Group Work Education: A Call for Renewed Commitment

Studies demonstrate steady decline in group work courses and concentration in graduate social work programs. This is attributed to the Council on Social Work Education’s recommendation, in 1969, for a generalist practice model; the growing interest of professional social workers in developing casework skills, including psychiatric casework; and the influence of perspectives from nonsocial work disciplines. This article proposes renewed efforts to strengthen social group work education and concerted collaboration between classroom and field. It focuses on essential course content, emphasizes social group work perspectives, and identifies core social group work concepts and tools for inclusion in curriculum and field education.     

Wie ver?ndert sich die Religiosit?t im Lebensverlauf?

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and fixed-effects regression models, this paper examines church attendance rates across the life course. For 1992?C2007, the overall frequency of churchgoing shows a slight decrease (secularization). This period effect is continuously thwarted by a positive age effect. However, this positive age effect becomes weaker over the recent years which also might be interpreted as a kind of secularization. In-depth analyses show that, in West Germany, the age-specific increase of church attendance rates is paralleled by gradual increases in the frequency of churchgoing after transition into first marriage, when children reach school-age and after the transition to widowhood. However, reaching a higher educational level and an increase in labor market participation, as well as a first divorce (in West Germany) and the transition into a non-marital cohabitation (in East Germany) contribute to a decrease of religious participation.     

Solving the Problems of Iowa Food Deserts: Food Insecurity and Civic Structure*

Abstract Rural regions include places where food sources are not evenly distributed, leading to areas of concentration and food deserts—places where few or no grocery stores exist. Individuals are hypothesized to depend on personal connections and the civic structure of where they live to help them solve the problem of food insecurity. We find that residents living in poor rural counties with few grocery stores and perceptions of high civic structure are significantly less likely to be food insecure. A great deal of food giving and receiving is reported, but these personal connections do not decrease the odds of being food insecure. Lower incomes and being younger increase the odds of food insecurity. Our findings suggest that investments in strengthening the social structure of rural communities along with strategies that increase incomes can help households solve the problem of food insecurity.     

Listening to learn: “Inactive” publics of the arts as exemplar

This exploratory study offers a research methodology by which organizations can more effectively listen to their publics. Using a dialogic interface, the methodology allows informants to relate how their intersections with organizations make sense to them on their own terms.     

More spray on solution: Community,social capital and evidence based policy

The role for government in generating social capital is to create the opportunities for individuals to establish relationships and shared values; that is, to facilitate the creation of networks. The site for network creation is the local community, and community strengthening is the means to do so.     

Moving toward cultural competence in the child welfare system

This paper uses a culturally competent (Cross, Bazron, Dennis & Isaacs, 1989) perspective to examine the child welfare system's, namely protective services, response to children of color. The purpose of the paper is to indicate how the absence of cross-cultural considerations in both child welfare policy and practice, limits the effectiveness of service delivery to children of color and their families. Specifically, three key aspects of the child welfare system are addressed: past responses to children of color, worker-client interactions, and child protective service agencies. The paper ends with several recommendations.     

U.S. nonprofit organizations' demand for temporary foreign professionals

This article examines the demand by nonprofits in the United States for foreign professionals to fill a variety of specialized and managerial positions on a temporary basis. Our study contributes to understanding the demand side of the trend toward a more contingent workforce. We test predictors of nonprofit employers' pursuit of foreign labor for professional expertise and show an association between strategy to insource foreign labor and organizational resource level, mission, occupational need, and wage offer. Our findings suggest that government visa policies and practices affect labor pools for nonprofit organizations. Given that our study reveals varied interest by nonprofits in pursuing temporary foreign professionals, we end with a brief review and discussion of how the use of temporary and foreign professionals may influence the dynamics of nonprofit organizations and suggest additional research questions.