Social work and macro-economic neoliberalism: beyond the social justice rhetoric

Macro-economic policy shapes and structures social welfare policy, services, and their implementation. As a result, the commoditisation of social welfare services and the use of markets as well as private sector management philosophies and tools have colonised and fashioned the design, provision and implementation of social welfare policy and structures. The impact has been far reaching, from limiting social welfare responses of elected democratic government to shaping the profession in a range of intended and unintended directions. Written from a UK perspective, this paper proposes a discussion of the impact of macro-economic neoliberal policies in the field of social welfare and explores the implications for social work practice. The paper also promotes a debate within the profession regarding the importance of macro-economic analysis and possible responses, as well as suggesting a way forward within European and, more broadly, international practice contexts.     

Phenomenological and Participatory Research on Schizophrenia: Recovering the Person in Theory and Practice

This article describes the application of phenomenological and participatory research methods in understanding the problem of recurrent inpatient admissions for individuals diagnosed with serious mental illness. Conventional approaches to understanding and addressing inpatient recidivism in serious mental illness have neglected to invite the perspective or input of the person with the disorder, further exacerbating the passive and helpless role of mental patient into which these individuals have become socialized by virtue of prevailing patterns of cultural stigma and clinical practice. These approaches have focused exclusively on the disorder and its signs and symptoms and have attempted to prevent readmission through early detection and intervention to prevent relapse. This paper describes the failure of one attempt to institute such an approach to addressing the problem of recidivism, and the use of phenomenological and participatory research methods to involve recidivist patients themselves in exploring the reasons for this failure and to suggest alternative approaches. These methods involved patients' describing their experiences of hospitalization, discharge, and readmission, identifying the precipitants and reasons for their readmissions, and participating in the design of a new intervention that has proven more successful in assisting them in establishing more satisfying lives for themselves in the community as an alternative to returning to the hospital. The authors suggest that such participatory methods provide an antidote to the passive and helpless role of mental patient often encouraged by conventional modes of clinical practice and research, allowing for a recovery of an active role for the person with the disorder both in the theory and practice of clinical psychology.     

Multidisciplinary Child Protection Decision Making About Physical Abuse: Determining Substantiation Thresholds and Biases

The current study examined the threshold at which multidisciplinary child protection team (CPT) professionals substantiate physical abuse allegations and the extent that they utilize potentially biased constructs in their decision making when presented with the same case evidence. State legal definitions of child maltreatment are broad. Therefore, the burden of interpretation is largely on CPT professionals who must determine at what threshold physical acts by parents surpass corporal discipline and constitute child physical abuse. Biased or subjective decisions may be made if certain case-specific characteristics or CPT professionals' personal characteristics are used in making physical abuse determinations. Case vignettes with visual depictions of inflicted injuries were sent to CPT professionals in Florida and their substantiation decisions, personal beliefs about corporal discipline, and coercive discipline were collected. Results of the study demonstrated relatively high agreement among professionals across vignettes about what constitutes physical abuse. Further, CPT professionals strongly considered their perceptions of the severity of inflicted injuries in substantiation decisions. Although case specific characteristics did not bias decisions in a systematic way, some CPT professional characteristics influenced the substantiation of physical abuse. Practice implications and future directions of research are discussed.     

A treatment outcome study of bereavement groups for children

An empirical study of the effectiveness of an eight-week children's bereavement psychotherapy group was undertaken. Children, aged 7–11, who had a parent and/or sibling die were initially assigned to either a treatment group or a waiting list control group and followed over an eight-week period. Participation in the experimental group was associated with a significant decrease in symptomatology, as assessed by multiple measures using multiple sources. Despite a small sample, the intervention was sufficiently powerful to suggest the use of short-term group therapy to help children cope with the death of a parent and/or sibling.The research reported here was originally included in a dissertation written in fulfillment of the requirements for a Ph.D. at Brigham Young University. We wish to acknowledge the helpful suggestions and support from Dr. John Flora-Tostado, Dr. John Lyons, Dr. Joanne Marengo and the participants in the Post-doctoral Research Seminar at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.Dr. Lambert is a Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University.     

Fostering Innovation in Contaminated Sediments Management Through Multicriteria Technology Assessment and Public Participation

Management of contaminated sediments is problematic and costly. Several new technologies are under development that may in some cases reduce costs and environmental or ecological impacts. However, there are significant barriers to implementing new technologies, including the increased management complexity, the potential for introducing antagonistic or incommensurate objectives that are unfamiliar to stakeholders or regulators, and the difficulty of capturing private, commercial benefits from environmental improvements that may primarily benefit the public. This article identifies several innovative contaminated sediments technologies, discusses the difficulty of proving or quantifying the benefits of new technologies, and presents an agenda for research that would foster partnerships between scientific, government, and public communities of interest for the purpose of improving innovative technology assessment and environmental decision making.     

Horizontal inequity comparisons

In this paper, we expound the idea that horizontal inequity (HI) in different tax systems be compared by transplanting the HI from one tax system into the other, as a mapping between its pre- and post-tax living standard distributions, and then applying known results to compare the extent of association present in the two joint distributions. We make this idea operational by means of axioms which, we show, lead to an implementable procedure based on the `copula'. Statistical inference procedures are discussed, and illustrative empirical exercises are undertaken for the UK, Canadian and Israeli tax and benefit systems. Received: 1 March 1999/Accepted: 29 May 2000