Practicing Restorative Justice in School Communities: Addressing the Challenge of Culture Change

The practice of restorative justice in schools has the capacity to build social and human capital through challenging students in the context of social and emotional learning. While restorative justice was originally introduced to schools to address serious incidents of misconduct and harmful behavior, the potential this philosophy offers is much greater. The conviction is that the key challenge for schools is addressing the culture change required to make the shift from traditional discipline, driven by punitive (or rewards based) external motivators, to restorative discipline, driven by relational motivators that seeks to empower individuals and their communities.     

Enhancing parent-child interaction during foster care visits: experimental assessment of an intervention

Mothers of young children recently placed in foster care participated in an intervention to enhance parent-child interaction during visits. The mothers all reported substantial loss and trauma histories. Immediately prior to the visits, the mothers were coached on strategies for separating from their children at the visit's end. The mothers displayed more behavioral strategies for supporting their children when the visit was over, but were less engaged with their children during the leave-taking sequence and displayed fewer ways of maintaining the child's involvement in mother-child interaction during leave-taking than those in a comparison group. This article discusses consideration of parents' trauma history in designing interventions to enhance parent-child interaction.     

Reviewing Respite Services: some lessons from the literature

Although the community care reforms raised the profile of respite services for adults with learning disabilities, little is known about the character of respite provision in Britain. This lack of information is compounded by the way the literature about respite is dispersed across user groups and is often restricted to particular types of services or to specific localities. In order to highlight some of the key issues associated with respite, this paper draws on a wide range of literature. Regardless of differences in terms of the service user groups, common themes are identified which are relevant to service planning and provision for adults with learning disabilities. The paper discusses these themes and argues that a break with the traditional notion of respite as primarily a way to relieve carer burden is long overdue. Adopting the perspective of the primary service users affords the opportunity to re-think respite services.     

Very Public Scandals: Nongovernmental Organizations in Trouble

This paper analyzes, from a cross-national perspective, publicized incidents of alleged wrongdoing on the part of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Data were derived from daily, weekly, or monthly newspapers and special nonprofit newsletters accessible through websites. Analysis of media reports of scandals involving NGOs was conducted to identify issues and trends in governance and management problems associated with this sector. The paper focuses on NGOs involved in the financing or delivery of health and human services. After highlighting some of the precedent-setting cases of NGO improprieties in the United States during the 1990s, prominent global cases of wrongdoing during the period 1998–2000 are reviewed. The underlying problems that allowed these cases to occur and their implications regarding NGO credibility and public trust are identified, and strategic options for enhancing accountability presented.     

Manageable Discord: Fraud and Resistance in the Social Security System

This article presents findings from a study of the attitudes and beliefs of social security claimants engaged in benefit fraud. The basis for a taxonomy of such claimants is outlined, drawing upon concepts of reflexivity and anxiety. This is compared and contrasted with other theoretically-drawn taxonomies, one relating to workplace crime, the other to the consumption of social care services. Finally, the article considers whether benefit fraud is intelligible as resistance to social control. It is argued that benefit fraud represents a conservative form of resistance. Benefit fraud does not signify a "culture" of resistance, so much as a "manageable" form of rule-breaking.     

Family treatment of a borderline personality

This article discusses family therapy as a complementary treatment modality with the adult borderline patient. According to theory, the separation-individuation process is the underlying conflict of the pathological adaptation of the adult borderline patient and the goal of therapy is often considered to be separation of the patient from the family. Family treatment can facilitate the process of separation-individuation as it allows for the concomitant enhancement of the separateness of the parents. Family treatment can also reduce anxiety about separation, minimize the development of a premature intense transference, and prevent the battle for control between the therapist and the parents. Moreover, the process of the family treatment itself, described in this article, reflects the developmental phase of symbiosis, followed by the subphases of the separation-individuation process, i.e., differentiation, practicing and rapprochement, with the groundwork being laid for moving into object constancy. The ego functioning of all family members has the potential of being enhanced and strengthened through this process.