Public child welfare workers' perception of efficacy relative to multicultural awareness,knowledge and skills

Maintaining a well trained pool of workers in public child welfare agencies continues to be an ongoing problem. Research suggests that it is critical that we continue to explore the factors associated with worker efficacy. Existing research has found that outcomes for families and children are affected by numerous individual and organizational characteristics including worker's perceived efficacy (Advancement of Social Work Research, 2005; Bernotavicz, 2007; Collier, 2007; Ellett, 2007; Government Accountability Office, 2003; Milner, 2003). This study describes public child welfare workers, and their perceptions of efficacy relative to multicultural awareness, knowledge and skills. Study outcomes have implications for worker training, supervision, and curriculum on child welfare.     

Participation and Emotions: Troubling Encounters Between Children and Social Welfare Professionals

This paper explores the emotional aspects of participation within social welfare contexts. The focus is on individual professionals, such as social workers and children’s rights workers and their articulation, management and negotiation of the emotional when working with children and young people. The institutions of welfare are also shown to be ambiguous in their approaches to participation. Lastly, the dimensions of power that are enacted in relations between professionals and children reveal some of the complex dynamics in this fraught area of social welfare policy and practice.     

The Development of Vocational Realism in Black American College Students

A total of 172 Black students completed a survey of biographical, educational, and vocational information about themselves and their immediate relatives. The results indicated that educational realism tended to increase across the college years. There was no difference in satisfaction with school or intent to leave school as a function of educational realism or salary realism. Vocationally realistic male and female students did not differ in age.     

Experiences of Women Elite Leaders Doing Gender: Intra‐gender Micro‐violence between Women

This paper responds to the dearth of research into women's negative intra‐gender relations and lack of understanding as to why and how these relations manifest. Through a qualitative study of women elite leaders' experiences in UK organizations, the research considers how gendered contexts, women doing gender well and differently simultaneously, intra‐gender competition and female misogyny may explain negative intra‐gender social relations between women. We consider micro‐aggression research and women's abjection and offer a unique conceptualization of intra‐gender micro‐violence with themes of disassociating, suppression of opportunity and abject appearance. The themes illustrate how the masculine symbolic order shapes and constrains women elite leaders' social relations with other women. We conclude that raising consciousness to intra‐gender micro‐violence between women is important as a means of disruption; to facilitate women and men's acceptance of intra‐gender differences between women; and to open up opportunities and possibilities for women in organizations.     

Women's Work,Dirty Work: The Gynaecology Nurse as ‘Other’

This article seeks to explore the world of the gynaecology nurse. This world defines the gendered experience of nursing; that is, women in a women's job carrying out ‘women's work’. It is also a world that receives scant public recognition due to its association with the private domain of women's reproductive health. Many issues dealt with on a daily basis by gynaecology nurses are socially ‘difficult’: cancer, infertility, miscarriage and foetal abnormalities; or socially ‘distasteful’: termination of pregnancy, urinary incontinence, menstruation and sexually transmitted disease. The ‘tainted’ nature of gynaecology nursing gives it the social distinction of ‘dirty work’ but does not deter the gynaecology nurse from declaring her work as ‘special’, requiring distinctive knowledge and skills. Qualitative data collected from a group of gynaecology nurses in a North West National Health Service hospital displays how they actively celebrate their status as women carrying out ‘dirty work’. Through the use of ceremonial work that continually re‐affirms their ‘womanly’ qualities the gynaecology nurses establish themselves as ‘different’, as ‘special’, as the ‘other’.     

SEX ROLE CONSIDERATIONS AND BEHAVIORAL MARITAL THERAPY: EQUAL DOES NOT MEAN IDENTICAL*

Despite the egalitarian position espoused in behavioral marital therapy, little attention has been paid to sex role issues and female-male differences. This paper explores advantages and disadvantages of behavioral marital therapy vis à vis the treatment of women and men. Features of behavioral marital therapy implicated as important in the consideration of sex role issues include underlying assumptions of egalitarianism, assumptions of external causality, and orientation toward action, as well as specific procedures such as goal setting, behavioral exchange and training in communication and problem-solving skills. Each of these features is evaluated with respect to clinical considerations as well as to research findings on female-male differences in marriage. The paper concludes with recommendations as to how behavioral marital therapy could become more sensitive to sex role issues.