The Deployment of Partnerships by the Voluntary Sector to Address Service Needs in Rural and Small Town Canada

Service restructuring trends since the 1980s have resulted in the downsizing or closure of many services in rural and small town Canada. In response, voluntary groups have been filling some of the emerging service gaps. Services, however, often are directed at complex problems that demand information, support, or assistance from a range of sources and institutions. For voluntary groups, this underscores a need to partner with other groups, organizations, or service providers. At the same time, voluntary organizations are increasingly encouraged to develop partnerships with public or private partners in order to qualify for government funding. This study tracks 29 voluntary organizations in four rural and small town places across Canada to explore the development and maintenance of partnerships (both local and non-local), as well as the types of networks, resources, and expertise for which partnerships were used. The findings indicate that while voluntary organizations feel that local partnerships are more important, partnerships with groups outside of these places are equally developed. Partnerships were used to expand networks, obtain expertise, and access a range of resources to assist in daily operations and delivery of services. The increase in partnerships with groups outside of these communities, particularly with non-local service providers, will have important implications for voluntary organizations and policy makers.

Psychosocial Correlates of Methamphetamine Use

Methamphetamine (MA) abuse is a devastating problem that has been sweeping the United States from west to east and has reached epidemic proportion in many areas. Literature on the drug itself, its history, and its effects are reviewed. The current project aimed to examine the psychosocial correlates of MA use using Hudson's Multi-Problem Screening Inventory (MPSI). The MPSI was given to a control group consisting of undergraduate social work students (n = 17) and a group of past-year MA users (n = 15). Differences between users and non-users were examined across the 27 domains of the MPSI, and subscales for which MA users exceeded the clinical cutting score were noted. In addition, the correlation between severity of craving for MA and MPSI scores was examined. MA users differed significantly from non-users on the depression, partner, child and neighbor problems, aggression, fearfulness, ideas of reference, phobias, guilt, disturbed thinking, memory loss, and drug abuse subscales. MA users exceeded clinical cutting scores on all of these scales except child problems; fearfulness; ideas of reference; self-esteem; sexual discord; personal stress; friend, school and coworker problems; and confused thinking. Severity of craving was correlated with MPSI score on all MPSI scales except self-esteem; sexual discord; mother, father, friend, coworker, school and family problems; suicide; non-physical abuse; and alcohol abuse. Interesting findings regarding the control group are also discussed.     

Taro Goh 1958–1988

Drawing is a fundamentally dialogic activity and yet it remains largely absent from anthropology's own accounts of its field practices and its history. The early Russian anthropologist of Oceania, Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay, employed drawing as a strategy to initiate dialogue with new interlocutors, often in the absence of a common language. My research on the history of Lelepa Island, Vanuatu, has built a series of conversations around Miklouho-Maclay's 1879 sketches of the community, mimicking the strategy of drawing-as-dialogue to develop a collaborative or dialogic account of the past.     

Motivating the Unemployed? Attitudes at the Front Line

Abstract

Underlying employment services policy in many countries is the assumption that the unemployed exhibit a range of deficits. The goal of employment activation programs is to develop self-efficacy. Noting the determinants of self-efficacy, we illustrate how case managers and social workers think about the unemployed and suggest that negative attitudes held by case managers are not conducive to the promotion of self-efficacy, unlike the orientation displayed by social workers. We suggest that employment services, wherever provided, would be significantly improved if social work frameworks informed policy and practices.     

A Survey of Wellness/Healthy Lifestyling on College and University Campuses

Abstract

Mental health providers at university counseling and health centers should be alert to the possibility that college students with previously unrecognized attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may present for initial evaluation at their centers. This study was a systematic chart review of 42 students at an Upper Midwest university who were diagnosed with ADHD during calendar year 1993. Diagnoses were made by the treating psychiatrist, who reviewed records for presenting problems; recent associated problems; previous evaluations as a child, adolescent, or adult; and associated problems in childhood. Presenting problems included ADHD symptoms, mood symptoms, nonspecific learning disability, and academic underachievement. Associated problems were depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, drug and alcohol abuse or both, dependency, legal problems, learning disabilities, and eating disorders. Thirty-three percent had been evaluated for academic or behavior problems as children, and 36% had sought previous psychological care for non-ADHD symptoms as adults. Thirty-one percent were presenting at the university health center for their first evaluation. Childhood histories showed educational underachievement, learning disabilities, and behavior problems.     

Tensions and contradictions in Australian social policy reform: compulsory Income Management and the National Disability Insurance Scheme

This paper explores contemporary contradictions and tensions in Australian social policy principles and governmental practices that are being used to drive behavioural change, such as compulsory income management. By means of compulsory income management the Australian Government determines how certain categories of income support recipients can spend their payments through the practice of quarantining a proportion of that payment. In this process some groups in the community, particularly young unemployed people and Indigenous Australians, are being portrayed as requiring a paternalistic push in order to make responsible choices. The poverty experienced by some groups of income support recipients appears to be seen as a consequence of poor spending patterns rather than economic and social inequalities. By contrast, Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has been constructed as a person centred system of support that recognises the importance of both human agency and structural investment to expand personal choices and control. Here we look at the rationale guiding these developments to explore the tensions and contradictions in social policy more broadly, identifying what would be required if governments sought to promote greater autonomy, dignity and respect for people receiving income support payments in Australia.     

Poverty and family structure effects on children's mathematics achievement: Estimates from random and fixed effects models

As children grow up, they may encounter changing family structures and poverty status. Any attempt to measure the effects of these statuses on children's school achievement runs the risk of spurious effects due to child- and family-heterogeneity. An analytic strategy for avoiding these spurious effects is to use longitudinal data on families, children, and their academic achievement to estimate random coefficient growth-curve models in which a large number of causally prior control variables are allowed to impact both the intercept and slope of the child's achievement trajectory, while poverty and family structure at each point in time enter the model as time-varying covariates. An even more powerful strategy is to use Allison's [Allison, P. D. (2005). Fixed effects regression methods for longitudinal data using SAS. Cary, NC: SAS Institute, Inc.] “hybrid” version of this model, in which a fixed-effects specification differences away all unchanging child and family characteristics. We use CNLSY79 data to estimate both types of models for the effects of poverty status and family structure on children's mathematics achievement between ages 5 and 14. We find that poverty status exerts a modest, statistically significant negative effect on math achievement, but only among younger children. The correlation between family structure and children's mathematics achievement is largely spurious, due instead to child- and family-heterogeneity on causally prior variables.     

The transitional impacts of material and service offshoring

The recent expansion of offshoring intermediate services has given rise to public fears and a possible pullback from a liberal trading system. Modeling and estimating intermediate offshoring is complicated since the shock is further down the production process. This paper incorporates the necessary transmission mechanisms into a data-intensive CGE model for the State of Colorado to estimate the current and future impacts of continuing a liberal trade policy for offshoring intermediates. The results indicate that while the overall effects of offshoring are small and positive, the future directions of service offshoring are projected to cause sizable domestic job destruction and displacement. Policies may have to be implemented to retrain domestic workers who face job loss or even consider curtailing future offshoring opportunities.