Perspectives of Young People in Care About their School-to-Work Transition

Abstract

Achieving in education and employment has long-term effects on quality of life. With below-average levels of educational attainment, many young people in care are ill-equipped for the transition from school to further education and work. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study that explored the school to work transition experiences of young people currently or previously in care, and their ideas about future employment. A range of personal and contextual factors that influence study and work goals were identified. Young people spoke about the importance of personal confidence and determination, supportive relationships, someone to believe in them and encourage them, opportunities to pursue their goals, avenues to gain information about how to get desired jobs, positive school experiences, and the need for stability in their lives. The study suggests widening the agenda for case planning, transition from care and after-care support, to include career planning and vocational assistance.     

Differential associations and concordance across measures of parent emotion socialization: The role of parent and adolescent emotion dysregulation

Although parent ratings, adolescent ratings, and observations are all utilized to measure parent emotion socialization during adolescence, there is a lack of research examining measurement differences and concordance. Thus, the present study compared three measures of parent supportive and nonsupportive emotion socialization and examined whether parent and adolescent emotion dysregulation differentially related to these measures or moderated concordance across measures. Participants were a community sample of 92 adolescent-parent dyads. Adolescents were 13–17 years-old (M = 15.5, SD = 1.1), 41 were female and 51 were male; 87% of parents identified as mothers. Observed emotion socialization was coded during a parent-adolescent conflict discussion task. The adolescent and parent also rated the parent's supportive and nonsupportive reactions to the adolescent's negative emotions; they each also rated their own emotion dysregulation. Due to data collection timing, COVID-19 family stress was also assessed and explored as a covariate in analyses. Bivariate correlations indicated that there were weak and non-significant correlations across emotion socialization measures. Multilevel models indicated that measures of parent emotion socialization were differentially associated with adolescent emotion dysregulation, with adolescent emotion dysregulation relating significantly to adolescent ratings, but not observations or parent ratings, of parent emotion socialization. In addition, multiple regressions indicated that there was less concordance across measures when parents were higher in emotion dysregulation. Results suggest that measurement may influence researchers’ conclusions about how youth adjustment relates to parent emotion socialization. Additionally, there may be even lower agreement across measures of parent emotion socialization when parents have emotional challenges.     

Challenges to the enforcement of development controls in the Wa municipality

The imposition and enforcement of a land-use regulation is extremely important if society is to reap the full benefits of its stock of land. Ghana has therefore enacted various statutes to regulate land development throughout the country. This paper examines development controls in the Wa Municipality. It finds out the challenges confronting the development control process in the municipality. The paper does these through a review of the development control literature. It also reviews the legal framework for development controls in Ghana. It used questionnaires to gather data from the officials of the Municipal Building Inspectorate Division (MBID), Wa. It used questionnaires to solicit the opinion, knowledge, experience and perception of land developers on the development control regime in the municipality. It revealed that development controls are not adequately enforced in the Wa Municipality. It notes that uncontrolled developments are a common sight in the municipality. It also established that socio-cultural reasons, political interferences, limited public knowledge on the essence of development controls, and an under-resourced building inspectorate division are responsible for this state of affairs. It recommends that the Wa Municipal Assembly strictly enforce its land-use regulations to ensure that the residents of the municipality fully benefit from the imposition of land-use regulations.     

A cultivated environment: Exploring the global distribution of plants in gardens, parks and streetscapes

Plants cultivated in gardens, parks and streetscapes are becoming increasingly important to peoples?? experience of biological life, and have been the recent focus of research in ecology, invasion biology, human geography and sociology. However patterns of distribution have not previously been explored at a global scale. In this study, global patterns in the distribution of cultivated floras were explored to determine the significance of biophysical and social factors driving species distributions. The taxonomic similarity of 72 published species lists was examined, covering a wide geographic and climatic range and a variety of land uses. Cultivated floras across urban and rural settlements were found to be very different and unsurprisingly to be strongly filtered by temperature. However we found that human behaviour may overcome other physical drivers of plant distribution such as rainfall in some instances. Social factors were also found to be important. Having a different dominant language (a proxy for cultural background) and difference in GDP per person (a proxy for household income) were also related to the dissimilarity of cultivated floras. Differences in both the social and physical environment are related to floristic differences between cities. However, we recognise that other factors identified in the literature but unsuited to meta-analysis, may also influence the composition of cultivated landscapes. These include changes in policy relating to the provision of street and park vegetation, the availability of plants from nurseries and the preferences of influential gardeners and landscape designers. The significance of the relationship between temperature and species composition suggests that cultivated floras are likely to change in response to climate change. The high level of dissimilarity observed between settlements suggests that patterns of potential naturalisation of cultivated plants are likely to be more complex than currently accepted.     

