Comprehensive career planning: The VCU Career Connections Program

Individuals with disabilities who complete post secondary education programs must be prepared to plan and direct their long-term careers. Despite recent legislation, students with disabilities exiting higher education continue to face obstacles such as negative employer attitudes, architectural barriers, and lack of necessary services and supports when attempting to access employment and pursue their careers. This article describes a comprehensive career-planning program designed to enhance employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities as they graduate from higher education.     

Assessing child care need under welfare reform

Suggestions for improvements to this research by Sherrill Friedman, Paula Brush and Subhash Sonnad are gratefully acknowledged.

With the advent of welfare reform, recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) are now required to enter the workforce. This workforce entry brings the need for child care. Two problems concerning child care emerge: poor women participating in the workforce at entry level jobs often require child care during hours when care is not readily available (Miranne & Young, 1998); and welfare reform s work requirement will necessitate a predicted ten percent increase in child care services (Maynard, 1989), while only a four percent increase in funding for child care is being mandated by the federal government (Blank, 1997). This essay explores welfare reform and its effect on child care availability by demonstrating its impact at a local level.     

Finding a routine that works: A mixed methods study of foster parents

Although it is well established that daily routines are important for family well‐being, very little research has been done on how foster parents establish and integrate new foster children into family routines. We used a mixed‐methods, cross‐sectional design, focused on qualitative results to explore how foster parents utilize routines. Twenty‐three foster parents were recruited from a private child welfare agency in a large city in the United States. Surveys were administered to obtain demographic information, overall home atmosphere, and the importance and prevalence of different routines, including mealtimes and sleep schedules. Nine foster parents received a semistructured interview with open‐ended questions. Foster parents reported that routines such as bedtimes, mealtimes, chores, and homework were essential to family well‐being. Because both parents and children had to adjust to living together in an intimate family environment, it was important to establish routines quickly. Foster parents modified routines depending on their child's needs. Along with typical family routines, foster parents reported additional tasks, such as visits with biological parents, meetings with caseworkers, and trainings that affected their family schedule. Results imply that training foster care workers and foster parents about routines can engender stability and emotional belonging for children.     

Incorporating self‐determination into substance abuse prevention programming for youth transitioning from foster care to adulthood

Youth transitioning from foster care to adulthood are at higher risk for alcohol and substance abuse disorders than general population youth. At the same time, these youths are often recipients of strong clinical intervention, often at levels considered unnecessary, for other mental health or behavioural challenges. Because of this, there is sometimes resistance from providers to offer services such as substance abuse prevention programming as it may be seen as contributing to youths' overclinicalization, stigmatization, or retraumatization. Using thematic content analysis, this qualitative study analysed focus groups with community stakeholders providing recommendations on support services for youth transitioning from foster care to adulthood to derive strategies for delivering substance abuse prevention programming in a way that enhances youth self‐determination. Findings were organized by self‐determination theory's 3 key psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. All three needs were represented in stakeholder recommendations, which were translated into strategies for bolstering youths' achievement of each need. Strategies include a mix of those already present in motivational interviewing‐based brief substance abuse prevention interventions as well as more unique strategies that are much less frequently employed but that may better meet the needs of youth with foster care experience.     

‘Coming Out Tales’: Adult Sons and Daughters' Feelings About Their Gay Father's Sexual Identity

Coming out to their children is a dilemma that concerns many gay, bisexual, and lesbian parents with children from previous heterosexual relationships. How children found out about having a father who identified himself as gay, and their feelings about their father's sexual identity, were explored through qualitative analysis of semi‐structured interviews with 36 sons and daughters (aged 19 to 36 years) whose gay fathers participated in the Gay & Bisexual Parenting Survey (Barrett and Tasker, 2001). Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis revealed that awareness of their father's sexual identity was often left unspoken for various reasons, and that acceptance came about through gradual understanding as well as direct discussion. Interview data indicated the complexity of the relationship between the young adult's personal acceptance of their father's gay identity and their consideration of social context when deciding how open to be to others about their father's sexual identity. This research has varied implications for therapeutic work with gay and bisexual fathers coming out to their children from previous heterosexual relationships.     

A Qualitative Assessment of South African Adolescents' Motivations For and Against Substance Use and Sexual Behavior

Focus groups (N=15 groups; 8 with girls, 7 with boys) with adolescents in high schools near Cape Town, South Africa, were used to conduct a qualitative investigation of reported reasons for using and not using substances and for having and not having sex. Adolescents reported Enhancement, Negative States, Social, and Aversive Social motivations for both substance use and sexual behavior. In addition, being addicted as a reason for using drugs and rape as a context for sexual behavior were frequently reported. Motivations against behaviors included Physical/Behavioral Consequences, Ethical Objections, Social Disapproval, and Incompatible Activities and Goals reasons. Preventive interventions should address existing motivations for and against substance use and sexual behavior to acknowledge adolescents' experiences in context.     

青年流动人口就医流向选择的影响因素与测度分析——基于北京、上海和深圳调查

通过探讨和研究青年流动人口就医流向,为认识和分析青年流动人口就医问题提供数据和依据,为提高我国青年流动人口的健康水平、优化卫生资源配置、促进卫生资源分配的公平合理、完善我国青年流动人口异地就医政策提供理论基础。故此,根据消费者选择效用最大化原理,应用就医地点对就医者的效用满足函数,构建基于效用最大化的青年流动人口就医行为选择及影响因素评估模型,从就医机构选择的预测概率、离散变化和Odds Ratios等角度对影响因素的重要程度及影响大小进行定量测度和分析,结论显示:青年流动人口的个体特质人口学因素、经济支持因素和生理因素对青年流动人口的就医流向影响具有统计显著性,但对不同就医方式选择的影响大小不尽相同,教育程度和在业状况对就医流向的影响最大,并根据影响因素程度的不同,提出了相应的对策和建议。