Parental access to children in care—the research messages

SUMMARY. The basic facts about access of parents to their children in care are simply stated: a significant number of children in care have parental access limited either deliberately or inadvertently, without professional or legal justification, and the result of this is that contact between parents and children withers, and may reduce to nothing. How much does this matter? How common is it? Why does it happen? These questions will be examined below. We shall see that access in care merits serious attention and highlights important issues concerning the role of the social services in the spectrum of professional support available to families with children. The article is based on a paper given in 1986 to a Family Rights Group study course on access to children in care     

The Social standing of ethnic and racial groupings*

L'article établi l'existence d'une échelle des groupes ethniques et raciales, selon leur position sociale, au Canada anglophone et francophone. Les données de l'étude étaient recueillies pendant une étude sur le prestige professionnel, utilisant une forme de question identique pour obtenir l'échelle ethnique et l'échelle professionnelle. On peut, donc, examiner si les évaluations des groupes ethniques et raciales démontrent moins de consensus que les évaluations des professions.
This paper establishes the existence of a ranking of ethnic and racial groups, according to social standing, within English and French Canada. Since the data used in the study were collected as part of a national study of occupational prestige, and used an identical question format, it is possible to test whether the degree of consensus in this ranking is as great as that for the ranking of occupations.     

The Role of Social Networks in the Maintenance of Schizophrenic Patients

Summary The levels of social support available to the nearest relativesof a sample of 45 outpatient schizophrenics are measured interms of both the structure of their social networks and thequality of their network relationships. It is hypothesized thatthe level of social support available to the closest associateof the schizophrenic patient is linked to the level of functioningfound in the patient. Good social performance in the patient is found with the structuralaspects of the nearest relative's social network whereas goodclinical performance in the patient is related to the interactionalaspects of the relative's network. The results indicate that a view of maintenance in schizophrenicpatients which incorporates both social and clinical functioningneeds to consider the structural as well as the interpersonalcharacteristics of the networks of their closest associates.     

THE IMPACT OF INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING ON PUBLIC OPINION AND POLICYMAKING TARGETING TOXIC WASTE

This article reports the fourth in a continuing series of casestudies that explore the impact of news media investigativejournalism on the general public, policymakers, and public policy.The media disclosures in this field experiment had limited effectson the general public but were influential in changing the attitudesof policymakers. The study describes how changes in public policymakingresulted from collaboration between journalists and governmentofficials. The authors develop a model that is a beginning steptoward specifying the cond6itions under which media investigationsinfluence public attitudes and agendas.