Foster Parents’ Nutritional Strategies and Children’s Well-Being

Among their many responsibilities, foster parents are tasked with providing healthy food and proper nutrition to children with a variety of physical, psychological, and emotional needs. Using the lens of symbolic interactionism, this exploratory mixed methods study examined how foster parents attend to the nutritional needs of abused and neglected children. Methods used included both quantitative surveys and qualitative follow-up interviews. Surveys were completed by 23 foster parents in a large, Midwest metropolitan area. Parents reported they provided their children balanced meals, although one-third of households reported instances of food insecurity. During qualitative interviews, foster parents (N = 9) described how children arrived at their home with a variety of unhealthy eating habits, some severe in nature. Parents discussed strategies used to modify and improve eating patterns, including offering healthy food choices, having children plan meals, and gathering as a family for daily dinners. In general, parents understood the link between unhealthy eating and past childhood trauma, but also reported being unprepared for more serious eating problems like hoarding. Findings indicate that foster parents need food assistance to increase food security as well as training in assessing and responding a variety of unhealthy child eating behaviors.     

A Systems Approach to Social Entrepreneurship

Currently, disabilities organizations are increasingly being challenged by the requirement for individualized service, expectations to show personal outcomes, and the need to base their services on evidence-based practices. Social entrepreneurship (SE) is being put forward as an innovative approach for dealing with these challenges. This article presents a systems approach to SE based on a program logic model. This model identifies the input factors (a strong social vision, exploiting opportunities, maximizing resources), throughput strategies (entrepreneurial orientation, critical thinking skills, networking, capacity building), and outcome components (improving people’s lives, community-building, improving society) of SE at the micro, meso, and macro level. Also, the importance of planning for contextual changes as a social entrepreneur is discussed. The article concludes with presenting three inspiring practices regarding SE in the field of disabilities organizations.     

NGO Strategies in an Authoritarian Context,and Their Implications for Citizenship: The Case of the People’s Republic of China

This study argues that different cities in China have different resource environments available for NGOs. Organizations react to these resource environments by constructing appropriate resource strategies, which in turn shape the characteristics and structures of the NGOs of that city. It further examines how these characteristics and structures influence the construction and performance of citizenship in an authoritarian environment. Specifically, some types of NGOs encourage Chinese citizens to be passive, while others offer a model for people to actively engage with social issues. This is aptly demonstrated in an analysis of NGOs operating across four cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming, and Nanjing—which reveals three different types of resource environments and behavioral models for NGOs. We subsequently discuss the implications of each model for citizen engagement.     

Disability,personalisation and community arts: exploring the spatial dynamics of children with disabilities participating in inclusive music classes*

This paper uses personalisation and the capabilities approach to explore inclusive music classes for children with disabilities in Scotland. It provides a unique insight into the impact of participation through the voices of the disabled young musicians, their parents and tutors. The study highlights the power of inclusive spaces to transform lives, to build confidence and contest disabled identities. It engages in the spatial dynamic of opening up inclusive spaces, as well as exposing emerging tensions in the liminal space that is created through movement between safe and supported spaces and the antithesis, spaces that disempower and marginalise. The findings suggest good practice around personalisation, when conceived of from a social justice perspective, as a template for working with other marginalised groups and in other professional settings.     

Care in a Time of Austerity: the Electronic Monitoring of Homecare Workers’ Time

Austerity places intense pressures on labour costs in paid care. In the UK, electronic monitoring technology has been introduced to record (and materially reduce) the working time and wages of homecare workers. Based on empirical findings, we show that, in a ‘time of austerity’, care is reductively constructed as a consumption of time. Service users are constructed as needy, greedy, time‐consumers and homecare workers as resource‐wasting time‐takers. We point to austerity as a temporal ideology aimed at persuading populations that individual deprivation in the present moment, self‐sacrifice and the suppression of personal need in the here and now is a necessary requirement to underpin a more secure national future. Accordingly, women in low‐waged care work are required to eschew a rights‐bearing, present‐tense identity and are assumed willing to suppress their entitlements to lawful wages as a sacrifice to the future. By transforming our understandings of ‘care’ into those of ‘time consumption’, and by emphasizing the virtue of present‐tense deprivation, a politics of austerity appears to justify time‐monitoring in care provision and the rationing of homecare workers’ pay.     

Stepchildren’s Communicative and Emotional Journey from Divorce to Remarriage: Predictors of Stepfamily Satisfaction

This study explores the emotional and communicative profiles of young adults who have experienced a parental divorce and the emergence of a stepfamily to better understand influences on stepfamily satisfaction. Results of regression analyses indicate that strong negative emotions experienced at the time of the divorce are a negative predictor of current stepfamily satisfaction, even after controlling for age at the time of the divorce. In addition, level of open self-disclosure to a stepparent, although not parents, is a positive predictor of current stepfamily satisfaction. Finally, the extent to which the father has now fully explained the circumstances of the divorce is a positive predictor of current stepfamily satisfaction, whereas the extent to which mother has now fully explained the circumstances of the divorce is a negative predictor of current stepfamily satisfaction. These findings are discussed and future directions for research on stepfamily interaction and satisfaction are offered.     

