Supporting Care Leavers to Fulfil their Educational Aspirations: Resilience,Relationships and Resistance to Help

Most children in state care do not do as well in school as their peers, but the period of leaving care and transition to adulthood may offer a ‘turning point’ for positive change. Based on a small study of care leavers in England, this article employs the concept of resilience to explore the significance of supportive relationships in enabling this group of young people to make decisions about their future and encouraging them to overcome setbacks in educational attainment.     

经理人警惕“亚健康”

一不小心,就把刚倒的水或牛奶喂给笔记 本喝了,导致电脑烧坏,这是很多有 “本”一族干过的傻事。有关专家建议, 当笔记本电脑进水等液体类物质后,可以采取如 下一些自救措施: 1．立即关机,拔掉外接电源适配器;     

Ergonomic recommendations and their role in cardiac sonography

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) have been recognized as a serious hazard to the health and safety of sonographers. Recommendations have been made on ways to reduce and prevent the frequency and severity of these disorders. The purpose of this study was to ascertain the impact ergonomics has had on the prevalence of MSDs among cardiac sonographers. Three hundred randomly selected Registered Diagnostic Cardiac Sonographers were surveyed. Eighty-one respondents completed the survey. The majority of the sample population was female with an average age of 40 and job tenure between 6-15 years. Ninety percent of respondents reported musculoskeletal pain/discomfort while scanning. Seventy-three percent of respondents perceived a need for ergonomic interventions. The majority of respondents were aware of previously recommended ergonomic interventions and had implemented what was feasible. Still, the experience of pain and discomfort, and incidence of MSDs remains exceptionally high for this occupation. It appears that recommended ergonomic interventions have not had a significant impact on improving the health and safety of cardiac sonographers.     

Education and training for social work: A response to Tony Novak

Novak's proposal (1995) that student social workers should be taught on the basis of how social work should be practised rather than how it actually is being practised within the current market economy, is challenged as an unhelpful ‘head in the sand’ approach to current dilemmas in social work education. The revised Diploma in Social Work (CCETSW, 1995a) is defended on the grounds that it prepares social workers for the jobs they will have to do on qualifying; that it retains a user-centred anti-racist and anti-discriminatory value basis and that, in spite of serious political threats, it remains rooted in higher education and emphasises the importance of holistic assessment and critical reflection in practice.     

'You have neither neighbours nor privacy' : ambiguities in the experience of emotional well being of women in farming families

This paper explores findings from an ethnographic study of relations of dependency within agricultural communities in the Northern region. Using a life course perspective it focuses on the cultural strategies which women draw upon to deal with the changing constraints, emotional stresses and loneliness of marrying into a farming family. Accounts from women occupying different generational positions demonstrate how they manage to achieve personal wellbeing through creative resolution of the different ambiguities involved in being a‘country girl', a ‘farmer's wife’ and a‘gran'.     

Gone Missing? Disabled children living away from their families

Many disabled children spend most of their childhood in 'care', but not formally 'in care'. Research concerning disabled children has been dominated by a medical model of disability and by a failure to include the subjective reality of children themselves. There is also inadequate statistical information available concerning children who spend most of their time away from a family setting. The article looks at what we do know about such experiences, identifying some issues for future research.     

Reclaiming the Mother-daughter Relationship after Sexual Abuse

This paper seeks to provide direction to therapists working with mothers and daughters after a disclosure of father-daughter sexual abuse. The importance of the mother's belief in and support for the child's recovery is highlighted, as are some of the cultural assumptions about mothers and daughters which negatively impact on the relationship. Despite paying lip service to offender responsibility, there continues to be a culture of mother blaming in the child sexual abuse and family therapy literature on incest. Current research findings challenge some of the prevalent myths about mothers’ responses to their children's disclosures. Few clinical sources have addressed this issue, and therapists who reject the mother blaming literature are therefore left with little guidance as to how to work more effectively with mothers and daughters. Consequently they may unwittingly further undermine the relationship. Work with mothers and daughters as they recover from intrafamilial sexual abuse is discussed, and key therapeutic themes and guidelines for practice presented. We explore the significant theme of the rebuilding of trust between mothers and daughters and facilitate a process whereby the woman is able to bear witness to and acknowledge the trauma experienced by her daughter.     

Looking inside the bag of tools: creating research encounters with parents with an intellectual disability

This paper examines the development of fieldwork methodology in a study that investigated the parenting experiences and parent support needs of a group of parents with an intellectual disability. It considers the ways in which the original planning for the project changed as the fieldwork unfolded, requiring adaptations to our methodological expectations and in the process deepening our understanding of the phenomena we were studying and reinforcing for us the importance of relationships in fieldwork‐based research. Three themes in particular are considered that became central to this research: research relationships; safety for participants/positioning of the researcher; suspending assumptions about impairment and disability and influences on life experiences.     

"I KNOW THIS ISN'T PC, BUT . . .": Religious Exclusivism among U.S. Adolescents

Despite the growing pluralism of American society, the proportion of Americans who maintain exclusivist religious beliefs is sizable. This study focuses on adolescence—a period when independent religious lives are forming—examining the social, familial, and denominational correlates of exclusivist beliefs and the ways in which exclusivist adolescents reconcile their beliefs with the cultural mores of a pluralistic society. Using new data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, this study involves the analysis of both survey data and in-depth interviews. Logistic regression results show that Mormons and evangelicals are more likely than mainline Protestants to hold exclusivist beliefs. High levels of parent religiosity and dense religious peer networks also strongly predict exclusivism. Yet the interview data show that exclusivists have not resisted pluralism but have internalized messages of religious diversity. They modify their beliefs in response to pluralism and articulate them carefully so as not to be perceived as intolerant.     

Remarriage,Unmarried Cohabitation,Living Apart Together: Partner Relationships Following Bereavement or Divorce

Substantial proportions of people enter into new partner relationships after bereavement or divorce. Nowadays in Europe, unmarried cohabitation and living‐apart‐together relationships are frequently opted for at repartnering. Drawing on the Netherlands’ Living Arrangements and Social Networks survey of men and women aged 55 to 89 years (N = 4,494), this article explicates the determinants that lead widowed or divorced people to enter into old and new types of partner relationships. Cox proportional hazard regression analyses revealed that age at most recent union dissolution, the number of partner dissolutions, working during and after the most recent union dissolution, and other demographic variables are important in weighing the pros and cons of different types of living arrangements.