The Resilient Survivor—A Student Social Worker's Journey on Placement

This paper represents the continuation of my ‘personal and professional journey’ from social work student to social work practitioner focusing on my first Practice Learning Opportunity (PLO). Recognising the potential impact of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) in a classroom environment is as important as the potential impact on actual practice learning and practice. This is salient in the real world of social work practice as the potential misuse of a painful childhood experience has greater ramifications. Utilising the ideas and assumptions of social constructionism (including context and multivocality) the significance of silence from social work educators shall be examined in relation to self-disclosure as a means of aiding PLO learning and practice. This paper will also focus on the concept of critical reflection and its significance in exploring the transferability of a childhood experience such as CSA and personal and professional dilemmas regarding self-disclosure. This paper concludes by highlighting areas for consideration for both students and social work educators and conveys an important message regarding the importance of communication between students and social work educators.     

Predictors of Intrusive Sexual Behaviors in Preschool-Aged Children

Intrusive sexual behaviors (ISBs) are a specific type of problematic sexual behavior characterized by the invasive nature of the acts (e.g., touching others’ private parts, attempting intercourse; Friedrich, 1997). The limited amount of research on ISBs has focused on sexual abuse history as the primary predictor. However, Friedrich, Davies, Feher, and Wright (2003) found that ISBs in children up to age 12 were related to four broad conceptual factors: (a) exposure to sexual content, (b) exposure to violent behavior, (c) family adversity, and (d) child vulnerabilities. The current study sought to replicate Friedrich’s study using a clinical sample of 217 preschool-aged children (ages two to six). Results supported variables from within the child vulnerabilities construct (externalizing behaviors, β_EXT = 0.032, p = 0.001), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) criteria met (β_PTSD = 0.177, p = 0.02), and an inverse relationship with age (β_AGE = ?0.206, p = 0.024). These results highlight the importance of considering childhood behavioral patterns and reactivity to traumatic events as correlates of ISBs in young children.     

Fear,Defensive Strategies and Caring for Cognitively Impaired Family Members

One topic rarely addressed in the literature on older adults and interpersonal violence is the violence that can be experienced by family carers in relationship with a person living with cognitive impairment. This violence tends to remain hidden and is rarely framed as intimate partner violence. We examine how situations of intimidation and violence invoked fear in family carers and how they interpreted and reacted to these circum- stances. Interview and diary data were collected from family members who had previously or were currently experiencing some form of aggression in caring for someone with cognitive impairment or dementia. Drawing on discussions of fear and applying the analytic lens of defensive strategies, we explore how these carers responded to situations of intimidation and violence.     

Proposing a model for promoting Children's Health in Early Childhood Education and Care Settings

This pilot study was conducted in one early childhood pre-school nursery setting in an area of high deprivation in England to explore the under-researched area of how practitioners promote the health of children. The research used an original tool, Child Health Promotion: A Toolkit for Early Childhood Education and Care Practitioners, containing a 5 Step Programme as a model to guide practitioners in identifying and implementing a health promotion activity. The findings will help to set the onward agenda for a larger scale study which will foreground the voices of practitioners and highlight the role that ECEC practitioners can play in promoting the health of children.     

An Agent‐Based Model for Pathogen Persistence and Cross‐Contamination Dynamics in a Food Facility

We used an agent‐based modeling (ABM) framework and developed a mathematical model to explain the complex dynamics of microbial persistence and spread within a food facility and to aid risk managers in identifying effective mitigation options. The model explicitly considered personal hygiene practices by food handlers as well as their activities and simulated a spatially explicit dynamic system representing complex interaction patterns among food handlers, facility environment, and foods. To demonstrate the utility of the model in a decision‐making context, we created a hypothetical case study and used it to compare different risk mitigation strategies for reducing contamination and spread of Listeria monocytogenes in a food facility. Model results indicated that areas with no direct contact with foods (e.g., loading dock and restroom) can serve as contamination niches and recontaminate areas that have direct contact with food products. Furthermore, food handlers’ behaviors, including, for example, hygiene and sanitation practices, can impact the persistence of microbial contamination in the facility environment and the spread of contamination to prepared foods. Using this case study, we also demonstrated benefits of an ABM framework for addressing food safety in a complex system in which emergent system‐level responses are predicted using a bottom‐up approach that observes individual agents (e.g., food handlers) and their behaviors. Our model can be applied to a wide variety of pathogens, food commodities, and activity patterns to evaluate efficacy of food‐safety management practices and quantify contamination reductions associated with proposed mitigation strategies in food facilities.     

