My Life in Huddersfield: Supporting Young Asylum Seekers and Refugees to Record Their Experiences of Living in Huddersfield

A project was undertaken with the aim of developing resources that would improve service delivery to asylum seeker children and young people by improving social worker training within the new social work degree. Funding was acquired to work with a group of children and young people. The workers engaged with them in a range of activities, designed to enable the expression of feelings in relation to immigration and asylum seeking. Participants were told they would be working towards producing resources for the training of health and social care staff. This became a strong motivating factor in the engagement of the young people and resulted in the production of teaching resources and a number of changes to the degree curriculum at the University of Huddersfield.     

Reunifying families, cutting costs: housing-child welfare partnerships for permanent supportive housing

In the absence of an adequate supply of affordable, quality housing, child welfare agencies are placed in the unenviable position of separating families to protect children from the debilitating effects of homelessness. This article presents recommendations for costeffective housing-child welfare partnerships that will shift the burden of providing adequate housing back to housing agencies. These partnerships have the potential to move child welfare agencies closer to achieving permanence and well-being for all children.     

“Suffragettes in Satin Shorts”? Gender and Competitive Boxing

This study is an empirical and theoretical contribution to the burgeoning literature on gender and competitive boxing. By using Connell's concepts of labor, power, cathexis, and representation and a combination of content and semiotic analysis, interviews, and observations, we argue that competitive boxing can be studied productively as a paradoxical gender regime that simultaneously enables and constrains how women do gender. On one hand, the sport encourages individual women to display physical aggression when such behavior traditionally has been deemed the antithesis of femininity. Some feminists argue that this form of physical feminism enables women to transcend essentialist discourses that restrict their corporeal power. On the other hand, women boxers in general also encounter resistance to their aspirations. For example, they are still positioned by essentialist discourses about both their bodies and capacity to develop the requisite form of controlled aggression. Strongly gendered links between bodily labor and bodily capital also mean that women have less access to resources than do men and, consequently, fewer opportunities to develop their pugilistic capital. We also maintain that competitive women boxers are implicated in a body project that tends to replicate sporting practices that some feminists and pro-feminists argue are damaging to both men and women.     

Why older Australians participate in exercise and sport

Research on variables that encourage older adults to exercise is limited. This study was carried out to identify the participation motives of older Australians involved in regular exercise and sport. The 815 participants (399 men, 416 women) ranged in age from 55 to 93 years (M = 63.6, SD = 7.8) and were participating in their activities of choice at least once per week. All participants completed the Participation Motivation Questionnaire for Older Adults. The most common exercise/sport activities that participants were involved in were walking, golf, lawn bowls, tennis, and swimming. The most highly reported motives for participation were to keep healthy, liking the activity, to improve fitness, and to maintain joint mobility. Principal-components analysis of the questionnaire revealed 6 factors: social, fitness, recognition, challenge/benefits, medical, and involvement. Analyses of variance showed significant differences in reasons for participation in exercise and sport based on gender, age, education level, and occupation.     

Jewish disappearing acts and the construction of gender

In this essay I propose to investigate the interarticulation of race/ethnicity and gender at two fin de siècle moments: the conceptualization of the Oedipus complex at the turn of the twentieth century and the conceptualization of gender as performative in contemporary queer theory. Though these gender constructions contrast strikingly with one another-queer theory opposes and calls into question the heteronormativity of the Oedipal itinerary-both theories are produced through the displacement of racial/ethnic difference onto sexual and gender difference. One line of investigation in this essay is to relate their difference to the distinct situations of ethnic in-betweenness in which they were produced. Freud's situation as a Jew undergoing assimilation to Western European customs has been compared to that of the post-colonial subject. Judith Butler's and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's theories of queer performativity have been located in a post-assimilationist situation in the U.S. of the 1990s. At both moments a doubling takes place but with a radical shift in perspective. Whereas the post-colonial subject undergoes a psychic splitting in which the point of view of the colonizer predominates and promotes assimilation via mimicry, the post-assimilation subject performatively constructs difference, often by a reverse mimicry that involves identification with a subaltern group. Finally, in both situations the notion of "queer incoherence" is deployed not to negate gay and lesbian specificity, but rather to articulate such specificity as historically emergent, on the verge of definition.     

