Drinking places: Young people and cultures of alcohol consumption in rural environments

This paper focuses on the contemporary British moral panic about young people and the consumption of alcohol in public space. Most of this public debate has focused on binge drinking in urban areas as a social problem. Here, we consider instead the role of alcohol in rural communities, and in particular alcohol consumption in domestic and informal spaces, as well as the formal drinking landscape of pubs and bars. Drawing on empirical work (including a survey, interviews and participant observation) in rural Cumbria, UK we explore the specific socio-spatial nature of local attitudes to alcohol consumption and its regulation. In doing so, we reflect on the nature of rural lifestyles, community spaces and intergenerational relations. The paper concludes by highlighting some of the implications for health promotion professionals of the generally positive attitude towards young people's drinking in the rural area where the research was conducted. It also draws attention to the need for academics to pay closer attention to the ways that moral panics about binge drinking are implicitly producing a monolithic image of alcohol consumption in urban areas that fails to acknowledge the socio-spatially differentiated nature of practices of alcohol consumption and regulation.     

Disaster disparities and differential recovery in New Orleans

The historical disparities in the socio-demographic structure of New Orleans shaped the social vulnerability of local residents and their responses to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. These disparities, derived from race, class, gender, and age differences, have resulted in the uneven impact of the catastrophe on various communities in New Orleans, and importantly, their ability to recover. This article examines how the pre-existing social vulnerabilities within New Orleans interacted with the level of flood exposure to produce inequities in the socio-spatial patterns of recovery. Utilizing a combination of statistical and spatial approaches, we found a distinct geographic pattern to the recovery suggesting that the social burdens and impacts from Hurricane Katrina are uneven—the less flooded and less vulnerable areas are recovering faster than tracts with more vulnerable populations and higher levels of flooding. However, there is a more nuanced story, which suggests that it is neighborhoods in the mid-range of social vulnerability where recovery is lagging. While private resources and government programs help groups in the high and low categories of social vulnerability, the middle group shows the slowest rates of recovery. Further, it appears that the congressionally funded State of Louisiana Road Home Program (designed to provide compensation to Louisiana’s homeowners who suffered impacts by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita for the damage to their home) is not having a significant effect in stimulating recovery within the city.     

A menu for learning: a World Café approach for user involvement and inter-professional learning on mental health

Inter-professional learning (IPL) initiatives and service user involvement are well established in professional education programmes, but are seldom incorporated in the same teaching and learning project. In order to accomplish a combination of these approaches, an interactive learning format, styled as a World Café on mental health, was chosen to bring social work and mental health nursing students together with service users and carers. The project aimed to be participatory and inclusive from the outset, establishing a steering group with staff, students and user/carer volunteers to plan the day-long event. The event enabled all participants to engage in round table conversations to learn from each other's outlooks and roles, and for students to reflect on their future inter-professional practice and engagement with service users. Findings from this project indicate that the World Café as a teaching and learning method may have much to offer students engaged in IPL activities. We believe that the findings from this project can contribute to the advancement of existing knowledge regarding IPL and user involvement, and that a World Café approach may serve as a template for replication for other education providers, as part of a wider repertoire of inter-professional and service user involvement initiatives.     

Revisiting Family of Origin in the Training of Family Therapists

Family of Origin exploration has had a controversial history in family therapy training. This article describes a process that aims to integrate family of origin work with skills development Co‐developed by a training group and their trainer, it builds on the existing approach at the Bouverie Centre in Melbourne. Family of origin work is clearly and practically linked with the enhancement of clinical skills, as argued for in the literature. Informed consent trust and safety are taken seriously, and negotiated within the training group. Trainee and trainer stories are included and the authors discuss the learning that resulted from asking trainees to present their family of origin to the group, including the unpredictable personal ramifications that inevitably occur in such processes.     

The Role of Geographic Scale in Monitoring Environmental Justice

Utilizing the concept of environmental justice, this paper examines the differential burdens of toxic and hazardous waste facilities locations in low income minority communities. The association between the presence of facilities and socioeconomic characteristics of places are examined for the state of South Carolina at three different spatial scales: counties, census tracts, and census block groups. Three different types of hazardous waste/toxic facilities are also examined: Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) sites, Treatment, Storage, and Disposal sites (TSD), and inactive hazardous waste sites. At the county level, there was some association between the presence of toxic/hazardous waste facilities and race and income. In South Carolina, this translates to a disproportionate burden on White, more affluent communities in metropolitan areas, rather than low income minority communities. At both the census tract and block group levels, there is no association between race and the location of toxic/hazardous waste facilities. There are slight differences in the income levels between tracts and block groups with facilities and those without. This localized ecology of hazard sources must be expanded to include emission/discharge data in order to adequately address environmental justice issues on who bears the burdens of environmental contamination.     

Benchmark Analysis for Quantifying Urban Vulnerability to Terrorist Incidents

We describe a quantitative methodology to characterize the vulnerability of U.S. urban centers to terrorist attack, using a place-based vulnerability index and a database of terrorist incidents and related human casualties. Via generalized linear statistical models, we study the relationships between vulnerability and terrorist events, and find that our place-based vulnerability metric significantly describes both terrorist incidence and occurrence of human casualties from terrorist events in these urban centers. We also introduce benchmark analytic technologies from applications in toxicological risk assessment to this social risk/vulnerability paradigm, and use these to distinguish levels of high and low urban vulnerability to terrorism. It is seen that the benchmark approach translates quite flexibly from its biological roots to this social scientific archetype.     

The Impact of Financial Hardship on Single Parents: An Exploration of the Journey From Social Distress to Seeking Help

Single parent families are at high risk of financial hardship which may impact on psychological wellbeing. This study explored the impact of financial hardship on wellbeing on 15 single parents. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed using constructivist thematic analysis. Participants described food and fuel poverty, and the need to make sacrifices to ensure that children’s basic needs were met. In some cases, participants went without food and struggled to pay bills. Isolation, anxiety, depression, paranoia, and suicidal thoughts were described. However, participants reported that psychological services not able to take the needs of single parents in to account. Support for single parents must acknowledge the impact of social circumstances and give more consideration economic drivers of distress.