Separate Schools: Gender,Policy, and Practice in Postwar Soviet Education

Christopher F. Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (1989), xiv + 321 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, £35.00).

Ralph Houlbrooke, English Family Life, 1576–1716: An Anthology from Diaries (1988), xiv + 268 (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, £14.95).

Judith Moore, A Zeal for Responsibility: The Struggle for Professional Nursing in Victorian England, 1868–1883 (1988), xvii + 214 (University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, $23.00).

Dieter Fricke, Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 1869 bis 1917 (1987), 2 vols, 1468 (Dietz Verlag Berlin, East Berlin, DM 58). [Handbook for the History of the German Labour Movement, 1869–1917].

Diane Langmore, Missionary Lives. Papua, 1874–1914 (1989), xxiv + 408 (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, $28.00).

Christine Collette, For Labour and For Women: The Women's Labour League, 1906–1918 (1989), iii + 225 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, £29.95).

Sebastian Balfour, Dictatorship, Workers, and the City. Labour in Greater Barcelona since 1939 (1989), viii + 288 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, £30.00).     

Cancer Screening Barriers for Community-based Older Hispanics and Caucasians

Despite advances in screening and early detection, ethnic minority populations, ages 65 and older, are less likely than Caucasians to participate in cancer screening services. Empirical research indicates that older ethnic minorities have cultural values that influence their behaviors. Addressing culturally relevant communication to better understand those values may increase participation in cancer screening. The study reported is a secondary analysis of qualitative data gathered from focus groups. Utilizing an interdisciplinary analytical lens, we compared older Hispanic and Caucasian's cultural values and their screening behaviors. Suggested psychosocial interventions are discussed to assist providers in their ongoing efforts to promote cancer screening.     

Can a Sector‐Wide Approach Underpin and Advance Universal Health Coverage?

Fragmented management approach makes the provision of comprehensive health care for achieving universal health coverage very unlikely. This article aims to explore the potential contribution of a systemic approach—the sector‐wide approach (SWAp)—to achieving universal health coverage (UHC), using the Mongolian context as an example. The paper describes UHC and factors that hinder its achievement in developing countries, based on the Mongolian experience. The analysis focuses on the root factors hindering the achievement of UHC and examines how these affect system and local capacity critical for achieving UHC. Two principally different approaches, a sector‐wide (holistic) approach and a standalone project (fragmented) approach are compared in terms of their contribution to the main indicators of achieving UHC. The current stage of the Mongolian health SWAp is identified and early rewards of a SWAp are presented. The paper proposes a SWAp as a potential approach to tackle these root factors to help in achieving UHC, because it is a promising instrument that promotes a systems‐strengthening and capacity‐building approach to enable effective coordination of standalone projects in alignment with the national priorities.     

Student Perceptions of Financial Literacy: Relevance to Practice

ABSTRACT

The relevance of financial literacy to social work has been framed almost exclusively in the context of poverty relief, but this study expands this framework to the evidence linking financial stress, not merely poverty, to adverse client outcomes. Using a new 15-item, quantitative instrument, student (N= 1,506) perceptions were collected. Respondents demonstrated a moderate awareness of the relevance of financial literacy in 11 of 15 problem issues commonly encountered in practice, indicating a moderate receptivity to financial education. Future research should clarify the contours of financial knowledge that is required to assist clients.     

Re‐imagining public service

We live at a time marked by growing distrust of democratic institutions and increasing threats to those Enlightenment values that afford the individual protection from the arbitrary exercise of authoritarian power. In the face of such challenges, we need to re‐imagine more agile, adaptive and responsive forms of governance. This edited speech argues that with sufficient political authority, public services can facilitate the commissioning of programme delivery, cross‐sectoral collaboration, new forms of social investment in public good and more opportunities for participatory engagement by citizens.     

Sunk ‘Decision Points’: a theory of the endowment effect and present bias

Theory and Decision - This paper presents a very simple model in which situational cues associated with a particular consumption good compel an agent—who may have otherwise been...     

Practices of activation in frontline interactions: Coercion,persuasion, and the role of trust in activation policies in Germany

Following Michael Lipsky's well‐known argument that policy is made in the daily encounters between street‐level bureaucracy and citizens, a growing body of research emphasizes that actors and organizations delivering social and labor‐market policy play a crucial role in welfare‐state politics. Using qualitative data collected at three local employment agencies in Germany, this article explores worker‐client relations as a crucial mechanism through which activation policies are translated into practice. The analysis investigates how caseworkers define their role and their relationships with clients. The findings show that it is essential for caseworkers to achieve client compliance. In such a context, building relationships of trust is a strategic instrument in overcoming possible barriers to co‐operation in the caseworker‐client interaction. Caseworkers develop strategies to create the impression of trustworthiness and to motivate both unemployed clients and employers to become trust‐givers in the caseworker‐client relation. While research has often stressed the dichotomy between disciplining and enabling elements of activation policies, our explorative study shows that persuasion and trust‐building are a further important dimension of the frontline delivery of activation policies. These strategies reflect the importance of emotional aspects of frontline work.