Adaptive governance to promote ecosystem services in urban green spaces

Managing urban green space as part of an ongoing social-ecological transformation poses novel governance issues, particularly in post-industrial settings. Urban green spaces operate as small-scale nodes in larger networks of ecological reserves that provide and maintain key ecosystem services such as pollination, water retention and infiltration, and sustainable food production. In an urban mosaic, a myriad of social and ecological components factor into aggregating and managing land to maintain or increase the flow of ecosystem services associated with green spaces. Vacant lots (a form of urban green space) are being repurposed for multiple functions, such as habitat for biodiversity, including arthropods that provide pollination services to other green areas; to capture urban runoff that eases the burden on ageing wastewater systems and other civic infrastructure; and to reduce urban heat island effects. Because of the uncertainty and complexities of managing for ecosystem services in urban settings, we advocate for a governance approach that is adaptive and iterative in nature—adaptive governance—to address the ever changing social order underlying post-industrial cities and offer the rise of land banks as an example of governance innovation.     

Caregivers as Interventionists and Trainers: Teaching Mands to Children with Developmental Disabilities

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - We evaluated the use of behavioral skills training (BST) to train caregivers to conduct procedures commonly associated with mand training. We trained two...     

Can we study the family environment through census data? A comparison of households,dwellings, and domestic units in rural Mali

Are ‘statistical households’, as defined in national censuses, able to describe the family environment in Africa? Do they correspond to the family units that individuals identify with? To address this issue, we build on a follow-up survey in south-east Mali, which links national censuses with local censuses at the individual level (N?≈?28,000 census observations). Three cross-sectional snapshots of family arrangements are compared: households recorded in national censuses, and family economic units and residential units recorded by local censuses. The national census household data appear poorly suited to documenting family living arrangements. They do not account for family economic units or residential units, but are highly conditioned by a normative representation centred on the nuclear family. Therefore, they fail to describe the complexity and diversity of people’s living spaces, making particular types of living arrangements invisible and increasing the likelihood of omitting individuals who do not fit into a nuclear model.     

Made wrong,excluded, and ignored: Introduction to a special issue on lesbians and the law

Abstract

For some time now, the specific experiences that lesbians have with the law have been considerably overlooked. This is because there is a focus on how gay males have contact with the law, as gay males are the group whose same-sex intimacies are most often criminalized in legislative frameworks. It is rare for the same-sex intimacies of lesbians to be targeted explicitly in legislative frameworks. This special issue therefore focuses on how lesbians have contact with the law. It features articles focused on what the guest editors conceptualize as how lesbians are being made wrong, being excluded, and being ignored by the law, and each of these are outlined in further detail in this introduction. The articles highlight the relational nexus between lesbians and different frameworks, processes, rules, policies, institutions and applications of law, and the far-reaching impacts this nexus produces in the lives of lesbians around the world.     

Time Cost of Children as Parents' Foregone Leisure

From the 1998–99 French Insee time use survey, the time cost of children is estimated in terms of hours of foregone leisure. The focus on couples with two spouses working full time implies no need to be concerned about substitution between home production and labor supply. The model accounts for selection into full-time employment, endogenous wages, and controls for outside help with home production and child care. The foregone leisure cost per child under the age of 3 is 1.6 hours for each parent. It is about half that size for children aged 3 to 14. Children over age 14 involve no leisure cost to parents.     

Social security reforms and poverty among older dual-earner couples

Existing retirement studies have, in the main, focused only on labor supply decisions of couples in which the husband has been the sole earner. This paper extends the focus of analysis to examine retirement among dual-earner couples. It further develops a framework for assessing how several past and prospective Social Security reforms might be expected to affect older working couples' retirement ages and retirement incomes. Two questions are addressed in some detail: (1) What are the likely effects of various changes in Social Security rules on the retirement decisions of older working women and their husbands? and (2) How might these changes alter the incidence of poverty among retired dual-earner couples? Empirical evidence from the United States suggests that many benefit reforms currently being discussed in policy circles will enhance Social Security system revenues, but will also worsen the economic status of an important segment of dual-earner couples.     

Are government intentions for the inclusion of innovation and small and medium enterprises participation in public procurement being delivered or ignored? An Irish case study

It is imperative that public procurement opportunities are made equally accessible to all size businesses to ensure a fair and level competitive playing field. “Innovation,” as the creative process of exploiting new ideas, has become widely recognized as playing a central role in the economic recovery of Europe and so too are the small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) who are considered as major promoters of innovation and innovative solutions. At a national level, the implementation of European Union (EU) policies on SMEs and innovation inclusion in public procurement, while of paramount importance to Irish policy-makers to ensure alignment and compliance, seems, however, to have a significant lack of monitoring and reporting mechanisms. It is found that a lack of commitment and drive from the top, a lack of robust measurements and monitoring mechanisms combined with contrasting political agendas, and a very risk averse culture have collectively added to government intentions being ignored in many instances.     

Using scrapbooks & portfolios in group work with women who are chemically dependent

This article provides a rationale and strategies for using scrapbooks and portfolios within the context of group work with minority women recovering from chemical dependence. An expanded model of recovery-based group work places the use of scrapbooks and portfolios within the context of a practice model that seeks to increase general and social self-efficacy in these women. Memory scrapbooks, lifecourse scrapbooks, and recovery portfolios are defined; their differential use in group work is described; and ways group members can use the tools to strengthen their sources of self-efficacy are explored.