Screening Elders in the Emergency Department at Risk for Mistreatment: A Pilot Study

Impaired functional status is associated with risk of elder mistreatment. Screening for functional impairment in elderly patients admitted to emergency departments could be performed to identify patients at risk for elder mistreatment who might benefit from further evaluation. This study utilized a modified Identification of Seniors at Risk (ISAR) screening tool to identify the proportion of elderly at risk for mistreatment due to functional difficulties presenting to two emergency departments in southeastern Virginia, one urban, the other rural. Of a 180-patient cohort (90 per site), 82 screened positive (46%), ISAR > 2 (range 0–6), indicating nearly half of all patients enrolled are at risk for mistreatment. Patients presenting to the urban emergency departments were potentially more at risk than their rural counterparts (p < 0.01). Health care professionals, particularly in urban settings, should consider screening seniors with a simple tool to identify patients at risk of elder mistreatment.     

The tele-technics of agency,the Net,the urban and sex tourism

This paper examines the effects of various tele-technologies (technologies at a distance) on the subject-object relationship within a context of Western conceptualizations about agency, self-other, and thought in relation to action. To examine these effects, the article uses the Internet postings of sex tourists as well as an example of ubiquitous media and screen culture in the form of a Hollywood film. How the loss of writing at a spatial and temporal distance influences these sex tourists, as well as how mass media (cinema) merge anxieties about the subject-object relationship with concerns about the status of individual agency supposedly enhanced by these tele-technologies is considered in the light of how thought has been constructed and understood from the early twentieth century to the present. The media through which thought and action are mediated become the focus of the inquiry.     

Feminine Purity and Masculine Revenge-Seeking In Taken (2008)

The 2008 film Taken depicts the murderous rampage of an ex-CIA agent seeking to recover his teenage daughter from foreign sex traffickers. I argue that Taken articulates a demand for a white male protector to serve as both guardian and avenger of white women's “purity” against the purportedly violent and sexual impulses of third world men. A neocolonial narrative retold through film, Taken infers that the protection of white feminine purity legitimates both male conquest abroad and overbearing protection of young women at home. I contend that popular films such as Taken are a part of the broader cultural system of representing social reality that elicit popular adherence to common-sense myths of white masculinity, feminine purity, and Orientalism.     

Relighting the Campfire: Rediscovering Activity-Based Group Work

Group Work Camp, sponsored by Association for the Advancement of Social Work with Groups (AASWG) and held during the summers of 2009 and 2011 on the campus of George Williams College of Aurora University, provided unique opportunities for educators, practitioners, and students to experience the power of collective action and activity/experience-based groups. The camp reminded participants of the origins of the group work movement and how the prevalence of experientially based group practice has diminished over the past few decades. Further, this camp experience served as an awakening and may have particular import for U.S.-based practitioners to align with emerging trends in global social group work.     

Calvinism,Proslavery and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw

In the autobiography of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, the first black author to be published in Britain, slavery was represented at best neutrally and at worst as spiritually and socially beneficial. Re-reading Gronniosaw's Narrative in the context of the Calvinist and Dutch Reformed confessional networks facilitating its composition and publication enables us to understand how and why a former slave would produce a text apparently advocating proslavery ideology. Gronniosaw's case demonstrates that black intellectuals, far from being solely concerned with abolitionism, participated in a broad array of political, religious and social movements during the eighteenth century, occasionally even those that supported slavery.     

Examining Recruitment Follow-Up Phone Calls and Their Influence on Attendance for Husbands and Wives in a Marriage and Relationship Education Program

Low-income married couples face unique stressors that contribute to increased relationship distress. Federal funding has supported research initiatives aimed at studying how marriage and relationship education (MRE) influences the relationships of low-income married participants. However, research identified recruitment and retention of low-income participants as a major obstacle to the replication of these programs. Therefore, this study examined programmatic data from 786 low-income married participants to investigate how recruitment follow-up influenced attendance in the MRE program. A weak, inverse relationship was found for women between the number of pre-enrollment phone calls made and hours spent in MRE. We found a statistically significant difference between who was contacted (wife, husband, or both) and attendance to the initial intake appointment for program enrollment. Implications and future research are discussed.     

Examining Passive and Active Recruitment Methods for Low-Income Couples in Relationship Education

One of the most difficult aspects of studying low-income couples is the effective implementation of recruitment and retention strategies. Low-income couples face environmental stressors that make participation difficult, and research has yet to identify efficacious methods of recruiting and retaining low-income couples into funded studies. Researchers and practitioners targeting low-income participants rely on a “learn-as-they-go” approach. Therefore, we examined passive and active recruitment strategies for 394 married participants with children under age 18 and reporting a total household income within 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines who participated in a federally funded couples and relationship education program. Univariate ANOVAs indicated significant differences between recruitment method and total time spent in couples and relationship education workshops for both women and men. Further, results indicated a relationship exists between recruitment method and the number of follow-up contacts required before participants attended the initial intake appointment. Implications for practice and research are discussed.     

Individual and systemic/structural bias in child welfare decision making: Implications for children and families of color

The factors contributing to observed racial disproportionality and disparity in the child welfare system have been the subject of national discourse for decades. This qualitative study used focus groups to engage child welfare and collaborating system decision makers, community partners, and families in a subjective interpretive analysis of racial disproportionality and disparity that had been demonstrated by a previous quantitative analysis of Oregon's child welfare system. Thematic analysis yielded eleven themes from the participant focus groups, four of which clustered around individual and structural/systemic bias and are examined in this paper: visibility bias; cultural bias and insensitivity; personal influences on determination of minimally adequate care; and foster and adoptive parent recruitment and licensing practices. Participants offered recommendations to improve outcomes for children and families of color in light of these observations: increase awareness of bias, create checks and balances in decision-making, contract with and hire culturally and racially diverse professionals, and increase funding for training.     

Gambling-related Irrational Beliefs in the Maintenance and Modification of Gambling Behaviour

Abstract

The present study investigated a primary assumption of the cognitive theory of problem gambling, that gambling-related irrational beliefs lead directly to problematic gambling behaviour. Participants (N =114) received a message designed to increase their illusion of control (IOC) over a computerised roulette game, a message designed to decrease their IOC, or a neutral message. Participants then played the game, during which their gambling behaviour was recorded and irrational beliefs were measured. Based on the cognitive model, it was expected that those receiving the IOC enhancement message would evidence greater levels of irrational beliefs and correspondingly more intense gambling behaviour and that those in the IOC reduction condition would show decreased levels of both irrational beliefs and behaviour. However, although conditions differed as to levels of irrational beliefs, there were no significant differences in gambling behaviour. Results are discussed and implications of the results on the cognitive theory of problematic gambling are explored.     

Affect's Effects: Considering Art-Activism and the 2001 Crisis in Argentina

Anxious of straying too far from traditional rational actor models and an unrelenting positivism, social movement scholars have displayed a persistent tendency to overlook the specificities of visual tools and aesthetic experience in claim-making and political protest. Often, as a direct consequence, the possibilities for mobilization and the matrices within which action takes place are described and understood in ways that are oversimplified, even distorted. Notably, small steps have been taken to overcome these distortions by building in a theory of affect that reserves a crucial space for the extra-discursive in the study of contentious politics. Extending some of these insights, this article reveals how an affect-informed approach can be particularly illuminating in studies of art-activism. It takes stencil protests from the aftermath of the 2001 crisis in Argentina as a case in point, discussing affects and their effects on porteño street artists. In so doing, it strengthens the case for greater incorporation of affect as a tool for understanding in literatures that deal with questions of framing, art-activism and the possibilities for social change.