Looking After Children: implications for social work education

Pilot schemes demonstrated a wide range of areas in which the Looking After Children materials might be used in social work training, both as part of the academic and the practice curriculum.     

Longitudinal Patterns in Parent and Friend Emotion Socialization: Associations With Adolescent Emotion Regulation

Adolescents learn about emotions through interacting with parents and friends, though there is limited longitudinal research on this topic. This study examined longitudinal patterns in parent and friend emotion socialization and adolescent emotion regulation. Eighty‐seven adolescents reported on parent and friend emotion socialization. Parents reported on adolescent emotion regulation. Parents’ responses were stable over time and across gender. Friends of girls reciprocated negative emotions more and were less punitive over time, whereas friends of boys increased in comforting and decreased in neglect of negative emotions. Parents and friends evidenced unique effects on adolescent emotion regulation, and the effect of friend socialization responses differed for girls and boys. Future research should examine combinatory influences of multiple socializers on adolescent adjustment.     

Views of a Structured Assessment Tool for Observing Practice

Assessment of learning in practice through observation is a key part of social work training in the UK. There is no evidence of systematic dissemination or evaluation of observation tools in social work training. The Assessment of Learning in Practice Settings (ALPS-CETL) programme developed observation tools intended to provide comprehensive assessment through the collection of analytic student reflection, alongside commentary from practice assessor, professional colleague and service user. These ALPS tools were further developed to include specific social work assessment criteria. The purpose of this study was to establish student and practice assessor views about how the tools had been used and to understand their effectiveness, or otherwise, in practice. Through analysis of student focus groups, practice assessor interviews and completed ALPS tools, this paper evaluates the use of the social work adapted ALPS tools on an undergraduate social work programme in an English university. The findings of this study support the view that the ALPS tools can be used to promote reflective writing and support students in obtaining formative and summative evidence of their progress. In addition the tools appear to promote a student-led process of observational assessment thereby potentially helping to address the issue of power in the student/assessor relationship.     

Direct and Indirect Effects of Maternal and Peer Influences on Sexual Intention among Urban African American and Hispanic Females

Peer and family influences are interconnected in complex ways. These influences shape adolescent decision-making regarding engagement in sexual behaviors. Evidence indicates the more proximal (and direct) a process is to an individual, the more likely it is to affect his/her development and behavior. Therefore, family factors (e.g., parenting practices) and peer influence (e.g., peer norms) tend to be more strongly associated with adolescent behavior than distal factors (e.g., media or the economy). Guided by an ecological framework, this study explored how maternal influence variables interact with perceptions of peer influence to affect daughters’ intentions to have sex. A nonprobability sample of 176 mother–daughter dyads was recruited in clinics and service organizations in the northeastern United States. Results from path analysis revealed that maternal influence variables had a significant indirect relationship with daughters’ intentions to have sex through daughters’ perceptions of peer influence. Maternal processes can act as protective factors for adolescent girls who perceive their peers are engaged in sexual behaviors. Therefore, risk reduction interventions with adolescents should include opportunities for parents to learn about sex-related issues and develop skills that will allow them to buffer negative peer influence.     

Improving Field Instruction: An Evaluation of a Seminar for New Field Instructors

Abstract

The field work component of social work education plays an important role in fusing the knowledge, skills, and values of the profession. Moreover, field instructors must be competent to ensure the success of the educational process. Thus, the training of new field instructors is critical to this success. This article reports the findings of a study evaluating the impact of a training seminar for new field instructors on student perceptions of the field experience. A 10-session seminar in field instruction was offered to new direct practice field instructors as a requirement for continued supervision of students. Students' responses to a questionnaire about their field instruction indicated that seminar attendance was related to the degree of emphasis on teaching students from process recordings and also on discussion of student learning needs. Students with trained field instructors were more satisfied with the faculty field liaison. Overall, trained instructors demonstrated expected supervisory behavior more often than untrained instructors for 75% of the 83 supervisory activities studied, although only a limited number of comparisons reached statistical significance.     

Depressive Symptoms in Mothers of Recently Adopted Post-Institutionalized Children

To determine whether depressive symptoms are elevated within months of adoption, we compared women who had recently adopted a toddler from an overseas orphanage to women with children of the same age who adopted more than a year before or were raising a child they birthed. The groups did not differ significantly in means or in percentage with elevated symptoms (Session 1, χ²(2) = 2.5, ns; Session 2, χ²(2) = 1.38, ns). The results provided no evidence of elevated symptoms in the first months following adoption for women who adopted internationally relative to other women with toddler-aged children.     

The Enduring Price of Place: Revisiting the Rural Cost of Living☆

Even as the 2016 elections brought increased public attention to rural life, stereotypes and misconceptions abound. One of these misperceptions is the generalization that prices are lower in rural areas. This article is a restudy of Zimmerman, Ham, and Frank (2008) research on geographic differences in the costs of living. Asking the same fundamental question—if someone bought the same thing in a rural and urban area, would they pay the same price?—and using the same methodology, the results 10 years later indicate that, contrary to popular perception, there was again no consistent pattern of lower prices in rural counties and no consistent pattern of a lower rural cost of living in all of the rural areas. While prices are only one piece of the larger picture of how rural households meet their needs, in addition to price differences, the results highlight how differences in rural life create additional costs that extend beyond prices.