Predictors of Problem Gambling in the U.S.

In this article we examine data from a national U.S. adult survey of gambling to determine correlates of problem gambling and discuss them in light of theories of the etiology of problem gambling. These include theories that focus on personality traits, irrational beliefs, anti-social tendencies, neighborhood influences and availability of gambling. Results show that males, persons in the 31–40 age range, blacks, and the least educated had the highest average problem gambling symptoms. Adults who lived in disadvantaged neighborhoods also had the most problem gambling symptoms. Those who attended religious services most often had the fewest problem gambling symptoms, regardless of religious denomination. Respondents who reported that it was most convenient for them to gamble had the highest average problem gambling symptoms, compared to those for whom gambling was less convenient. Likewise, adults with the personality traits of impulsiveness and depression had more problem gambling symptoms than those less impulsive or depressed. Respondents who had friends who approve of gambling had more problem gambling symptoms than those whose friends did not approve of gambling. The results for the demographic variables as well as for impulsiveness and religious attendance are consistent with an anti-social/impulsivist pathway to problem gambling. The results for depression are consistent with an emotionally vulnerable pathway to problem gambling.     

Subtyping Non-treatment-seeking Problem Gamblers Using the Pathways Model

This study examined whether distinct subgroups could be identified among a sample of non-treatment-seeking problem and pathological/disordered gamblers (PG) using Blaszczynski and Nower’s (Addiction 97:487–499, 2002) pathways model (N = 150, 50% female). We examined coping motives for gambling, childhood trauma, boredom proneness, risk-taking, impulsivity, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and antisocial personality disorder as defining variables in a hierarchical cluster analysis to identify subgroups. Subgroup differences in gambling, psychiatric, and demographic variables were also assessed to establish concurrent validity. Consistent with the pathways model, our analyses identified three gambling subgroups: (1) behaviorally conditioned (BC), (2) emotionally vulnerable (EV), and (3) antisocial-impulsivist (AI) gamblers. BC gamblers (n = 47) reported the lowest levels of lifetime depression, anxiety, gambling severity, and interest in problem gambling treatment. EV gamblers (n = 53) reported the highest levels of childhood trauma, motivation to gamble to cope with negative emotions, gambling-related suicidal ideation, and family history of gambling problems. AI gamblers (n = 50) reported the highest levels of antisocial personality disorder and ADHD symptoms, as well as higher rates of impulsivity and risk-taking than EV gamblers. The findings provide evidence for the validity of the pathways model as a framework for conceptualizing PG subtypes in a non-treatment-seeking sample, and underscore the importance of tailoring treatment approaches to meet the respective clinical needs of these subtypes.     

Using an Acculturation‐Stress‐Resilience Framework to Explore Latent Profiles of Latina/o Language Brokers

With survey data from 243 Latina/o early adolescent language brokers, latent profile analyses were conducted to identify different types (i.e., profiles) of brokers. Profiles were based on how often Latina/o early adolescents brokered for family members, as well as their levels of family‐based acculturation stress, negative brokering beliefs, parentification, and positive brokering beliefs. Three brokering profiles emerged: (1) infrequent‐ambivalents, (2) occasional‐moderates, and (3) parentified‐endorsers. Profile membership was significantly predicted by ethnic identification and brokering in a medical context. Respect, brokering at school, and brokering at home did not significantly predict profile membership. In addition, parentified‐endorsers had more frequent perceived ethnic/racial discrimination and depressive symptoms than other profiles. In contrast, infrequent‐ambivalents engaged in risky behaviors less frequently than other profiles.     

Increased Urge to Gamble Following Near-Miss Outcomes May Drive Purchasing Behaviour in Scratch Card Gambling

Previous research into scratch card gambling has highlighted the effects of these games on players’ arousal and affective states. Specifically, near-miss outcomes in scratch cards (uncovering 2 of 3 needed jackpot symbols) have been associated with high levels of physiological and subjective arousal and negative emotional evaluations, including increased frustration. We sought to extend this research by examining whether near-misses prompted increases in gambling urge, and the subsequent purchasing of additional scratch cards. Participants played two scratch cards with varying outcomes with half of the sample experiencing a near-miss for the jackpot prize, and the other half experiencing a regular loss. Players rated their urge to continue gambling after each game outcome, and following the initial playing phase, were then able to use their winnings to purchase additional cards. Our results indicated that near-misses increased the urge to gamble significantly more than regular losses, and urge to gamble in the near-miss group was significantly correlated with purchasing at least one additional card. Although some players in the loss group purchased another card, there was no correlation between urge to gamble and purchasing in this group. Additionally, participants in the near-miss group who purchased additional cards reported higher levels of urge than those who did not purchase more cards. This was not true for the loss group: participants who experienced solely losing outcomes reported similar levels of urge regardless of whether or not they purchased more scratch cards. Despite near-misses’ objective status as monetary losses, the increased urge that follows near-miss outcomes may translate into further scratch card gambling for a subset of individuals .