, and Breast Cancer

Gendered definitions of care influence breast cancer survivors’ coping strategies, sense of entitlement to care, and ultimately their capacity to receive care. Using qualitative data from 60 intensive interviews, this study examines how gendered definitions of care influence women’s experiences as care-receivers. Findings indicate that negotiating gender boundaries to care for the self is both empowering and stigmatizing. Women with breast cancer are required to break gender norms that stress compliance, nurturing, and putting the needs of others first to prioritize their own needs for care. Concurrently, they take on additional nurturing roles to provide support to other women with breast cancer, relinquishing to some degree the individualistic approach to life they found necessary to cope with their illness in the first place.

Beyond Nonprofits: Re-conceptualizing the Third Sector

The idea of a “third sector” beyond the arenas of the state and the market is probably one of the most perplexing concepts in modern political and social discourse, encompassing as it does a tremendous diversity of institutions and behaviors that only relatively recently have been perceived in public or scholarly discourse as a distinct sector, and even then with grave misgivings. Initial work on this concept focused on what is still widely regarded as its institutional core, the vast array of private, nonprofit institutions (NPIs), and the volunteer as well as paid workers they mobilize and engage. These institutions share a crucial characteristic that makes it feasible to differentiate from for-profit enterprises: the fact that they are prohibited from distributing any surplus they generate to their investors, directors, or stakeholders and therefore presumptively serve some broader public interest. Many European scholars have considered this conceptualization too narrow; however, arguing that cooperatives, mutual societies, and, in recent years, “social enterprises” as well as social norms should also be included. However, this broader concept has remained under-conceptualized in reliable operational terms. This article corrects this short-coming and presents a consensus operational re-conceptualization of the third sector fashioned by a group of scholars working under the umbrella of the European Union’s Third Sector Impact Project. This re-conceptualization goes well beyond the widely recognized definition of NPIs included in the UN Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts by embracing as well some, but not all, of these additional institutions and forms of direct individual activity, and does so in a way that meets demanding criteria of comparability, operationalizability, and potential for integration into official statistical systems.