Discretionary approaches to social workers’ personalisation of activation services for long-term welfare recipients

Contemporary social policies emphasise labour market inclusion of vulnerable groups through personalisation of activation services. This article investigates social workers’ decision-making when personalising activation measures to suit each client. Data consist of case files for 16 clients participating in a Norwegian activation scheme, and interviews with the clients’ designated social workers. Using Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism, the article examines what the social workers consider in their decision-making process and the pivotal factors in their conclusions. Findings show that social workers employ two distinct approaches to personalisation, which have significantly different implications for clients’ pathways towards labour market inclusion. The first approach concentrates on clients’ personal challenges, while the second focuses on feasible short-term employment strategies. The study demonstrates how institutional and political frameworks may lead to social workers’ posing activation requirements inconsistent with clients’ needs and capabilities. It suggests further research into these interrelations to improve social workers’ ability to adapt services to individual clients.     

A systematic review on community-based interventions for elder abuse and neglect

Elder abuse and neglect is a societal issue that requires prevention and intervention strategies at the practice and policy level. A systematic review on the efficacy of community-based elder abuse interventions was undertaken to advance the state of knowledge in the field. The peer-reviewed literature between 2009 and December 2015 were searched across four databases. Two raters independently reviewed all articles, assessed their methodological quality, and used a modified Sackett Scale to assign levels of evidence. Four thousand nine hundred and five articles were identified; nine were selected for inclusion. Although there was Level-1 evidence for psychological interventions (n = 2), only one study on strategies for relatives (START) led to a reported decrease in elder abuse. There was Level-4 evidence for conservatorship, an elder abuse intervention/prevention program (ECARE), and a multidisciplinary intervention (n = 4), in which one study yielded significant decreases in elder abuse and/or neglect. The remaining three were classified as Level-5 evidence (n = 3) for elder mediation and multidisciplinary interventions. There are limited studies with high levels of evidence for interventions that decrease elder abuse and neglect. The scarcity of community-based interventions for older adults and caregivers highlights the need for further work to elevate the quality of studies.     

The Population's Confidence in the Child Protection System – A Survey Study of England,Finland, Norway and the United States (California)

This article examines the confidence the population (N = 4,003) has in the child welfare system in four countries – England, Finland, Norway and the USA (California). We find that about half or less of the population reports having confidence in the system, which is slightly higher than the confidence in the civil servants in the same countries. The Nordic countries display more confidence in the child welfare system than the Anglo‐American countries. The similarity between the countries is, however, greater than anticipated. As for independent variables that can shed light on differences in confidence levels, we find three variables to be related to a higher confidence level, and these are a left wing political orientation, lower age, and higher education. This study contributes in filling a knowledge gap on studies about trust in the child welfare system, but we emphasize that we have studied an aspect of trust that rests on the population's impressions of a system, and not their substantial knowledge about, or identification with, this system.     

What Prompts Policy Change? Comparative Analyses of Efforts to Create Age-Friendly Cities in 14 Cities in Indonesia

Four years after an age-friendly city (AFC) assessment across Indonesia, this article presents a comparative analysis of policy changes that have taken place across different AFC dimensions and factors associated with more and less change. Nine of fourteen cities initiated changes, ranging from public declarations, regulations, and creation or expansion of services. Our findings suggest that the AFC assessment can offer a means to engage policy makers, which in turn may facilitate city-level change, particularly for larger cities with more substantive budgets and more consolidated rather than dispersed leadership; however, no single factor represented a sufficient or necessary condition for change.     

Urban risks due to climate change in the Andean municipality of Pasto,Colombia: A Bayesian network approach

The current trends of climate change will increase people's exposure to urban risks related to events such as landslides, floods, forest fires, food production, health, and water availability, which are stochastic and very localized in nature. This research uses a Bayesian network (BN) approach to analyze the intensity of such urban risks for the Andean municipality of Pasto, Colombia, under climate change scenarios. The stochastic BN model is linked to correlational models and local scenarios of representative concentration trajectories (RCP) to project the possible risks to which the municipality of Pasto will be exposed in the future. The results show significant risks in crop yields, food security, water availability and disaster risks, but no significant risks on the incidence of acute diarrheal diseases (ADD) and acute respiratory infections (ARI), whereas positive outcomes are likely to occur in livestock production, influenced by population growth. The advantage of the BN approach is the possibility of updating beliefs in the probabilities of occurrence of events, especially in developing, intermediate cities with information-limited contexts.     

Widening the gap: White ignorance,race relations and the consequences for Aboriginal people in Australia

White ignorance has a critical impact on race relations and is implicated in the maintenance of Aboriginal disadvantage. Addressing this ignorance is a largely overlooked capacity-building opportunity within Australia's non-Aboriginal population. It warrants consideration as a key component of strategies targeting Aboriginal disadvantage. Despite the established links between race relations and Aboriginal well-being, Aboriginal perspectives on non-Aboriginal people rarely feature in public discourse on “Aboriginal problems.” This paper draws on data from 180 in-depth interviews with 44 Aboriginal people in Darwin on the topic of White Australian people, culture and race relations. It reports Aboriginal perceptions of White Australian ignorance across areas of great symbolic and practical significance to Aboriginal people's lives. Their experience is that most White Australians are ignorant of the history of colonisation and the complexities of its aftermath. They are ignorant of Aboriginal law, cultures and languages, and of the extent of their own ignorance. The call to address White ignorance subverts assumptions about whose ignorance and capacity must be dealt with in order to progress national goals of reconciliation, address Aboriginal disadvantage and achieve justice and equality for Aboriginal people.     

近20年来中国人口老龄化的区域差异及其演化

文章借助各省区人口老龄化的演变过程及其与本地区经济的发展相关程度变化,来判别中国是否出现"未富先老"、"城乡倒置"或"人口红利"消失阻滞经济发展以及区域差异化演变等问题。通过一系列的数据分析发现:(1)中国各省区的人口老龄化演变阶段差异很大,但基本没有出现"未富先老",人口老龄化并没有妨碍经济发展,这既与经济转型、开放经济等有关,也符合全球人口老龄化演化的一般规律;(2)勾画中国各省区人口老龄化演变特征,可将其划分成四类不同的人口老龄化类型,其演变历程的地域推移与地域集聚现象十分明显。就目前的演变过程来看,中国人口老龄化与地区经济发展有明显相关性,经济发展成为中国人口老龄化的重要推动因素之一。     

21世纪中国人口负增长惯性初探

本文计算了中国1950～2006年期间的人口内在自然增长率,发现早在1990年时内在增长率就已经由正变负。并且通过该指标与人口自然增长率的比较发现,中国过去十几年的低生育率正在逐渐累积起人口负增长惯性。此外,本文基于不同的模拟方案结果揭示出,人口负增长惯性将会对未来中国人口规模和年龄结构有重大影响。本研究旨在说明,中国人口发展处于转折的关键时期,应当充分认识低生育率下的人口负增长惯性问题,有关人口决策必须尊重人口发展的内在规律。     

Abstracts

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