Funding Civil Society? Bilateral Government Support for Development NGOs

Research on the determinants of foreign aid tends to focus on the relationship between donor country priorities and recipient state characteristics, but donors also make decisions about which organizations and programs within countries will receive assistance. Although NGOs increasingly have been recipients of foreign aid, few data are available to investigate which organizations within a given country receive that funding. Donors may prioritize structural characteristics of NGOs or their local ties—or they may seek a combination that blends concern about efficiency and accountability with an interest in developing national civil society. We use original data from Cambodia to explore whether aid is likely to go to managerial organizations (professionalized NGOs and NGOs that utilize modern management tools) or to organizations that are embedded in the domestic context. We argue that managerialism provides legitimacy for NGOs by signaling capacity and accountability to donors, increasing the likelihood of government funding. We argue that local embeddedness also confers legitimacy by aligning community ties and networks to rights-based development, increasing the likelihood of government funding. We find general support for the managerialism argument, but donor agencies do not prioritize direct funding for “indigenous” NGOs—not even among those with high levels of managerialism.     

The Congruence Between Adolescents and Their Parents’ Gender-Role Attitudes in Urban Slums of Allahabad,India

Gender role differentiation intensifies during adolescence. The current study explores gender-role attitudes among unmarried young men and women aged 15–21 residing in the slums of Allahabad, India. The survey asked a series of questions about gender role attitudes to young men and women and to their parents (relating to work and educational attainment for girls, marriage and husband–wife relations). Since either the father or mother responded to the parent questionnaire, data analyses are based on subsets of mother–daughter pairs (n = 2124), mother–son pairs (n = 2135), father–son pairs (n = 788), and father–daughter pairs (n = 452). No significant differences emerged in terms of adolescent background characteristics of the four groups and the adolescent population of the study. A fair amount of congruence in gender role attitudes was found in the mother–daughter and father–son pairs for most items. However, a similar pattern was not visible in the father–daughter or mother–son pairs. Multivariate regression analysis indicated strong influence of parental attitudes on the adolescent’s attitudes. While education led to a shift in girls’ attitudes to gender egalitarian ones, it did not impact the attitudes of adolescent boys.     

Vacant land conversion to community gardens: influences on generalist arthropod predators and biocontrol services in urban greenspaces

Due to economic decline and the recent rise in home foreclosure, many U.S. cities are faced with managing large acreages of vacant land. Interest in local food production on this land has the potential to dramatically reshape the composition of greenspace found within urban landscapes. This study examined how the conversion of vacant land to urban gardens and farms influenced arthropod generalist predator populations and their ability to support biocontrol services. We found that the abundance of Coccinellidae and Syrphidae, and the activity density of Carabidae, Formicidae, and Lycosidae were equivalent among vacant lot and urban garden sites. Dolichopodidae abundance and the activity density of Linyphiidae and Opiliones were reduced in urban gardens whereas Anthocoridae abundance and the activity density of Staphylinidae were greater within urban gardens relative to vacant lots. The biocontrol service supplied by generalist predators was measured using sentinel eggs (Helicoverpa zea (Noctuiidae)) and pupae (Sarcophaga bullata (Sarcophagidae) and Musca domestica (Muscidae)). We found no difference in the biocontrol of H. zea eggs or M. domestica pupae among the focal greenspaces. We found no difference in the removal of S. bullata pupae by predators in June 2010, whereas in August 2010 a greater proportion of pupae were removed in urban garden sites relative to vacant lots. Based on these findings, we discuss the potential of the urban landscape to support generalist predators and sustainable urban gardening and farming.