Face-to-Face Contact Post Adoption: Views from the Triangles

The importance of ongoing contact for children with membersof their birth families is currently a matter of great concernto both practitioners and academics and there is ongoing debateabout the merits or otherwise of the different forms of postadoption contact. Research evidence remains largely inconclusiveand the Prime Minister in his review of adoption highlightedthe urgent need for more research evidence to assist professionalsin making decisions about adoption and contact. To date, muchof the research does not adequately differentiate between typesand frequency of contact, the conditions under which contactis arranged and members of birth families who are involved.Whilst the needs of the child should be at the forefront ofany decision about contact, it is also important to considerthe repercussions for others involved in contact arrangements.This paper reports the findings from a sample of eleven adoptivekinship networks. Adoptive parents, children and birth relativesfrom the same kinship networks who were sharing direct, face-to-facecontact were interviewed. We were able to explore the developmentof relationships between adults and the ways in which theirinteraction affected the experience of contact as reported tous by the children. By focusing on issues associated with theconvergence or divergence of attitudes, feelings and perceptionswe identify factors that facilitate or impede beneficial contactand contribute to its maintenance. Understanding similaritiesand differences between participants in the adoption triangleprovides important information for adults and children involvedin face-to-face contact and for those professionals attemptingto facilitate the openness process.     

Returning to Normality: Substance Users' Work Histories and Perceptions of Work During and After Recovery

Correspondence to Andreas Cebulla, National Centre for Social Research, 35 Northampton Square, London EC1V 0AX, UK. E-mail: a.cebulla{at}natcen.ac.uk Summary New service provisions designed to improve the employment prospectsof former substance users will enhance the roles and responsibilitiesof Drug Action Teams (DATs), Jobcentre Plus offices and otherproviders and co-ordinators of support services for substanceusers. This paper discusses the findings of a study of 30 currentand former drug and alcohol users, exploring past substanceuse histories and current employment aspirations. The researchinforms new policy initiatives designed to assist substanceusers’ entry or return to work. Differences in presentperceptions of work-readiness were observed, which reflectedusers’ perceptions of the nature of their addiction. Theattribution of blame for the substance dependency to either‘the drug’ or the individual’s psychologywas a critical influence on users’ work-readiness assessments.Work was perceived to benefit recovery from substance dependency.The evidence suggests that substance users’ return towork might be helped by their staged (re-) introduction to thelabour market as well as encouraging the primary labour marketto employ (more) recovering substance users. The research highlightedthe need for joint working between employment services and DATsto help substance users into work and to support their recovery.It also highlighted the need for mutual understanding and recognitionof each collaborator’s expertise.     

What is child protection? Historical and methodological issues in comparative research on lastensuojelu/child protection

This article addresses comparative research on what has come to be called, in (British) English, 'child protection' or, rather differently, in Finnish ' lastensuojelu '. In developing a cross-national research project on lastensuojelu /child protection practices in England and Finland, we found it necessary to go back a few steps, to address what might usually be considered as 'background issues'. This article discusses the welfare state traditions in both countries, especially with respect to families and children, in order to contextualise the focus of ongoing qualitative research on micro comparisons. When comparing the mundane practices of child protection and the ways problems and clienthoods are constructed, as in this study, historical, social, cultural and linguistic issues matter. Indeed, very basic concepts such as 'child protection' and 'child protection case' become problematic in the comparison.     

Inferring Labor Income Risk and Partial Insurance From Economic Choices

This paper uses the information contained in the joint dynamics of individuals' labor earnings and consumption‐choice decisions to quantify both the amount of income risk that individuals face and the extent to which they have access to informal insurance against this risk. We accomplish this task by using indirect inference to estimate a structural consumption–savings model, in which individuals both learn about the nature of their income process and partly insure shocks via informal mechanisms. In this framework, we estimate (i) the degree of partial insurance, (ii) the extent of systematic differences in income growth rates, (iii) the precision with which individuals know their own income growth rates when they begin their working lives, (iv) the persistence of typical labor income shocks, (v) the tightness of borrowing constraints, and (vi) the amount of measurement error in the data. In implementing indirect inference, we find that an auxiliary model that approximates the true structural equations of the model (which are not estimable) works very well, with negligible small sample bias. The main substantive findings are that income shocks are moderately persistent, systematic differences in income growth rates are large, individuals have substantial amounts of information about their income growth rates, and about one‐half of income shocks are smoothed via partial insurance. Putting these findings together, the amount of uninsurable lifetime income risk that individuals perceive is substantially smaller than what is typically assumed in calibrated macroeconomic models with incomplete markets.     

