The high cost of neglecting children: The need for a preventive policy agenda

Millions of children in the United States suffer from poor care and inadequate services due to neglectful national social policy. More than 13 million children live in poverty and its negative consequences, at great individual and social cost. This paper outlines the need to seriously advocate for a preventive policy approach to child welfare and presents a blueprint for individual and collective political action. The cost-effectiveness and social benefits of preventive policies are demonstrated. Social workers understand the value of prevention in working with children and families, and are needed to advocate on the policy-making level for a preventive policy agenda.     

Divorced Parents’ Qualitative and Quantitative Reports of Children's Living Arrangements

We use data from a sample of divorced parents in Wisconsin (N = 1,392) to examine how parents describe their children's living arrangements. When the children spend substantial time in both parents’ homes, both parents are less likely to use the phrase live with to describe living arrangements. When children spend most nights with their mother, mothers are more likely than fathers to state that the children live with their mother. Together, these findings suggest that family researchers no longer can rely on simple questions to capture complex living arrangements. We need clearer and more careful question wording and, in some instances, follow‐up questions to accurately describe where children live.     

Local realities: a frontier perspective on child protection team practice

This article presents a case study of a child protection team in a frontier county in Montana. Narratives from individual and group interviews highlight team members' experiences and the structuring of team practice in their frontier community, the power and challenge of community culture and history, and the interplay of constructions of children and child abuse as key elements that influence and shape team practice. This exploration suggests a framework for rethinking child protection team practice in diverse locations.     

When a child welfare client dies: an agency-centered perspective

When working with vulnerable children and their families, the specter of client death for child welfare workers and agencies is recognized as a rare but unsparingly real event. This article uses an agency-centered perspective to explore the multilayered steps agencies may implement at the supervisory through administrative levels to build agency-wide support for workers to cope and perform well during such crises.     

The impact of body-mass index and steps per day on blood pressure and fasting glucose in older adults

The purpose of this study was to investigate the combined impact of obesity and physical activity (PA) on the health of older adults. Pedometer-determined steps/d, body-mass index (BMI), resting blood pressure, and fasting glucose (FG) were assessed in 137 older adults (69.0 +/- 8.9 yr). The active group (>4,227 steps/d) had lower systolic blood pressure (SBP; p = .001), diastolic blood pressure (DBP; p = .028), and FG (p < .001) than the inactive group (< or = 4,227 steps/d). The normal-BMI group (18.5-24.9 kg/m2) had lower SBP (p < .001) and DBP (p = .01) than the obese group (> or =30 kg/m2). There were no differences in SBP (p = .963) or DBP (p = 1.0) between active obese and inactive normal-BMI groups. The active obese group, however, had a more favorable FG than the inactive normal-BMI group (chi 2 = 18.9, df = 3, p = .001). Efforts to increase PA of older adults should receive the same priority as reducing obesity to improve BP and FG levels.     

Maculate Conceptions: Power,Process, and Creativity in Participatory Research

Justifiably concerned about power dynamics between researchers and participants in participatory research, much of the literature proposes guidelines for including participant voices at every step of the research process. We find these guidelines insufficient for dealing with constraints set up by the social organizational structures in which researchers and participants find themselves. We argue that the process of building relationships between scientists and farmers is unavoidably imperfect, but nonetheless necessary and rewarding. We contend that the potential problems of participatory research originate more from the social organizational structures in which it takes place than in failure to follow particular rules. By acknowledging these structures and the resultant interests of participant and researcher we can make room for the messy reality of negotiating participatory relationships. We suggest that transformative engagement can be born of what we term the “maculate conceptions” of dialogic process and the building of mutual trust.