Integrating Social Work Perspectives and Models with Concepts,Methods and Skills with Other Professions’ Specialized Approaches

In this article, the authors encourage social work practitioners to identify with and adopt distinctive social work perspectives and practice models rather than solely embrace models or approaches developed by and for other professions. We do so because these perspectives are most responsive to our professions’ mission of social justice and social purpose of paying equal attention to people and their environments. For heuristic purposes, we present and illustrate the ecological perspective and life modeled approach. Since no social work model or approach can take into account every type of life stressor, event and condition, we demonstrate how we can borrow and integrate specialized concepts, methods and techniques from other profession’s approaches. The authors identify five characteristics which borrowed content should meet in order to integrate well with social work models. Accordingly, concepts, methods and skills from a few approaches have particular relevance for social work direct practice: Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy; Motivational Interviewing; Narrative Therapy and Solution-Focused Practice. Moreover, the authors present and illustrate the process of borrowing and integrating concepts, methods and skills from other professions to deepen social work practice.     

Expanding the Family Economic Stress Model: Insights From a Mixed‐Methods Approach

The current study used a mixed‐methods approach to examine how low‐income mothers managed their household economies, their experiences of economic pressure, and the consequences for family and child functioning. Qualitative analyses (N = 32 families) revealed that experiences of economic pressure were associated with an inability to afford both basic needs and some modest but highly valued “extras.” To meet demands, mothers reported using a variety of strategies, including instrumental support from friends and family members and other financial strategies. Results from the quantitative analyses (N= 516 families; 800 children, ages 6 – 15) were generally consistent with patterns observed in the qualitative analyses and extended the findings to include effects on parenting practices and children’s behavioral functioning.     

Women and immigrants: Strangers in a strange land

This paper draws an analogy between the fate of women in the labor market and immigrants in the host country by examining the social processes that affect both categories. Immigrants, and women in traditionally male occupations, are usually regarded and treated as strangers, reflected in stereotyping, exclusion, segregation, and assimilation. By conceptualizing gender-based occupational segregation in terms of territory, borders, and migration we attempt to understand this phenomenon and its persistence in a new way and within a wider framework of social distinctions and inequality. These processes are specifically illustrated by two examples: women in a traditionally male occupational sphere, i.e., faculty women in academia, and immigrant scientists.     

Dating Vioknce: Young Women in Danger

Abstract

Barrie Levy, Dating Violence: Young Women in Danger Seattle: Seal Press; 1991. Paper. 308 pps, $16.95     

Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Senior Centers: Comparing Participant Characteristics in More and Less Multicultural Settings

The 2008 Health Indicators Project surveyed a probability sample (N = 1,870) of New York City senior center participants. Attendees of racially and ethnically diverse and nondiverse senior centers were compared across 5 domains: demographics; health and quality of life; social support networks; neighborhood perceptions and engagement; health service access/utilization. Although homogeneous and diverse center participants demonstrate similar health and quality-of-life outcomes, those from diverse centers demonstrate greater risk of social isolation, receive less family support, and more likely seek medical care from hospitals or community clinics. Implications and future directions for research, practice and policy are discussed.     

Social Protection in a Context of HIV/AIDS: A Closer Look at South Africa

Abstract

South Africa is unusual in that it is experiencing high levels of AIDS morbidity and mortality, but is also able to afford a relatively developed system of social assistance. However, HIV/AIDS is affecting poverty in some unique ways and compounding other challenges such as unemployment. Its nature is such that it demands immediate action, balanced with a focus on long-term development. This is requiring a conceptual shift from ‘social security’ to ‘social protection’, since social assistance is not managing to address all dimensions of poverty and is also creating perverse incentives for people not to maximise their health. In South Africa, household studies comprise the most useful evidence to explore the particular challenges posed by HIV/AIDS. They indicate a need to review policies in all the social sectors and to focus on the issue of human capital.     

Age Cohort Differences in Sexual Behaviors Among Black Men Who Have Sex With Men and Women

Little attention has focused on generational or age-related differences in human immunodeficiency virus/sexually transmitted infection (HIV/STI) risk behaviors among Black men who have sex with men and women (BMSMW). We examined sexual risk behaviors between BMSMW ages 40 and under compared to over age 40. Analysis was conducted using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)–sponsored intervention data among BMSMW in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia (n = 546). Pearson’s chi-square tests were conducted to evaluate associations between age groups and behavioral outcomes. Logistic regression was used to evaluate the odds of behavioral outcomes by age group, adjusting for sexual orientation and study location, within strata of HIV status. HIV-positive BMSMW over age 40 had 62% reduced odds of having a nonmain female partner of HIV-negative or unknown status compared to those ages 40 and under (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 0.38, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.15, 0.95). Among HIV-negative BMSMW, the older cohort was associated with greater odds of having condomless insertive anal intercourse (IAI) with most recent main male partner (AOR 2.44, 95% CI = 1.12, 5.32) and having a concurrent partnership while with their recent main female partner (AOR = 2.6, 95% CI = 1.10, 4.67). For both groups, odds of engaging in certain risk behaviors increased with increasing age. Prevention efforts should consider generational differences and age in HIV risks among BMSMW.     

Regimes of Mobility Across the Globe

Mobility studies emerged from a postmodern moment in which global ‘flows’ of capital, people and objects were increasingly noted and celebrated. Within this new scholarship, categories of migrancy are all seen through the same analytical lens. This article and Regimes of Mobility: Imaginaries and Relationalities of Power, the special issue of JEMS it introduces, build on, as well as critique, past and present studies of mobility. In so doing, this issue challenges conceptual orientations built on binaries of difference that have impeded analyses of the interrelationship between mobility and stasis. These include methodological nationalism, which counterpoises concepts of internal and international movement and native and foreigner, and consequently normalises stasis. Instead, the issue offers a regimes of mobility framework that addresses the relationships between mobility and immobility, localisation and transnational connection, experiences and imaginaries of migration, and rootedness and cosmopolitan openness. The introduction highlights how, within this framework and its emphasis on social fields of differential power, the contributors to this collection ethnographically explore the disparities, inequalities, racialised representations and national mythscapes that facilitate and legitimate differential mobility and fixity. Although the authors examine nation-state building processes, their analysis is not confined by national boundaries.