A Global Review of New Social Risks and Responses for Children and their Families

Given global demographic and social trends, the need for new policy and program responses is essential. This article identifies and describes new and traditional social risks affecting children and their families in both industrialized and developing countries by region. Traditional risks continue in the developing as well as the industrialized countries but the extent and scale are very different and the problems are far more severe in developing countries. In addition, new risks are now evident and new policy responses are emerging. Attention to the new risks is increasing, with growing investment in services and policies facilitating the reconciliation of work and family life and non-traditional families. The citizens of many developing countries experience new risks as well, but their capacity to confront and address these risks is also more limited.     

A Model Program for Increasing Treatment Access for African American Women Who Use Crack Cocaine and Are at Risk of Contracting HIV

ABSTRACT

In the United States, the threat of HIV/AIDS to African-American women's health has become the focus of much concern. This article describes a federally funded community-based program that provides services to African-American women at risk for HIV/AIDS in Nashville, TN. This program provides a culturally relevant set of interventions specific to crack cocaine users aimed at reducing substance use and HIV/AIDS risk behaviors. The model is important to the continued development of culturally relevant interventions that are vital to stemming the disproportionate rates of HIV/AIDS within the African-American community by ensuring treatment access to all populations.     

Workload Management Evaluation System within a Hospital Social Work Department

This article describes an instrument to evaluate the workload of a social worker in a hospital job. It has been adapted from an original idea developed in London, and has the elements to be further adapted in different work settings. It is simple to use. Dialogue from other social workers regarding the weighting of the case loads would be most welcome.     

Age,religious beliefs,and sexual attitudes

Age effects on sexual attitudes were examined using the Hendrick and Hendrick (1987a) Sexual Attitude Scale. The study was cross‐sectional, including people from various age groups, from young adults to older adults. The religious beliefs variable, which covaries substantially both with age and sexual attitudes, was controlled. Three main questions guided the study: (a) Is the four‐factor structure (Permissiveness, Instrumentality, Communion, and Sexual Practices) previously identified in a sample of young students able to accurately account for data gathered over a full range of adult ages, (b) are older adults much less permissive and less instrumentalist than young people, and (c) to what extent are believers less permissive and instrumentalist than young people when age is taken into account? Factor analyses showed that at least five correlated factors were needed to account for the data; the fourth factor, Sexual Practices, divided itself into two distinct factors: Pleasure and Responsibility. Older adults and believers were shown to be less permissive than young people and nonbelievers, and this result held regardless of the participants’ educational level. As regards to instrumentality, however, the pattern of differences was extremely complex.     

The success of the Cuban success story: Ethnicity,power, and politics

This article examines the convergence of various forces that constructed a public image of Cuban Americans in the United States as a politically united, socially homogeneous, and economically successful ethnic group. The claims that comprise the Cuban “success story” are not well‐grounded in an objective, empirical reality, but do reflect the historical interplay of power and politics locally, nationally, and internationally. The focus is on how politicians, the media and the civic elite construct images of reality, the processes that determine which images gain prominence in the public mind, and the ways in which the images, themselves, shape social and political outcomes. Metropolitan Miami provides the laboratory, but the analytical approach generates important insights for the study of ethnicity and the politics of identity more generally.     

Migrants of Privilege: The Political Transnationalism of Americans in Mexico

This article applies the literature on political transnationalism to the unique case of a growing population of Americans, born and bred in the United States, who are choosing to live in Mexico. With few exceptions, this population, moving from north to south, fits the model of transnational migrants who reside in a country of settlement while maintaining ties, political and otherwise, to their country of origin. They vote in U.S. elections, raise money for U.S. campaigns, meet with U.S. politicians, and form civic organizations dedicated to the values of their homeland all while residing in Mexico. The exceptions in the case, however, point to the need for minor refinements in the literature on transnationalism to take account of a sending state that is privileged in relation to the receiving state and migrants who are privileged relative to their host society. The case also has important political and policy implications given that this population of U.S. emigrants, many of them retirees, is likely to increase in coming years, as is their cross-border political engagement.     

Targeting Social Assistance in a Transition Economy: The Mahallas in Uzbekistan

Falling output and living standards have pushed countries in transition from the socialist system to reconsider how best to target public resources on those in need. This paper investigates the workings of a new social assistance benefit in Uzbekistan, the largest of the former Soviet Central Asian republics, administered by community organizations, the Mahallas. Household survey data are used to assess the scheme's success in targeting on the most vulnerable households, using a variety of indicators including income, durable goods ownership, agricultural assets, employment status, and anthropometric status of children.     

Understanding how globalisation and restructuring affect women's lives: implications for comparative policy analysis

Globalisation and neo–liberal restructuring have transformed social policy and social services in many countries over the past two decades. Among the various impacts on different societies, one commonality is that many of the costs of restructuring are being picked up by women. In the last decade, feminist scholars have developed a critique of the effects of restructuring on the public and private lives of women, effects which are conspicuously absent from many discussions of restructuring. This article presents several conceptual ingredients for a framework that can facilitate a comparative understanding of restructuring and its effects on women at both global and local levels. Canada and China are used to illustrate the utility of such an approach to comparative policy analysis. The article contributes to a growing body of feminist literature on changing regimes of citizenship. It adds to the scholarship on comparative policy analysis by developing a research approach that is grounded in the experiences of women and is attentive to global and local politics. We argue that understanding just how restructuring affects different groups of women is essential for developing analyses that can cross national boundaries and challenge policies that reproduce conditions that oppress women.