Client Experiences of Trauma-Informed Care in Social Service Agencies

This paper describes a qualitative study of individual client interviews (n?=?26) from four social service agencies to understand how clients experience trauma-informed care services and implementation challenges. We used the Fallot and Harris framework to explore client experiences of the five core concepts of trauma-informed care (safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment) using semi-structured interview questions with each client. The four agencies consisted of: refugees (n?=?4), substance abuse (n?=?8), older adults (n?=?12), and maternal/child health (n?=?2), and the agencies varied in size, service goals, and clientele. The results of the study suggest that clients’ experience of these concepts was shaped by the actions of other clients, and these experiences were either mitigated or hindered by actions of the agency employees. Agency policies either supported or enhanced their experiences as well. The results also suggest that it was challenging for agencies to provide for all of the trauma-informed care (TIC) concepts at the same time. We discuss the implications of these findings for social service delivery in a range of agency types. Future research should examine the effects of trauma-informed policies on client experiences of each TIC domain.     

Hunger,nutrition, and precipitation: evidence from Ghana and Bangladesh

Population and Environment - Changing precipitation patterns caused by climate change are expected to have major impacts on food security and nutrition in agrarian areas in developing countries....     

Health-Promoting Influences of the Family on Late Adolescent Functioning

This study examined whether potentially modifiable health-promoting family factors during mid-adolescence (age 15) predicted adaptive functioning in late adolescence (age 18) among members of a working-class community cohort. Family factors included feeling valued in the family, cohesion, and social support. Late adolescent outcomes covered developmentally salient areas: academic functioning; mental health; suicidal behavior; and social, psychological, and behavioral functioning. Our findings demonstrate that a positive adolescent family milieu is related to both adaptive outcomes and a reduced likelihood of serious difficulties, including mental and behavior problems. Although each hypothesized health-promoting factor was significantly associated with multiple areas of age 18 functioning, the patterns of association differed by type of family factor. Taken together, results suggest that the family remains an important social context during mid-adolescence and that to be most effective programs designed by practitioners aimed at strengthening families should target multiple features of the family environment.     

What demographers can learn from fruit fly actuarial models and biology

Historically demographers have viewed the results of actuarial studies of nonhuman species, particularly those on invertebrates such as fruit flies, as largely irrelevant to investigations on human populations. In this paper I present life table data from large scale studies on the Mediterranean fruit fly, and show that they provide important insights into fundamental aspects of mortality relevant to human populations: the trajectory of mortality at older ages, sex mortality differentials, the concept of maximal life span, and demographic heterogeneity and selection. An overriding theme of the paper is the need for demographers to acquire a heightened awareness of new developments in biology including areas such as evolutionary ecology, experimental demography, and molecular medicine.     

Young Mother (in the) Hood: Gang Girls' Negotiation of New Identities

This article examines the experiences of young women in street gangs who become mothers. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 65 young women in the San Francisco, CA, Bay Area, we examine their narratives about the transition to motherhood. In particular, we focus on the ways these young women negotiate femininities and attempt to reconcile their identities as young mothers and gang girls-both stigmatized identities. For many of the young women, motherhood entails a retreat from the street and a renewed emphasis on time spent in the home. While many receive (financial and childcare) support from their families, this also often means a diminution of the autonomy they experienced while more heavily involved in the gang. Issues of respect and respectability remain important for the young women, but the dimensions on which these are based change.     

Teaching Note—Reification and Recognition in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program

ABSTRACT

At an Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program course in a correctional facility, roughly half the students are from the university (outside students) and half are residents of the facility (inside students). I participated as a teaching assistant in an Inside-Out social work course on drugs and crime that was offered in a prison for men and interpreted the observed and reported experience of students using Lukács’ concepts of recognition and reification as discussed by Axel Honneth. This teaching note explores the implications of the Inside-Out course for outside students’ reification and recognition of people who are incarcerated, and by extension, members of groups that typically receive social work services. The pedagogical elements of Inside-Out courses that promote recognition and the limitations of the program are discussed.     

Predictors of Fatigue among Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Activity logs involve patients writing down their activities over 1 or more days. Several studies have found these data collection instruments to accurately describe activities of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). The purpose of this study was to utilize the repeated measures available on the National Institutes of Health Activity Record to evaluate predictors of fatigue at a given time point. A random intercept model was tested with the following variables predicting current fatigue: past fatigue (30 mins. prior), current category of activity (e.g., resting, work, recreation), past category of activity (30 mins. prior), the interaction of past fatigue and past activity, and TH2/TH1 immune shift. These findings and others suggest that activity logs can provide investigators and clinicians with valuable sources of data for understanding patterns of behavior and activity among patients with CFS.     

Response: Choice and Ethics in Listening Situations

We developed a new listening scale pertaining to how one likes to be listened to by others. Specifically, we constructed items by adapting the Listening Style Profile (LSP)-16 and a Constructive Listening subscale taken from the Facilitative Listening Scale and tested the validity of the scale against the Big Five personality traits. A survey (N = 195) suggested that (a) the factor structure of the adapted LSP-16 items yielded the expected four factors, albeit with items not loading on factors as expected in the original LSP-16; (b) the people facet of the LSP-16 is strongly correlated with a scale of constructive listening, r = .70; and (c) both the people facet of the LSP-16 and the constructive-listening behaviors scale are correlated with all of the Big Five personality traits, save for neuroticism. These listening scales showed a moderate correlation with a summary of all of the Big Five scales, known as General Factor of Personality, r = .38. Among the implications is the possibility that the more adjusted a person is, the more the person prefers to be listened to with a people-listening style or by a constructive listener.