VIRTUAL COMMUNITY CARE? SOCIAL POLICY AND THE EMERGENCE OF COMPUTER MEDIATED SOCIAL SUPPORT

This article argues that the emergence and growth of internet use in Britain has important implications for the analysis of social policy. It attempts to outline a research agenda for social policy in relation to one particular aspect of internet use, that of on-line self-help and social support - what we term here virtual-community care . The article presents data on patterns of home based internet use in Britain and outlines some contemporary debates in social policy about the importance of self-help and social support. It also considers how the internet is being used for self-help and social support with a particular emphasis on the emerging situation in Britain. Three illustrations of on-line self-help and social support are presented: two from newsgroups, which are part of the 'uk.people.* hierarchy': one concerned with disability and one with parenting issues; and one web based forum concerned with issues surrounding mortgage repossession. Drawing upon this illustrative material the article discusses some emergent issues for contemporary social policy discourse: the rise of self-help groups; the privileging of lay knowledge and experience over the 'expert' knowledge of health and welfare professionals; the nature of professional-client relationships; the quality and legitimacy of advice, information and support; dis/empowerment; and social exclusion.     

'INFORMATION SOCIETY' AS THEORY OR IDEOLOGY: A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE IN TECHNOLOGY, EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT IN THE INFORMATION AGE

This paper argues that the concept of Information Society fails as theory because it is internally incoherent and unsupported by evidence. Its current popularity within policy discourse can only be understood ideologically. In particular it is argued that one of the drivers of current policy towards higher education is based upon the supposed growth of knowledge work linked to a theory of human capital formation as crucial to international competitiveness and to an explanation of unemployment in terms of a skills gap. The paper goes on to argue that current labour market indicators and research into the skills gap do not support this policy thrust and that a better explanation of the current push towards the creation of virtual universities is the desire to cut educational labour costs rather than to upgrade the economic status of so-called knowledge workers.     

Kindness in Australia: an empirical critique of moral decline sociology

A new sociological agenda is emerging that interrogates how morality can be established in the absence of the moral certainties of the past but there is a shortage of empirical work on this topic. This article establishes a theoretical framework for the empirical analysis of everyday morality drawing on the work of theorists including Ahmed, Bauman and Taylor. It uses the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes to assess the state and shape of contemporary moralities by asking how kind are Australians, how is its expression socially distributed, and what are the motivations for kindness. The findings demonstrate that Australians exhibit a strong attachment and commitment to kindness as a moral value that is primarily motivated by interiorized sources of moral authority. We argue these findings support the work of theorists such as Ahmed and Taylor who argue authenticity and embodied emotion are legitimate sources of morality in today's secular societies. The research also provides new evidence that generational changes are shaping understandings and practices of kindness in unexpected ways.     

Validity judgments of rumors heard multiple times: the shape of the truth effect

Research on the illusory truth effect has found that repeated presentation of uncertain statements increases validity judgments of those statements. Three experiments explored the shape of the repetition–validity–judgment relationship over multiple repetitions, the mediating role of processing fluency, and the moderating role of dispositional skepticism. Participants read narratives in which different rumors were repeated 0–6 or 0–9 times; validity estimates, processing fluency, and dispositional skepticism were also measured. Validity judgments were logarithmically related to repetitions; this effect was mediated by processing fluency, and moderated slightly by skepticism. Results explore the boundaries of the processing fluency contrast account of the illusory truth effect, suggest a minor role for skepticism, and inform research on belief in rumor (uncertain statements in circulation).