Social services and social support: blended programs for families at risk of child maltreatment

Social support, increasingly put forth as a fundamental in helping multiproblem families to avoid placement, is a complex construct not easy to define and far more difficult to carry out conceptually and practically. This article describes four family support programs that illustrate certain common denominators for implementation.     

Marital Adjustment and Irrational Ideas*

This study involved an attempt to explore the relationship between irrational ideas and marital discord, as posited in Rational-Emotive-Therapy. The results supported the hypothesis that individuals who experience marital difficulties demonstrate higher degrees of irrational thinking than individuals who do not experience such difficulties. Additional findings were interpreted on the basis of differences between males and females with respect to cognitive and perceptual orientation.     

Analysis of a complex decision situation — The Simpsons/Simpsons-Sears merger proposal

Many of the decision situations that arise in modern organizations are very complex. Conventional methods of decision analysis have only limited applicability in these situations. This paper describes a method that can be used as an aid to decision making in such situations where interactions between the parties involved are an important factor. The method is illustrated by reference to a recent situation in which there was competition between a number of participants with regard to the future of the firm of Simpsons Ltd of Toronto. The analysis described illustrates the application of a step-by-step procedure that can be used by participants in the analysis of such situations.     

Placement stability for adolescents in foster care: findings from a program experiment

Increased stability in foster care placements for adolescents who had multiple placement failures and who were alienated from family and other social institutions is reported as the outcome of a demonstration placement-planning and support service in a public agency. Other positive findings are described.     

Families of Hadamard group divisible designs

By a family of designs we mean a set of designs whose parameters can be represented as functions of an auxiliary variable t where the design will exist for infinitely many values of t. The best known family is probably the family of finite projective planes with υ = b = t² + t + 1, r = k = t + 1, and λ = 1. In some instances, notably coding theory, the existence of families is essential to provide the degree of precision required which can well vary from one coding problem to another. A natural vehicle for developing binary codes is the class of Hadamard matrices. Bush (1977) introduced the idea of constructing semi-regular designs using Hadamard matrices whereas the present study is concerned mostly with construction of regular designs using Hadamard matrices. While codes constructed from these designs are not optimal in the usual sense, it is possible that they may still have substantial value since, with different values of λ₁ and λ₂, there are different error correcting capabilities.