Germany's Social Long-term Care Insurance: Design, Implementation and Evaluation

Across all industrialized countries, issues surrounding population ageing have captured the attention of policymakers. Among its manifold ramifications, disability-related poverty and the projected growth in public funding of long-term care demand close attention. Comparative studies have revealed distinct policy approaches to long-term care across different countries, but a shared interest in market-oriented policy design and cost containment. In Germany, legislation on mandatory and universal dependency care insurance came into force recently. The 1994 Dependency Insurance Act responded to limited market insurance against the financial risk of long-term care, deficiencies in servicing long-term care dependants and the fiscal crisis of German communities, which had to provide social assistance to a growing number of destitute care clients. The new social long-term care insurance scheme adopts basic features of existing German social insurance schemes even as it challenges the country's social insurance legacy in terms of cost containment strategies and consumer-directed provision. After three years of operation, the new programme is technically in place and financially healthy. However, critics point to its tight screening procedures, persistent shortages in the supply of formal care, and fraud. Equity issues, quality of care and consumer direction have also drawn critical attention. A variety of scenarios for programme improvement are conceivable. Coverage could be extended and payments offered to family caregivers. A comprehensive "cash and counselling" concept should be developed. Finally, programme efficiency depends on public accountability and quality auditing. Choice should be informed by ongoing research into long-term care and the broader impacts of long-term care policy.     

Drinking, socioemotional functioning, and academic progress in secondary school

Secondary schools are sites of academic instruction but also contexts of socioemotional development, and the intertwining of these two functions has consequences for adolescents' future health and education. Drawing on nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 8,271), this study explored the bidirectional associations among indicators of adolescents' alcohol use and their feelings of social integration at school. Socioemotional problems did not predict increased drinking over time, but drinking predicted declining socioemotional functioning, with negative implications for adolescents' academic grades by the end of high school. These associations, however, were conditioned by aspects of school context, with drinkers feeling more marginalized in schools characterized by dense networks with low rates of drinking.     

Policy development: An analysis of disability inclusion in a selection of African Union policies

Contemporary debates in international development discourse are concerned with the non‐tokenistic inclusion and participation of marginalized groups in the policy‐making process in developing countries. This is directly relevant to disabled people in Africa, which is the focus of this article. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities delineates the principles of inclusion in society. Furthermore, the African Union (AU) plays a key role in advising its Member States about disability issues, and this advice should be reflected in disability‐inclusive policies. This article analyses nine policy or strategy documents produced by the AU, covering the policy domains of education, health, employment and social protection that are crucial to the inclusion of disabled people in international development. These were analysed according to seven discrete elements (rights, accessibility, inclusivity, implementation plans, budgetary allocations, enforcement mechanisms or disaggregated management information systems) using a rating scale of one to four, with four being the highest level of inclusion. The process (for example, level of consultation), the context (for example, the Sustainable Development Goals) and actors involved in the policy development were reviewed as far as was possible from the documents. None of the policies reached even 50% of the total possible score, indicating poor levels of genuine inclusion. Rights scored a highest rating, but still at a low level. This suggests that there is recognition of the rights of disabled people to inclusion, but this is not generally integrated within inclusive implementation plans, budgetary allocations, enforcement mechanisms or disaggregated management information systems for monitoring. The limited socio‐economic inclusion of disability within AU policies is a lost opportunity that should be reviewed and rectified. The findings have broader ramifications for the non‐tokenistic and genuine involvement of poor and marginalized groups in the international policy‐making arena.     

Suicidal and Help-Seeking Behaviors Among Youth in an Online Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,Transgender, Queer,and Questioning Social Network

LGBTQ youth have a great burden for suicidal ideation/behavior compared to their non-LGBTQ peers. While scholars have explored risk factors for suicidal behaviors, little is known about protective factors among LGBTQ youth, let alone within group differences in terms of help-seeking. Data were collected from 203 TrevorSpace (e.g., a social network for LGBTQ youth) users via online survey to examine suicidal and help-seeking behaviors among LGBTQ individuals. Among participants who reported suicidal ideation/behavior, a large proportion did not seek help (73.1% of gay men, 33.3% of bisexual men, 42.9% of bisexual women, 14.3% of lesbian women, 41.2% of queer individuals) when they considered or attempted suicide. Among those who sought support, reaching out to a friend was most common. However, family support was associated with fewer suicidal behaviors. Our findings underscore the need to examine the effectiveness of specific sources of help and the impact of exposure to social connectedness.     

