Social Work Educators' Views and Experiences of Grow Your Own Qualifying Programmes in England

Little is known about the impact on social work educators and social work programmes of employer sponsorship of social work students through secondment or traineeship schemes, often referred to as Grow Your Own (GYO) schemes. This article reports on social work educators' views of sponsorship, the effects on their activities and the dynamics of mixed student cohorts. The study took place in England during 2007–2009 and comprised a review of the literature, interviews with a range of social work educators (n = 23), GYO students (n = 35), and employers (n = 27), and the production of a good practice guide based on stakeholder contributions. Social work educators reported that GYO activity may enhance and enrich social work programmes. They valued secured and guaranteed practice placements, considered that employer-sponsored students enriched the total student cohort, facilitated an expansion of student numbers, and strengthened partnerships with local employers. A further advantage was that GYO benefited the teaching programme overall with more robust employer/university relationships. Social work educators reported that such schemes required careful management and investment of time and might lead to some tensions about the balance between education and training. These findings are placed in the context of developments in social work education in England.     

Gearing Up for Personalisation: Training Activities Commissioned in the English Pilot Individual Budgets Sites 2006–2008

The transformation of social care in England is taking place though changes affording greater choice and control for people using services. Individual budgets were one key element of these changes and were piloted in 13 local authorities in 2006–2008. This article reports on interviews with training leads in these local authorities that took place in 2008 as part of an independent evaluation of the individual budget pilots. The aims of the interviews were to explore the role of training as part of the processes of transformation, the use of resources and establishment of training strategies within the local authority. Participants revealed that the subject of training was acquiring higher profile within their authorities, although uncertainties remain about the extent of local authority responsibilities for training. Within local authorities, training resources were yet to be determined and models of training were not fully developed. The article concludes that training will remain a central issue when implementing personalised social care services and that models of training for such changes should be shared and evaluated over the long term.     

'I know I signed something': older people,families and social workers' understanding of the legal aspects of entry to residential care

This purpose of this paper is to report findings that older people are legally vulnerable when entering an aged care facility, that social workers lack knowledge of the legal aspects of this move and do not necessarily view this information as core to their practice. The structure of social work services mirror the disjuncture older people and their families experience at this time and this may, in part, explain social work's lack of attention to these issues. Although many social workers are in contact with older people, the profession in Australia has been slow to develop a knowledge base to support effective practice with this group.     

User and Carer Experiences of International Social Care Workers in England: Listening to their Accounts of Choice and Control

Abstract

This paper develops a typology of people using social care services’ preferences for care workers and satisfaction with social care services from a large multimethod study that explored international recruitment to the English social care sector (home and health care, including residential homes). We developed this typology with two questions in mind: (a) what led to satisfaction of care and (b) what led to preference and satisfaction with workers? Data were collected from face-to-face interviews with 35 people who were using social care services and carers (2007–2009) and these data were used to develop the typology. Using the theoretical concept of homophily, we explored contentions that people might prefer to receive care and support from individuals resembling themselves. We observed that preferences for care workers and satisfaction with social care services may be linked, but highlighted that the concept of meeting a preference is personal to the individual. The implications of users’ preferences for certain care workers at a time where policy is promoting greater consumer-led care or self-directed support are discussed.     

Prevalence, type, disclosure, and severity of adverse life events in college students

OBJECTIVE: Some information on the prevalence of adverse life experiences is available for the general population and college students, but the extent, nature, and severity of these events is unclear. PARTICIPANTS: The authors recruited undergraduate college students (N = 6,053) from diverse academic settings (public and private schools) and geographic locations. METHODS: They examined the prevalence, nature, severity, and disclosure of adverse events, in addition to reports of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology within the sample. RESULTS: Across multiple studies, prevalence rates of adverse events ranged from 55.8% to 84.5%, replicating previous findings in larger samples. In a subset of undergraduate students (n = 97) who the authors interviewed in greater depth, 9% reported symptoms of clinical PTSD and an additional 11% reported subclinical symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Research using college samples for the study of stressful life events is a useful and reasonable strategy. The authors discuss implications for research, as well as screening and referral services at universities.     

Deviations from the least-cost diets for infants

This paper addresses an on-going controversy in the nutrition literature over the size and significance of the nutrient elasticity with respect to food expenditure. Linear programming methods are used to estimate the least-cost diets for infants in Cebu, Philippines. The results imply that, overall, the actual expenditure is greater than the least-cost expenditure. Data and regression analyses are used to explore the determinants of the deviations from the least-cost diets. The results support the hypotheses that the deviations increase with income due to the diminishing marginal utility of nutrients and that the deviations fall as the nutritional knowledge of the mother increases.I am indebted to Anne Krueger, Marjorie McElroy, John Akin, James Baumgardner, Kevin Rask, Takao Kato, Michael Haines, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. Thanks also to the participants of Duke University International and Labor Workshops. I would like to thank the Carolina Population Center at UNC-Chapel Hill for providing me with the data and the Sloan Foundation for financial support. All errors are my own.     

Using Object Knowledge in Visual Tracking and Reaching

Nine‐month‐old infants were presented with an engaging and challenging task of visually tracking and reaching for a rolling ball that disappeared and reappeared from behind an occluder. On some trials, the infant observed the experimenter place a barrier on the ball's track; the barrier remained partially visible above the occluder throughout the remainder of the trial. When the task involved only predictive tracking, infants' anticipatory gaze shifts were faster when no barrier was present. When the task involved both tracking and reaching, there were more reaches when no barrier was present. If the infant reached, the timing and extension of the reach and the accompanying gaze shift did not differ with regard to the barrier. Because catching the ball was quite difficult for these infants, task demands interfered with the integration of visual information and visuospatial reasoning about the barrier with the reaching action.