Decision making in child welfare: A critical review of the literature

The decision to intervene with families has enormous implications for a democratic society. Child protective services must both protect children and families. Practice theory, social policies, and agency procedures have not provided a consensus on the criteria to guide decision making in child welfare. This paper reviews the empirical studies in the decision making literature for the purposes of: identifying variables workers are using to guide their decisions; identifying major professional concerns and issues with this literature; and suggest questions for further research.     

Do female candidates ‘lose votes’?: the experience of female candidates in the 1979 and 1980 Canadian general elections

Dans quelle mesure la sous-représentation des femmes au Parlement du Canada est-elle attribuable à la “perte de votes”? II est évident que lorsque les femmes se présentent à la députation sur un pied d‘égalité avec les hommes en ce qui concerne un rival titulaire, la compétitivité du siège disputé, et le parti politique, les femmes n'obtiennent pas moins de votes que les hommes. Les femmes sont également plus aptes àêtre choisies pour disputer des sièges à des titulaires ou des sièges que le parti a peu ou pas de chance de gagner. II est done peu probable que l’échec relatif des femmes aux élections fédérates soit directement relié aux sentiments des électeurs. II apparait plutôt que le succès limité des femmes dans la politique fédérale au Canada est dû aux difficultés qu'elles ont à se faire nommer pour disputer des sièges qu'elles auraient une assez bonne chance de gagner. This paper explores the extent to which the under-representation of women in the House of Commons in Canada can be attributed to female candidates “losing votes.” The evidence suggests that, when male and female candidates are equated in terms of running against an incumbent, competitiveness of the contested seat, and political party, the women do not receive fewer votes than the men. At the same time, women were more likely than men to be nominated to contest seats against incumbents or seats which their party had little or no chance of winning. It does not seem, then, that the relative failure of women in federal elections can be traced directly to voters' sentiments. Rather, it appears as if the limited success of women in federal politics in Canada largely originates in their difficulties in securing nominations to contest seats which they have some reasonable prospect of winning.     

School-based interventions with depressed minority adolescents

School-based approaches to intervention with depressed minority adolescents is discussed within a preventive framework. The symptomatology and epidemiology of depression is presented as it pertains to minority group adolescents. Specific suggestions for school-based services, the uses of school-based mental health professionals, and for coordination with mental health agencies are provided.     

Termination: When the therapist leaves

Despite an expansion of our knowledge about loss and grief little has been written on the experience and techniques employed during a forced termination. This article examines the theory, applications of theory, and transference/countertransference issues surrounding the author's experience as she moved to another state and transferred or terminated with her patients.Paper presented at the Fourteenth Annual Symposium of the New York Center for Psychoanalytic Training, March 1989.     

The child and adolescent social perception measure

Tests currently available for measuring children's sensitivity to nonverbal aspects of communication have been criticized on methodological and conceptual grounds. The Child and Adolescent Social Perception Measure (CASP) was developed to meet the need for a clinically useful measure which examines social perception within a semi-naturalistic context. The CASP consists of 10 videotaped scenes, each of which lasts 19–40 seconds. The verbal content was removed through electronic filtering so that the ability to receive and interpret nonverbal social cues could be measured without bias from verbal cues. Children are shown the scenes and then questioned about the emotions portrayed. Based on standardization with 212 children and adolescents ages 6 to 15 years old, reliability (interrater, test-retest, internal consistency) and initial validity information are reported.Portions of this paper have been presented at the Congress of the World Federation of Occupational Therapists, London, England, 1994, and at the joint conference of the Canadian and American Occupational Therapists, Boston, 1994.We acknowledge funding from the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital Research Grants Program. We thank each of the actors and actresses who generously volunteered their time to produce the videotape; the students and teachers in the schools who participated in the collection of the normative data; and the research assistants who worked many hard hours to make this all possible (Janet L. Smith, Kara Ryan, Dixie McLean, Kate Murie, Taslim Pardhan).     

Assessing clinical progress: A case study of Daryl

In this single case study, the authors conceptually framed their understanding of dissociation and splitting as defensive/adaptive coping mechanisms through which children respond to abusive/neglectful environments and the developmental deficits of abused/neglected children as related to failure in separation/individuation. Case study methodology with a nested experimental research design employed content analysis of process recordings to identify targeted defenses and developmental themes and then to assess therapeutic effectiveness during the first six months of psychodynamic play therapy with Daryl. In-session cliniial progress was assessed through charting changes in defenses and developmental themes, identifying degree of goal achievement, and clinically observing treatment stage progression. Visual analysis of the frequency charts identified a slight cyclical decline in use of splitting and guarding against dissociation and a somewhat uneven increase in the developmental theme of coexistence/integration. While these changes in targeted outcome variables were not statistically significant, the amount of change did exceed the predetermined outcome goals for decreased splitting and increased coexistence but not the goal of decreased guarding against dissociation. Review of the process recordings also identified clear markers of treatment progression through two therapeutic stages in the first six months of long term psychodynamic play therapy and further supported the clinical meaningfulness of the observed changes.     

Conditions Facilitating Participatory-Democratic Organizations*

This paper examines “alternative institutions” in a variety of institutional domains as participatory-democratic modes of organizution. Grounded in comparative data, it posits structural conditions, both internal to an organization and in its environment, which support or undermine the achievement of its collectivist-democratic ideals. While the literature on social movement organizations well demonstrates the fragility of democratic systems and their tendency toward oligarchization, goal displacement, and organizational maintenance, this work suggests, in propositional form, conditions which militate against these all-too-common transformation patterns.