AIDS Risk Behaviors among American and Australian Homeless Youth

We examined HIV/AIDS risk behaviors among homeless youth in cross-national data collected in Melbourne, Australia ( n = 398), and Los Angeles, California ( n = 498). Using structural equation modeling, we found that the Australian youth reported greater involvement in AIDS risk behaviors than the American youth and the Australian youth were more involved in intervening risk factors that promote risk behaviors and less involved with protective factors that reduce risk behaviors. Youth reporting the highest rates of delinquent behaviors also had peers engaging in delinquent acts, used alcohol and marijuana, and were more likely to utilize social services. These findings underscore the importance of having a service sector that is able to adequately address the needs of homeless youth .     

Challenges,Barriers, and Opportunities: Social Workers With Disabilities and Experiences in Field Education

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of social work students with disabilities in field education. This qualitative inquiry used semistructured interviews exploring inclusion and accommodations in field education. The 15 participants were graduates of accredited BSW or MSW programs and reported one to five disabilities each. Four themes emerged: different experiences with visible versus invisible disability, confusion about accommodation, field as a learning opportunity regarding disability, and a sense of isolation being a social worker with a disability. This study provides information valuable to social work educators and field instructors regarding strategies for improving opportunities for students with disabilities as future social workers, aligning with the mission and values of the social work profession.     

Parental Caregivers' Desires for Lifetime Assistance Planning for Future Supports for Their Children with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Future life planning is a growing concern among families with children with disabilities. This article presents a needs assessment evaluating feasibility of a new model for future life planning for family caregivers, Lifetime Assistance, which will provide ongoing planning and monitoring for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Using surveys informed by a series of focus groups, data were gathered from older and younger parents in one midwestern state regarding the potential program. Study results indicate that respondents did not feel the current system of support was adequate for planning for their child's future, nor sufficient for monitoring the quality of life for their children in the future. Although almost all families had identified a person to support their family members when they were no longer able to do so, parental caregivers overwhelmingly identified the need for the Lifetime Assistance program and many were willing to pay for this service themselves.     

Moments,Monuments and Explication: The Standing of the Millennium Dome

The construction of the Millennium Dome near the origin of Greenwich, at a cost of something in the order of one billion pounds to the British taxpayer, 1 see, for example, Nick Mathiason 'Downturn hits Dome sale,' The Observer , Sunday October 21, 2001. provides an excellent, if somewhat expensive, opportunity to reconsider the interrelations of time and space. For the Dome seeks to monumentalise and celebrate a moment of time as it simultaneously takes the form of a material structure that will persist. 2 Although the extent of this persistence has been a constant matter for considerable debate. This trade between moment and monument is replayed between the Dome as a startling visual immediacy, a whole to be apprehended in wonder, and the serialisation in progressive fashion of its staged contents. But it also represents an opportunity to see in the Dome a reflection of the society in which we live, and the possibilities it delivers. And we contend that the monumentalisation of the Dome may be read as an evisceration of the power of the moment, of the capacity of the human subject to engage in 'authentic unconditional ethical' ( i ek;, 2001, p. 151) action. In Britain, at least, much of the millennial moment was mediated through the Domic narrative. Nowhere else, after all, 'has anything like it'. An organising symbol for both malcontents and modernizers, reactions to the product were certainly diverse. But the majority of these reactions to the contents of the monument, and indeed the monument itself, represent a retreat from and obfuscation of our own complicity in the monumentalisation of our current society, of our refusal to treat the institution of society as an active product of our own imaginary making (Castoriadis, 1997). In their and our lack of reflection on, and problematisation of, the moment in time that is being monumentalised, we and they re-institute a denial of the possibility of 'real' time and thus of 'real' action and change. Through consideration of the work of Castoriadis (1997) and i ek (2001) we attempt to take back the millennial moment from the conservatism of the monument. Through a collage of media commentary on the Dome and constructivist and poststructualist commentary on our social condition, we attempt to show how a particular reading of the Dome as reflection of the impoverishment of our contemporary, progressivist modernity can open up an opportunity to engage in a project that wills a different society.     

‘Their Coats were Tied Up like Men’: Women Rebels in Antigua's 1858 Uprising

This paper presents the story of the 1858 riot and its primary causes, including Antigua's economic downturn since emancipation in 1834 and the dissatisfaction which black working people had with the post-slavery social order. The disturbance originated between dockworkers from both Antigua and Barbuda competing for jobs in Antigua's capital, but expanded to involve hundreds of working-class Antiguans assailing Barbudans, white planters, Portuguese immigrants, and black and mixed-race policemen. As many Antiguan women formed the forefront of the uprising, the article concentrates on the gendered dimensions of the violence, from the brutal acts Antiguan women perpetrated against Barbudan women to their masculinisation in the press and the trial, being alleged to have dressed and carried themselves ‘like men’ during the fray. The study raises critical questions about the hardships of Antiguan freedwomen in the post-slavery period seeking to maintain their lives and livelihoods, and how those hardships drove them to the front lines of the conflict. Overall, the essay examines the goals of the Antiguan rioters and investigates the changing targets of their violence during the insurgency, as a way to engage their conceptions, however contradictory, of what freedom was and who should enjoy its privileges.     

Report of the President of the Australian Association of Social Workers

Currently there appears to be a spate of world, national and local disasters. Always there is concern, not only about how to manage the immediate emergency, but how to facilitate the long-term recovery period. This paper presents a six-months perspective of a particular disaster and recovery period, based on the experiences of a recovery worker. It emphasises the importance of routine training for workers in organisations who may be called upon in a disaster. It notes that because of the unique situation in every disaster, decision making on recovery structures and processes needs to remain invested in the local community, with assistance from external resources. It makes other suggestions for consideration in the continuing building of recovery theory. Finally, it underlines the importance of the social work role in most aspects of disaster recovery work, and the need to prepare not only undergraduates, but professional workers, for this role.     

The Psychological Contract of Volunteers: A New Research Agenda

This paper considers the ways in which research into the psychological contract of volunteers have been constrained by the direct transfer of measures from the study of employees, and more generally by the assumptions in the dominant psychological contract discourse. After examining these assumptions the paper proposes a revised research agenda, open to the possibility that the psychological contract of volunteers is affected by expectations arising from socio-cultural influences beyond the volunteer/manager relationships, and in particular, from the expectations of relative freedom in volunteering and from subjective perceptions of volunteering as (variously) serious leisure, unpaid work, or activism. Understanding the contract as socially constructed reveals the need to juxtapose the expectations of managers and volunteers in order to understand the contract as a social relationship.     

Developmental stability and leadership effectiveness

Developmental stability is the degree to which we can withstand environmental or genetic stressors during development. Fluctuating asymmetry (FA), concerns the extent to which the right and left side of the body is asymmetrical and is one way to measure developmental stability. Two studies were carried out that examined both the predictive value of leader FA with leadership behaviors and its role in facilitating group performance. The first study examined the hypothesis that a leader's FA is correlated with scores on the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). The results revealed individuals with a more asymmetrical morphology scored higher on the transformational, but not transactional, dimensions of leadership behavior. A second study examined the hypothesis that asymmetrical morphology and leadership effectiveness would share a positive relationship. In this study participants who led a business game exercise, revealed a positive relationship between FA and self-reported well-being and task satisfaction. Importantly, there was also a positive correlation between the leader's FA score and group performance. The role that developmental stability may play in leadership effectiveness is discussed in the wider context of evolutionary psychology.