Bridging child welfare and juvenile justice: preventing unnecessary detention of foster children

Gaps in service coordination between child welfare and other child-serving agencies are well documented. This article examines the gap between the child welfare and juvenile justice systems and discusses a program, Project Confirm, designed to reduce the problems associated with this gap. Project Confirm aims to improve cooperation between juvenile justice and child welfare agencies to prevent the unnecessary detention of arrested foster children in secure facilities. The program's design is outlined, and implementation statistics and government partner perceptions of the program in its first year of operations are provided. The article also identifies future challenges to implementation and discusses the broader implications of the program. In making this appeal for coordination and collaboration among public agencies, I'm not talking about pro forma integration efforts-I'm not talking about memoranda of understanding or top-level reorganizations that have autonomous agencies vaguely reporting to a single box labeled "human services." Rather, I'm talking about the much more challenging objective of achieving real working partnerships at the front line. (Nelson, 1998, p. 6)     

Identifying meaning and perceived level of satisfaction within the context of work

OBJECTIVE: The primary objectives of this study were to identify sources of meaning for individuals within the context of a work environment, and to compare varied sources of meaning for individuals with high and low work satisfaction levels. METHOD: Participants were chosen based on satisfaction levels in employment, full-time employment status within an organization for at least one year, and diversity in the work setting. Data were gathered through a series of interviews and observations of the participants' workplaces. A comparative analysis of transcribed interviews was conducted by the researchers and with an expert occupational therapy faculty panel. From these analyses, the researchers developed work narratives for a mechanical engineer, a high school teacher, an employee of mechanical services, and a career service counselor. RESULTS: Emerging themes from the work narratives indicated that the various meanings employees found in work had an effect on their perceived levels of job satisfaction. Participants conveyed that organization identification, financial benefits, independent decision-making, reciprocal respect, opportunities for creativity, and maintaining significant relationships outside of work enhanced meaning and satisfaction. CONCLUSIONS: The worker role is a significant source of an individual's identity, meaning, and satisfaction in life. Professionals in various fields can work with employers to develop meaningful work environments for increased job satisfaction, greater motivation for work, increased productivity, and decreased employee turnover.     

Religious Communities,Immigration, and Social Cohesion in Rural Areas: Evidence from England*

Religious communities are important sources of bridging and bonding social capital that have varying implications for perceptions of social cohesion in rural areas. In particular, as well as cultivating cohesiveness more broadly, the bridging social capital associated within mainline religious communities may represent an especially important source of support for the social integration of new immigrant groups. Although the bonding social capital associated with evangelical communities is arguably less conducive to wider social cohesion, it may prompt outreach work by those communities, which can enhance immigrant integration. This article examines these assumptions by exploring the relationship between mainline and evangelical religious communities, immigration, and residents' perceptions of social cohesion in rural areas in England. I model the separate and combined effects of religious communities and economic in‐migration on social cohesion using multivariate statistical techniques. The analysis suggests that mainline Protestant communities enhance social cohesion in rural England, while evangelical communities do not. The social integration of immigrants appears to be more likely where mainline Protestant and Catholic communities are strong, but is unaffected by the strength of evangelical ones.     

Iterated full partitions

Algebraic calculations that depend upon a full partition can be automated through the use of an operator P for the derivation of such a partition. Calculations that require the repeated use of P are automated by simply iterating the operator. The resulting output is general and contains sufficient structure to identify the result of a calculation for a variety of settings.     

Toward a Culturally Informed Rehabilitation Treatment Model for American Indian/Alaska Native Veterans

American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) have a long tradition of military service, allying with Western forces in North America since the 1700s. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that AI/AN veterans experience higher rates of overall disability and service-related disability than veterans of other races and ethnicities. It is not clear, however, that AI/AN veterans with disabilities are receiving effective, culturally informed rehabilitation services. This article examines the incidence of disability among contemporary AI/AN veterans, considers barriers to effective treatment, and points out model programs tailored to the particular needs of this population, with attention to the historical and cultural context of AI/AN military service.     

Disability and climate change: A critical realist model of climate justice

Existing literature on climate change as an issue of environmental justice documents the heightened vulnerability of people with disabilities to the effects of climate change. Additionally, there are numerous studies showing that access to information is a prerequisite for perceiving risk and taking action. Building on this work, our review seeks to understand how physical disability relates to perceptions of climate-related risk and adaptations to climate-related events. We introduce a critical realist model of climate justice to understand the relationships between the environmental features that disable, risk perception and information seeking, and adaptive capacity and resilience to climate change. In understanding the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of people with disabilities to climate change, this review synthesizes research on one of the U.S.’s largest minority communities with the goals of better understanding how vulnerable populations cope with climate change and integrating them into climate action and policy.     

Verbal and Nonverbal Dynamics of Privacy, Secrecy, and Deceit

We discuss the ways in which deception can be used to protect privacy, as well as the ways in which claims to privacy can provide the latitude to lie. In their attempts to maintain their own privacy and their secrets, people can be assisted by others who overlook their lies. Habits of honoring other people's verbal and nonverbal claims about themselves, even when they are not totally convincing, and expectations of similar indulgences from others can keep interactions from getting derailed by small interpersonal bumps. But they also enable exploitation in the form of frauds and scams .     

Bayesian incorporation of repeated measurements in logistic discrimination

A common problem in medical statistics is the discrimination between two groups on the basis of diagnostic information. Information on patient characteristics is used to classify individuals into one of two groups: diseased or disease-free. This classification is often with respect to a particular disease. This discrimination has two probabilistic components: (1) the discrimination is not without error, and (2) in many cases the a priori chance of disease can be estimated. Logistic models (Cox 1970; Anderson 1972) provide methods for incorporating both of these components. The a posteriori probability of disease may be estimated for a patient on the basis of both current measurement of patient characteristics and prior information. The parameters of the logistic model may be estimated on the basis of a calibration trial. In practice, not one but several sets of measurements of one characteristic of the patient may be made on a questionable case. These measurements typically are correlated; they are far from independent. How should these correlated measurements be used? This paper presents a method for incorporating several sets of measurements in the classification of a case.