Social Protection and Health: Experiences in Uganda

There is an interesting and continuing debate on the nature and role of social protection in poverty reduction. Within the health sector, discussion has focussed on the drawbacks associated with fee exemption schemes and community‐based health insurance, with much less attention paid to the policy option of abolishing user fees. This paper reviews empirical evidence on the impact of the Government of Uganda's decision in 2001 to abolish user fees for health services. The paper finds that this policy intervention has had a significant positive impact on health‐seeking behaviour in Uganda and concludes that this policy measure can make an important contribution towards a more ‘promotional’ policy approach to social protection.     

Regional Tertiary Students and Living Away from Home: A priceless experience that costs too much?

For financial reasons, an increasing number of tertiary students in Australia are forced to work long hours each week, and they are becoming more likely to be living in relative poverty. This study aimed to explore and describe the economic situation of students at a provincial Australian university campus, and the role that type of residence plays in their financial well‐being. A large‐scale self report survey dealing with students' financial experiences during the 2003 academic year, was distributed to a convenience sample of students from across the courses offered on the campus. Quantitative data analysis was completed using SPSS and qualitative data was analysed thematically. Results indicate a strong relationship between type of residence and financial well‐being. Rural students may be especially vulnerable to the effects of financial distress, because of issues such as low cash‐flow on many family farms, and the long distances many travel to attend regional universities. This study indicates a number of possible avenues to protect students from living in poverty.     

A Developmental Perspective on Community Service in Adolescence

A substantial number of U.S. adolescents currently participate in community service and there is increased national interest in service programs. This article assesses the assumption of developmental benefits to service participants by critically reviewing 44 empirical studies. It offers a theoretical framework for understanding the findings by connecting them to identity development and delineating three pertinent concepts: agency, social relatedness, and moral-political awareness. These concepts are applied to studies that investigate: (1) the characteristics and motivations of participants, (2) the effects of service, and (3) the process of service. The findings support the conclusion that service activities which provide opportunities for intense experiences and social interactions are often associated with prasocial development. The findings also point to the need for more studies focused on particular service programs and on relationships between service providers and those served.     

Performing Femininities: Listening to White Working-Class Girls in Rural Maine

In this article, I explore the ways in which sixth, seventh, and eighth grade White girls from poor and working-class families in rural Maine understand, express, and react to dominant cultural definitions of femininity. Using a qualitative method, The Listening Guide, to interpret data gathered over the course of a year from weekly videotaped focus group conversations and individual interviews, I identify and underscore the contradictory nature of what constitutes appropriately feminine discourse and behavior for these girls—discourse and behavior that is radically different from the dominant White middle-class cultural ideal and that offers these girls a wide range of physical and verbal expression not usually considered under the rubric of conventional femininity. I then examine the girls' ambivalent relationship with middle-class propriety, as well as their anger, their longing, and, in some cases, their resistance to dominant cultural ideologies of femininity. Although such resistance may serve them well in their local community, it puts them at odds with the expectations of their teachers and other adults invested in the conventional feminine ideal and thus underscores their displacement in school and society. The Listener's Guide, I contend, provides a way to elucidate the struggles these working-class girls experience as they negotiate and contest contradictory voices and visions of appropriately feminine behavior and constructions of self vying for their attention and allegiance.     

Skills Laboratories and the New Social Work Degree: One Small Step Towards Best Practice? Service Users' and Carers' Perspectives

The new social work degree has a strong emphasis upon the development of communication skills and upon the requirement for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to assess students' safety and readiness to practise. The GSCC grants to HEIs to develop skills labs to help with this skills development have been widely welcomed, but not enough work has been done fully to evaluate the effectiveness of such skills labs. There has been some previous evidence to suggest that such projects may even be counter‐productive. This article explores the way in which Staffordshire University has called upon its service user/carer group and a team of practice assessors to work with the academic tutor to devise and carry out a programme of skills training in a skills lab environment for first year students on the new degree. An initial evaluation of this project shows encouraging results for this ‘work in progress’, even though it is still early days.     

A journey of embedding mental health lived experience in social work education

Abstract

The value of learning from mental health lived experience is widely acknowledged, however, the nature of lived experience involvement in Australian social work education seldom extends beyond guest lecturing. Further, few opportunities exist that build the capacity of people with lived experience to become educators within tertiary settings. In this paper we present the Valuing Lived Experience Project (VLEP), an initiative led by a Lived Experience Academic (LEA) that seeks to systematically and meaningfully embed lived experience into the social work curriculum at a Western Australian university by providing significant opportunities for the capacity building of both individuals with mental health lived experience and academics. Given the relative infancy of service user involvement in Australian social work education, the VLEP offers a number of opportunities for reflection and consideration. A long-standing partnership between a LEA and Social Work Academic is described, the activities and key learnings of the VLEP to date are outlined, and we offer our reflections on challenges encountered throughout the journey. We hope that our experiences and learnings can be drawn upon to progress lived experience participation in tertiary settings and further legitimise lived experience involvement in the education of social workers.     

History,The City and The Interactionist: Anselm Strauss,City Imagery,and Urban Sociology

My goal in what follows is to explore some of the questions, analyses and insights that a scholar, equipped with a sense of history and the sensitivity of an interactionist, might bring to the study of the city. But before I begin that task, I want to spend a little time laying some ground- work. I want to introduce my readers to (or remind them of) two snippets of sociological history: the first snippet has to do with the place-more accurately, the lack of place-of the interactionist perspective within the field of urban sociology; the second deals with the unique contributions of one of the few interactionists to work urban sociology: Anselm Strauss.