What Explains the Decline in First Marriage in the United States? Evidence from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, 1969 to 2013

Rates of entry into first marriage have declined sharply in the United States during the past half century, and there is evidence of broad gaps in marriage entry by race and education. Although a large literature explores the influences on marriage for single cohorts, there is little research that tests explanations for this decline across multiple cohorts. The authors use individual and contextual measures of employment and incarceration to predict transitions to first marriage in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1969–2013). They test two prominent theories of why marriage rates have declined: the decreased availability of “marriageable” men and the increased economic standing of women. They find that men's reduced economic prospects and increased risk of incarceration contributed to the decline in first marriage rates during the past 45 years in the United States, although these basic measures of economic and carceral conditions cannot explain the entire decline.     

Antiracism Expanding Social Work Education: A Qualitative Analysis of the Undoing Racism Workshop Experience

The importance of addressing implications of racism has reached a critical point at colleges and universities across the United States, and schools of social work are no exception. This study uses grounded theory methods to thematically analyze data from student participants (N=30) on their thoughts and reactions during a 2 1/2-day Undoing Racism workshop sponsored by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. Qualitative data were collected to answer the research question, How do students experience an intensive Undoing Racism workshop, and what are the implications for integrating antiracism into social work education? Findings imply that workshop-based learning may be more effective than solely using course content to teach antiracism material and also indicate the importance of activity-based learning, as well as an emphasis on developing concrete strategies to combat racism.     

Official standards and local knowledge in asylum procedures: decision-making in Germany’s asylum system

ABSTRACT

The role of public officials in asylum procedures is generally a critical concern in scholarly and political debates. Focusing on the asylum system in Germany, this paper seeks to understand asylum procedures with regard to officially claimed standards and the still varying practices of decision-making. It draws on the findings of a qualitative study based on a multi-method design and carried out in the asylum administration. Based on a sociology of knowledge approach, the paper shows that administrative practices are largely a matter of how decision-makers on the ground interpret legal and political regulations. We demonstrate that decision-makers utilise shifting strategies to handle official claims and cope with local settings in their daily work, from defining the applicant to reaching decisions about asylum requests. The administration of asylum applications is discussed as a field that uses and (re-)produces both authorised and informal knowledge. Caseworkers develop a pragmatic knowledge of how to deal with the discrepancies between official standards and local working conditions. However, it is the asylum institution that provides the context in which they navigate the pitfalls and challenges of the asylum procedure.     

The voice of lived experience: mobile video narratives in the courtroom

Video is overtaking other modes of communication in new media. Whether from a smartphone, a wearable device or surveillance camera, video is being made, stored and shared in unprecedented ways. Once the exclusive territory of institutions becomes large enough to finance video production and its storytelling power, technology’s contemporary democratization is changing the landscape of visual narrative. This project explores the discursive nature of video based on a case study of a courtroom trial that was both about the legality of filming crime scenes and the evidentiary use of videos from crime scenes. This unique intersection of surveillance, counter-surveillance, word and image, body and text allows for deeper understanding of how video serves human purposes. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and textual analysis, we build upon Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm by identifying significant attributes of unedited, evidentiary video that distinguish it from other forms of visual documentation. Raw video’s hard-edged timeline presents narrative coherence in a way that resists discursive contextualization. This has important implications for public policy and citizen-generated video evidence.     

What Helps Working Informal Caregivers? The Role of Workplace Characteristics in Balancing Work and Adult-Care Responsibilities

Population ageing and expected labour shortages mean that successful reconciliation of adult care and paid work is becoming a key issue for employers, employees and frail older people alike. Based on the detailed workplace-related variables in the fourth European Working Condition Survey, we examined differences in levels and determinants of carers’ and non-carers’ role conflict and one of its outcomes, absenteeism. We found caregivers to exhibit higher levels of perceived work–family conflict. Work schedules and time regimes affect carers’ and non-carers’ work–family conflict alike. However, good friends at work and work overload have a larger impact on carers’ work–family conflict. Furthermore, we found indications for a trade-off between perceived work-to-family conflict and absenteeism via workplace policies.     

Improving extreme quantile estimation via a folding procedure

In many applications (geosciences, insurance, etc.), the peaks-over-thresholds (POT) approach is one of the most widely used methodology for extreme quantile inference. It mainly consists of approximating the distribution of exceedances above a high threshold by a generalized Pareto distribution (GPD). The number of exceedances which is used in the POT inference is often quite small and this leads typically to a high volatility of the estimates. Inspired by perfect sampling techniques used in simulation studies, we define a folding procedure that connects the lower and upper parts of a distribution. A new extreme quantile estimator motivated by this theoretical folding scheme is proposed and studied. Although the asymptotic behaviour of our new estimate is the same as the classical (non-folded) one, our folding procedure reduces significantly the mean squared error of the extreme quantile estimates for small and moderate samples. This is illustrated in the simulation study. We also apply our method to an insurance dataset.