The Big Freak Out: Educator Fear in Response to the Presence of Transgender Elementary School Students

Increased visibility of transgender children requires elementary school professionals to take on issues of gender diversity, sex and sexuality, which are considered taboo in elementary school spaces. School professionals who have worked with transgender children were interviewed about their experience with these students, perceptions of their school's success in supporting them, and recommendations for information and resources needed by schools to provide support. Findings indicate that fear and anxiety are common educator responses to the presence of a transgender child and the disruption of the gender binary, and these emotions are limiting the possibilities for schools to affirm transgender identity.     

Conflicting or Compatible: Beliefs About Religion and Science Among Emerging Adults in the United States1

A wide‐held assumption is that increased religiousness is associated with stronger perceptions of a conflict between religion and science. This article examines this assumption using four distinct questions asked on the third wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR). Results indicate a variety of viewpoints for constructing the relationship between science and religion, rather than a simple conflict‐compatibility continuum. Further, findings suggest that increased religiousness among emerging adults is associated with a stronger agreement in science and religion’s compatibility, rather than conflict. Incorporating New Age or non‐Western spiritual tradition and a strict adherence to fundamentalist Christian doctrine are associated with complex configurations of beliefs on the relationship between religion and science. Collectively, the findings among emerging adults contradict traditional assumptions about how religious experiences influence beliefs, suggesting that such social factors may influence beliefs and attitudes uniquely at different points in the lifecourse or across generations. More broadly, the findings speak to the ongoing debate about the extent to which differing social experiences may produce consistent or discordant sets of beliefs and values, and in turn how particular configurations may impact strategies of action across a range of life domains.     

Promoting “Zest for Life”: A Systematic Literature Review of Resiliency Factors to Prevent Youth Suicide

Suicide is a leading cause of death among youth globally. In this critical interpretive synthesis, we examined literature on resiliency factors and suicidality. Systematic searches identified 474 articles, 37 of which were included. Results revealed internal (positive self‐appraisal, zest for life, personal traits, and coping skills) and external factors (social support system and inclusive environments) contribute to resilience among youth, with age, sex and gender, and Indigenous identity as important intersecting considerations. Findings validated fostering resilience as primary suicide prevention among youth, with little explanation for how these factors may work to protect youth from suicidality. Continued research in this area requires a focus on how to promote resilience at the community and systems levels.     

A Standard of Care for the Prevention of Sexual Misconduct by School Employees

ABSTRACT

This article describes the development of a standard of care for the prevention of adult to student sexual abuse in pre K-12 schools. Standard of care is not a phrase often used in educational practice, and yet, it is a legal concept that may be useful for school administrators. A sample of administrators, child sexual abuse specialists, and attorneys with experience in school employee sexual misconduct responded to 101 items that the literature indicates should be included in a standard of care. There was agreement on 94 of these items by sample participants. Categories of the standard of care were policies, hiring process, hiring screening, hiring interview, training, and reporting. Where there was disagreement by role of respondent, attorneys, child sexual abuse specialists, or both rated the item as more important for inclusion than did administrators.     

The relations of ruling: a feminist inquiry ∗

This paper explores the complex of objectified social relations that organize and regulate our lives in contemporary society. Its inquiry is driven by experiences in the women's movement of a dual consciousness, with the particularities of being mother and housewife on the one hand, and, on the other, the abstracted discourses and forms of organization creating the matrix of a consciousness outside the local and particular. A strategy for sociological inquiry is formulated which does not begin from a discursively structured position within the objectified relations, but from a standpoint traditionally women's, located in the actualities of the everyday of people's embodied living. The historical trajectory of these relations emerges as increasingly independent and increasingly pervasive organizers of people's everyday/everynight activities. The materiality of printed and electronic texts mediates the intersections of the relations of ruling and the everyday world. Texts are complemented by technologies or disciplined practices that standardize local states of affairs or events, bringing them into correspondance with standardized texts. Baudrillard's conception of ‘hyperreality’ is used to explicate characteristic forms of the text-mediated systems of corporate management. Finally the topic returns to the issue of gender, showing how the dual consciousness which brings the objectified extra-local character of these relations into view has itself been defined in the historical trajectory of their emergence. It is in this context, that a sociology from the standpoint of women can be seen as proposing an alternative organization of knowledge which does not reproduce the relations of ruling, but an explication of just those relations in which our lives are embedded.