Generations learning together: pilot study for a multigenerational program

Generations need to spend time in meaningful activities to facilitate more healthy interactions. An interdisciplinary team worked together to implement an enriching, intergenerational project with 4 year olds, college students, and older adults. College students played an active role in planning/facilitating activities. The overall objective of the research was assessing perceptional change between the generations using pre/posttests with college students, pre-post interviews with older adults, and pre-post teacher led discussions with children. Findings suggest that older adults and college students had improved perceptions. Children’s perceptions remained negative with some positive perceptions.     

Towards Critical Intersections of Ageing,Housing and Well-Being

ABSTRACT

Across the life course, far-reaching socio-demographic and health related transformations are influencing the meaning of home in the UK. The collection presented in this Special Issue of Home Futures critically interjects into the ‘where and when’ of dwelling during the process of ageing with key concepts explored within this introductory article. It argues that, change is seen through the disruption of conventional ideas of ageing ‘at home’, traditional understandings of ‘the older person’ and its corollary social imaginaries, alongside the relationship between care practices and homes. Many of these shifts are being addressed through a range of emerging housing (and collaborative) alternatives. The article concludes by considering how discussions in this special issue disclose the home, from a range of social and material angles, as a diverse process and experience of meaning making over time, deeply entangled with health and well-being, disrupting traditional understandings of ‘place making’ in later life.     

Proportionate universalism in child and family social work

Integrated services in preventive health care and child and family social work increasingly embrace the concept of proportionate universalism (PU) as a means of overcoming the dichotomy between universal and targeted services in contexts of diversity. The implementation of the concept of PU raises several theoretical and empirical questions that form the basis of this article. This study aims to provide more insight in how the concept of PU is operationalized in child and family social work. Qualitative research was performed in three specific cases of child and family social work, the so‐called “Huizen van het Kind” or Children's Houses in Flanders (Belgium). The study triangulates three perspectives: policy, organizational level, and street level. The findings generate three meta‐themes: perseverant structuring of populations or predefinitions, image and conceptualization of the Children's House, and organizational challenges. These results reveal a difference between the theoretical assumption of PU and the practical implementation in child and family social work.     

The missing link: the role of social work schools and evidence-based practice

The translation and adoption of evidence-based practice principles has proved to be more difficult than researchers anticipated. Schools of social work are in a unique position to support this process within their home communities. Using the evidence-based practice process steps outlined by previous researchers, this article identifies specific strategies that schools of social work can adopt to support their broader communities as they attempt to adopt and sustain empirically supported interventions.     

Are curriculum decisions based on the evidence? How social work faculty members make choices in curriculum decisions

An important step in translating evidence-based practice and empirically supported interventions into large-scale service improvements is to develop an understanding of practitioners' education and training in these practices. This understanding begins with discovering the factors that influence the decision-making process by social work faculty regarding curriculum content for master's level social work programs. This exploratory study uses quantitative and qualitative survey data to examine the decision-making process used by 42 master's level social work programs to select the models of direct practice taught in their master's level social work programs, and whether evidence-based practice and research evidence influences those decisions. We investigate faculty perceptions of curriculum effectiveness and discuss implications of our findings for social work educators making content and organization decisions regarding master's level social work curriculum.     

Why does zeno the stoic hold his breath? "Zenoism" as a new variable for studying suicide

A single misfortune may be seen as just that, or may be interpreted as Zeno the Stoic did, as a "sign" of cosmic proportion (zenoizing), which paradoxically provides a missing meaning structure. This article presents two studies testing out this new variable (zenoism): in Study One (n = 233), we explore the moderating effects of religiosity and gender on zenoism, depression, demoralization, and suicidality. In Study Two (n = 137), we explore these same moderating effects on zenoism, fear of dependency, value of life, and favorability toward physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Results indicate: 1) men and non-religious respondents (especially men) zenoize more than women and religious respondents; 2) non-religious respondents, (especially men) are more generally favorable to PAS and more suicidal; 3) Zenoism is negatively related to depression, demoralization, and value of life for non-religious respondents, and for men; 4) Zenoism is positively related to favorability toward PAS toward one's self and overall suicidality; and finally 5) general and self-specific favorability toward PAS are distinct, but both relate to overall suicidality.     

