What's up? What young teens and parents want from youth programs

Young teens and their parents clearly state that the "if you build it, they will come" approach, even if it is well built, is only part of the solution for engaging young people in learning opportunities. Interviews with youth and parents explore what they are doing and what they say they want in their nonschool hours. Opportunities that are flexible, less structured, and more leisure-based emerge as priorities. Although relatively content with the options currently available to them, when pressed, youth and families want more connections between people and age groups as well as more of the free-spirited, organic activities likely to emerge in neighborhoods and communities.     

Strategic leadership for exploration and exploitation: The moderating role of environmental dynamism

This study advances prior theoretical research by linking transformational and transactional behaviors of strategic leaders to two critical outputs of organizational learning: exploratory and exploitative innovation. Findings indicate that transformational leadership behaviors contribute significantly to adopting generative thinking and pursuing exploratory innovation. Transactional leadership behaviors, on the other hand, facilitate improving and extending existing knowledge and are associated with exploitative innovation. In addition, we argue that environmental dynamism needs to be taken into account to fully understand the effectiveness of strategic leaders. Our study provides new insights that misfits rather than fits between leadership behaviors and innovative outcomes matter in dynamic environments. Hence, we contribute to the debate on the role of strategic leaders in managing exploration and exploitation, not only by examining how specific leadership behaviors impact innovative outcomes, but also by revealing how the impact of leadership is contingent upon dynamic environmental conditions.     

Collective survival strategies and anti-colonial practice in ecosocial work

ABSTRACT

Oppressed communities have long used strategies of caring for and protecting each other to ensure their collective survival. We argue for ecosocial workers to critically interrogate how agency, history, and culture structure environmental problems and our responses to them, by developing a resilience-based framework, collective survival strategies (CSS). CSS consider power, culture and history and build upon the strengths of oppressed communities facing global environmental changes. We challenge the dominant narrative of climate change as a “new” problem and connect it to colonization. We discuss implications by examining a social work program explicitly built on Indigenous knowledges and anti-colonial practice.     

Use of a Short Gambling Screen with an Arrestee Population: A Feasibility Study

Problem gamblers have been disproportionally found among prisoners. This study sought to (1) demonstrate if a short screening instrument (Lie/Bet Questionnaire) can expeditiously identify problem gamblers during the initial Criminal Justice System stage, and (2) examine the relationships between problem gambling and criminality among arrestees. Surveys were conducted with 959 inmates (from 1,445 approached) at a Central Booking Facility in Tampa, Florida. Among those surveyed, 81% were male with average age of 32.9. Ethnic distribution of those surveyed was Blacks (35.8%), Whites (43.3%), Hispanics (19.3%), Others (2.4%). Sixty-eight percent had completed trade school or less, 20% had some college and 12% were college graduates. Among those reporting gambling the year prior, 32.7% were problem gamblers according to the Lie/Bet. If including those who declined, the percent drops to a considerable 17.4% of the entire sample. Problem gamblers were significantly more likely to be charged with a drug or status crime, as well as being charged with a felony. Feasibility of screening inmates in an intake facility using the Lie/Bet Questionnaire was found. Furthermore, we found a need for gambling screening. Gambling courts should be considered.     

Equine-assisted activities and therapies: enhancing the social worker’s armamentarium

Introduction: Equine-assisted activities and therapies (EAAT) have gained prominence as a viable therapeutic approach for a range of mental health and developmental problems, yet is not widely known and not conventionally provided within the social work educational curriculum. Thus, the purpose of this study is to provide a review of various certification bodies available to social workers in order to bring EAATs into their therapeutic work. Methods: A multi-stage process, including consultation with experts in the field and an online search was undertaken to locate certification programs for mental health professionals. Results: Seven certification organizations were identified; programs varied with respect to mental health pre-requisites, type of certification, training components, and cost. Discussion: There has been substantial growth in EAAT for children with mental health and developmental problems, and there are a range of certification types to select from. Factors to consider when choosing which type of certification to pursue, and barriers to certification are discussed.     

Pictorial Approaches for Measuring Time Use in Rural Ethiopia

Time use researchers working in least developed countries (LDCs) face difficulties collecting data from illiterate populations who may conceptualize time differently than those in industrialized countries. We identify existing gaps in time use data collection methods and discuss two novel, pictorial methods to collect time use data from these populations. The first method is a modified recall interview modeled on participatory rural appraisal (PRA) methods that asks respondents to place macaroni on pictures of activity categories in proportion to the amount of time spent on that activity during the previous day. The second is a simplified pictorial time diary that uses a timer and sequentially-numbered stickers to re-create the temporal order of activities in 30-min increments. The latter method also avoids recall bias problems. We present time use data collected in 2009 using these methods in a study examining the impacts of water infrastructure on women and children’s time use in rural Ethiopia. In total, we collected information using the first method from 263 household members over age 10, including 167 water collectors, and pilot-tested the pictorial diary approach with 10 adult respondents.     

The Pregnant Therapist: A Qualitative Examination of the Client Experience

This article reports on the findings of a qualitative study that was designed to capture the clinical dynamics that emerge when a therapist becomes pregnant during treatment. While there have been some empirical studies that have captured the pregnant therapist’s perspective, it is a sparse amount in comparison to the vast number of women therapists who become pregnant, and there have been no studies that have actually interviewed clients of pregnant therapists. This study seeks to begin to redress that crucial missing perspective by interviewing the clients of pregnant therapists, as well as first-time, formerly pregnant therapists. This article will look at the coded results of this qualitative study and the emergent themes from the client perspective, as well as discuss their implications for clinical social work practice.