Elder Abuse: Clinical,Ethical, and Legal Considerations in Social Work Practice

As a consequence of the steadily growing older population, and increased demands on family for community based care of elderly, elder abuse is an issue to be considered in all domains of social work practice. Intervention in cases of elder abuse is often fraught with ambiguity and ethical dilemmas as the application of professional principles is less than straightforward, bringing to the fore personal, legal, and ethical concerns in the management of the client’s safety and well-being. This article addresses challenges which arise from the complexity of elder abuse cases and reviews clinical, ethical, and legal obligations to inform ethical decision-making.     

Student achievement against national minimum standards for reading and numeracy in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9: A regression discontinuity analysis

Literacy and numeracy are essential for success in life. In Australia, students’ academic achievement is monitored using the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). One of the aims of NAPLAN is that results will drive student improvement by identifying which students are underperforming against national minimum standards and who require additional learning support. This study investigated the performance trajectories of students who were identified as “below the national minimum standards”, relative to students above the national minimum standards. This study used standardised reading and numeracy test scores for Australian students and regression discontinuity methods to investigate whether students who performed below the national minimum standards showed improved performance in subsequent years compared with similar students above the national minimum standards threshold. On average, achievement gaps between students below the standards and students at or above the standards persisted across year levels. Labelling students below the national minimum standards had no significant effects on later reading or numeracy achievement. The results suggest the NAPLAN national minimum standards labelling is not driving student improvement, highlighting the need for effective early identification and interventions for children who do not meet school year benchmarks for literacy and numeracy.     

Bondage and resistance in the land of lead: antebellum Upper Mississippi River Valley mineral country landscapes

Slaves and indentured servants in the Illinois–Wisconsin border region suffered manifold hazards in mining, building, transport, domestic, and hospitality realms of the lead economy. Their toils underpinned settlers’ survival and reputed hardiness as well as the region’s prosperity and growth. While local white abolitionist fiction emphasized secret, successful resistance, unfree people themselves pursued more public, mobile paths to freedom. Masters’ knowledge of and concerns about the landscape, combined with weak anti-slavery support, often impeded freedom and justice.     

Assessing Family Caregiving: A Comparison of Three Retrospective Parentification Measures

Despite the frequent use of the Parentification Questionnaire (PQ) and the Parentification Scale (PS) in research studies, scant attention has been directed toward the psychometric properties of the scores derived from these measures. Moreover, given the importance of parentification as a clinical topic for treatment, it is surprising that more attention has not been paid to the accuracy and psychometric properties of parentification instruments. The current study was the first to compare the psychometric properties of these two commonly used parentification instruments (i.e., PQ and PS). This study also examined another parentification instrument, newly developed: the Parentification Inventory (PI). More specifically, the psychometric properties of the PI were compared comprehensively with those of the PQ and PS in a sample of college students (N = 787). Scores derived from the three measures were found to be comparable, valid, and reliable. Implications for couple and family system practice, and directions for future research are proffered.     

Voluntas Symposium: Comments on Salamon and Sokolowski’s Re-conceptualization of the Third Sector

With their “Beyond Nonprofits: Re-conceptualizing the Third Sector”, Salamon and Sokolowski have made an important contribution to the ongoing debate on how to define the third sector. This Voluntas symposium brings together the comments of five leading scholars both supportive and critical of the new definition. The comments are based on a debate held at the conference of the International Society for Third Sector Research, in Stockholm in 2016.     

Gender-Based Occupational Segregation and Sex Differences in Sensory,Motor, and Spatial Aptitudes

Research on sex differences in humans documents gender differences in sensory, motor, and spatial aptitudes. These aptitudes, as captured by Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) codes, predict the occupational choices of men and women in the directions indicated by this research. We simulate that eliminating selection on these skills reduces the Duncan index of gender-based occupational segregation by 20 % to 23 % in 1970 and 2012, respectively. Eliminating selection on DOT variables capturing other accounts of this segregation has a smaller impact.     

Governmentalities of Volunteering: A Study of Regional Western Australia

The aim of this article is to investigate the governmentalities of volunteering in regional Western Australia. Drawing on interviews with 25 consenting volunteers and their managers, a thematic analysis revealed the experiences and perceptions of the research participants. Two distinct governmentalities exist: one reflecting neo-liberal governmentality and the other reflective of classic liberalism. Whilst this study is limited to regional Western Australia, the results suggest that there are variations in ‘governmentalities’ of volunteering comprising a mix of sometimes contradictory elements. This article also demonstrates the usefulness of governmentality for expanding the understanding of volunteering that has the potential to illuminate vital elements of the volunteer sector, which are being missed. There are many niches where volunteer groups exist or are emerging that are not visible and out of reach of the control techniques commonly used by governments adopting advanced (neo) liberal governmentalities.