Un/doing Gender and the Aesthetics of Organizational Performance

In the age of the so‐called ‘expressive organization’ and the ‘aesthetic economy’, for an organization to compete in the global marketplace it would appear that it must perform. This does not refer simply to economic performance, but rather to the idea of performance as a means of affecting both people's impressions and definitions of reality. In this article we argue that such performativity is achieved, in part, through the power of symbolism and aesthetics, as well as the capacity to bring oneself into being in an environment in which successful management of the aesthetic has increasingly become a prerequisite for the conferment of recognition. Central to this process are the ways in which the aesthetics of gender are mobilized and indeed simultaneously ‘done’ and ‘undone’ in order to affirm particular, but often unstable, regimes of managerially desired meaning. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler, and informed by a critical or hermeneutic structuralism, we are concerned here to think through the relationship between performativity and the gendered organization of the desire for recognition as it is materialized in, and mediated by, the landscaping of corporate artefacts and organizationally compelled ways of un/doing gender. With this in mind, we consider a series of images taken from a sample of recruitment documents that, as cultural configurations that organize and compel particular versions of gender, we argue, are concerned with the production of organizationally legible and therefore viable gendered subjects.     

DIFFERENT LENSES: VARIATIONS IN CLIENTS' PERCEPTION OF FAMILY THERAPY BY RACE AND GENDER

Race and gender have been given extensive theoretical and clinical attention in family therapy in the last decade. However, little empirical work has focused on their effect on therapy. The present study examines the effect of clients' race and therapists' race and gender on male and female partners' assessments of an initial and subsequent family/marital therapy session. One hundred twenty-six individuals, comprising 63 heterosexual adult couples, evaluated both the first and the fourth therapy session using the Session Evaluation Questionnaire (Stiles, 1980). Results indicated a strong effect for race, with black females rating initial sessions more negatively than white females when seeing a white therapist. Black men, however, had a more positive response than white men to the initial session, regardless of the race of the therapist. Over time, these differences decreased. The results suggest not only that race and gender may contribute to differences in partners' perceptions of the same session, but also that these differences are not static.     

Risk as Analysis and Risk as Feelings: Some Thoughts about Affect, Reason, Risk, and Rationality

Modern theories in cognitive psychology and neuroscience indicate that there are two fundamental ways in which human beings comprehend risk. The “analytic system” uses algorithms and normative rules, such as probability calculus, formal logic, and risk assessment. It is relatively slow, effortful, and requires conscious control. The “experiential system” is intuitive, fast, mostly automatic, and not very accessible to conscious awareness. The experiential system enabled human beings to survive during their long period of evolution and remains today the most natural and most common way to respond to risk. It relies on images and associations, linked by experience to emotion and affect (a feeling that something is good or bad). This system represents risk as a feeling that tells us whether it is safe to walk down this dark street or drink this strange‐smelling water. Proponents of formal risk analysis tend to view affective responses to risk as irrational. Current wisdom disputes this view. The rational and the experiential systems operate in parallel and each seems to depend on the other for guidance. Studies have demonstrated that analytic reasoning cannot be effective unless it is guided by emotion and affect. Rational decision making requires proper integration of both modes of thought. Both systems have their advantages, biases, and limitations. Now that we are beginning to understand the complex interplay between emotion and reason that is essential to rational behavior, the challenge before us is to think creatively about what this means for managing risk. On the one hand, how do we apply reason to temper the strong emotions engendered by some risk events? On the other hand, how do we infuse needed “doses of feeling” into circumstances where lack of experience may otherwise leave us too “coldly rational”? This article addresses these important questions.