Exposure to Client Trauma,Secondary Traumatic Stress,and the Health of Clinical Social Workers: A Mediation Analysis

While it is widely acknowledged that providing services to traumatized populations may negatively impact the mental health of clinicians, little is known about the impact of exposure to traumatized clients and secondary traumatic stress on the physical health status of clinicians. As such, the twofold purpose of this study was to: (1) document the prevalence of STS in a national (US) sample of clinical social workers, and (2) to examine the relationships between exposure to client trauma, STS, and perceived health of clinical social workers. Specifically, we sought to determine if STS mediates the relationship between exposure to client traumas and perceived health. Results indicate clinicians experience intrusion symptoms most frequently, and a significant portion report arousal and avoidance symptoms. Mediation analyses revealed that exposure to traumatized client populations indirectly influenced clinical social workers’ physical health perceptions by way of secondary traumatic stress. Findings call for increased attention toward prevention and amelioration of secondary traumatic stress symptomology among direct service providers, given both its prevalence and potential impact on physical health. Directions for future research are discussed.     

Multiple Perspectives of Teams’ Experiences of a New Zealand Wraparound Process

Since it was first introduced in the 1980s, Wraparound has been defined as ‘a philosophy,’ ‘an approach,’ and ‘a service’ which is designed to work with youth and families with high and complex needs. Wraparound is most commonly understood as an intensive, individualised care planning process. It aims to achieve positive outcomes through a structured, creative, and individualised team planning process, which results in effective and more relevant plans for the youth and family. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences of Wraparound facilitators, caregivers, youths, and team members to gain a multi‐perspective insight into the process. Sixteen families and Wraparound teams participated in the study which resulted in 56 semi‐structured interviews being conducted involving 16 Wraparound facilitators (some facilitators were interviewed more than once because they served multiple families who participated in the study), 16 caregivers, eight youth, and 16 team members (one person from the team, i.e., teacher, social worker, or mentor). Thematic analysis gave seven themes organised into three broad domains: (1) key elements of the Wraparound process including the Wraparound facilitator, Wraparound's philosophies and principles, and the supportive nature of the process; (2) the outcomes achieved throughout the process including family empowerment and hope, improved family dynamics and relationships as well as individual parent and youth change; and (3) the challenges and feedback respondents identified through the process, which included personal and systemic challenges, improved transition, and continuity of care, role clarity, and accessibility of the service. Overall, the findings from this study support Wraparound as an effective process for youth and their families, identify the importance of key aspects of the process, and suggest some improvements to increase the efficacy of and accessibility to the process.     

Alterations in the Emotional Regulation Process in Gambling Addiction: The Role of Anger and Alexithymia

This study aims at the assessment of alexithymia and anger levels in 100 treatment-seeking pathological gamblers compared with controls, who were matched for age, gender and education. Furthermore a positive correlation between alexithymia, anger and severity of gambling disorder and a relationship between gambling behaviour and anger after controlling for alexithymia, are investigated. Finally the role that gender plays in anger in pathological gamblers was also evaluated. Psychological assessment includes the South Oaks Gambling Screen, State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2 and the twenty-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale. Statistical analysis of the results shows a higher level of anger in pathological gamblers than in controls, together with alterations in emotional processing. Severity of gambling behaviour positively correlates with alexithymia scores, state-anger and trait-anger. Moreover, a significant contribution of anger in predicting gambling behaviour was suggested after controlling for alexithymia. In conclusion, anger and alexithymia must be regarded as relevant components of the assessment of pathological gamblers, in order to select the best therapeutical strategies to prevent self-defeating behaviours and to reduce drop-out from treatments.     

Serving families with child maltreatment and substance use disorders: A decade of learning

ABSTRACT

An increase in parental substance use disorders (SUD) and the number of infants and toddlers entering foster care has prompted federal and state efforts to change the treatment paradigm toward more integrated and family-centered strategies. The Regional Partnership Grant (RPG) program demonstrated that family-centered strategies can improve child and parent outcomes. The current challenge is to bring effective strategies to scale. This conceptual article highlights the lessons learned from 10 years of implementing and evaluating programs to meet the needs of families affected by parental SUD and child maltreatment. Effective family-centered strategies identified by the RPG program are illustrated with specifics from the Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Team program. These effective strategies could be implemented in any jurisdiction and include (1) collaboration toward integrated services between child welfare and SUD treatment, (2) timely access to SUDS treatment, (3) recovery management and support, (4) tailored family services, and (5) adaptation to local jurisdiction needs. When these strategies are operational, children are more likely to be safe and remain in parent custody, and parents are more likely to achieve sobriety and improve their parental capacity. Future research might examine the unique impact of each of the five strategies independently.