Picking up the pieces: local government reorganisation and voluntary sector children's services

Between 1995 and 1998, most of British local government was reorganised, leading to the creation of more, generally smaller, local authorities. Although social services were then the direct responsibility of local government, the potential impact of reorganisation on social work departments and partner organisations was barely considered prior to reorganisation. This article explores the consequences of reorganisation for children's services provided by voluntary sector organisations in Scotland, England and Wales. Drawing on two separate but complementary studies, the paper reviews the impact on funding, boundary problems, changing structures and the fragmentation of local authorities. It concludes that although some advances may be stimulated in the medium term by reorganisation, the overall short‐term impact for projects and their users is likely to have been damaging. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“A game of two halves?” Understanding the process and outcomes of English care home closures: Qualitative and quantitative perspectives

With care services increasingly delivered via a market there is always a risk that care homes could fail financially or struggle in terms of quality, ultimately having to close. When this happens, the received wisdom is that subsequent relocation can be detrimental to the health and well‐being of older residents (possibly even culminating in increased mortality). However, there is very little formal evidence in the United Kingdom (UK) or beyond to guide policymakers and local leaders when undertaking such sensitive work. Against this background, this article reports findings from an independent evaluation of what is believed to be the largest care home closure program in the UK (and possibly beyond). This consisted of qualitative interviews with older people, families, care staff, and social work assessors during the closure process in one case study care home and one linked day center, as well as self‐reported health and quality of life data for older people from 13 homes/linked day centers at initial assessment, 28 days after moving and at 12‐month follow up. The study is significant in presenting public data about such a contested topic from such a large‐scale closure process, in its focus on both process and outcomes, in its mixed‐methods approach, and in its engagement with older people, families, and care staff alongside the use of more formal outcome measures. Despite significant distress part‐way through the process, the article suggests that outcomes either stayed the same or improved for most of our sample up to a year after moving to new services. Care homes closures may thus be a “tale of two halves”, with inevitable distress during the closure but, if done well, with scope for improved outcomes for some people in the longer term. These findings are crucial for current policy and practice given that the risk of major closures seems to be growing and given that there is virtually no prior research on which to base local or national closure processes. While some of this research is specific to England, the underlying issue of care home closures and lessons learned around good practice will also apply to other countries.     

Word Level Stress and Lexical Processing in 17‐Month‐Old Infants

Detailed representations enable infants to distinguish words from one another and more easily recognize new words. We examined whether 17‐month‐old infants encode word stress in their familiar word representations. In Experiment 1, infants were presented with pairs of familiar objects while hearing a target label either properly pronounced with the correct stress (e.g., baby /’be?bi/) or mis‐pronounced with the incorrect stress pattern (e.g., baby /be?’bi/). Infants mapped both the correctly stressed and mis‐stressed labels to the target objects; however, they were slower to fixate the target when hearing the mis‐stressed label. In Experiment 2, we examined whether infants appreciate that stress has a nonproductive role in English (i.e., altering the stress of a word does not typically signal a change in word meaning) by presenting infants with a familiar object paired with a novel object while hearing either correctly stressed or mis‐stressed familiar words (Experiment 2). Here, infants mapped the correctly stressed label to the familiar object but did not map the mis‐stressed label reliably to either the target or distractor objects. These findings suggest that word stress impacts the processing of familiar words, and infants have burgeoning knowledge that altering the stress pattern of a familiar word does not reliably signal a new referent.     

Life Stories of International Romanian Adoptees: A Narrative Study

This study sought to explore the life stories of Romanian adoptees who were internationally adopted following the fall of communism in 1989. Ten participants were recruited via social media and took part in a life stories interview. Data were analyzed using narrative analysis, which led to the development of four life chapters centered around identity construction—Chapter 1: Setting the scene–the adoption story; Chapter 2: Constructing the self; Chapter 3: Who am I? Quest for self-discovery; and Chapter 4: Negotiating the selves. Clinical implications, research limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Constructing undesirables: A critical discourse analysis of ‘othering’ within the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

Immigration policy in Canada has recently shifted, reflecting changes in other Western countries. We studied the discursive constructions of forced migrants within Bill C‐31 “Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act” and its associated Backgrounder documents published by the Canadian Government. The documents were analysed using an approach to critical discourse analysis adapted from Bacchi's (2009) methodology and informed by a theoretical framework of “othering”. Particular groups of migrants were represented as posing threats to the economy, the integrity of the refugee system, and national security. The documents offered three solutions: the creation of specific categories of migrants, an emphasis upon efficiency of the system, and expanded powers to the government. The problematization of asylum seekers as posing multiple threats to Canadian society obfuscates governmental responsibilities to this population and reflects common strategies of neoliberal governance.     

Collaborative Partnership in Age-Friendly Cities: Two Case Studies From Quebec,Canada

This article aims to explain the collaborative partnership conditions and factors that foster implementation effectiveness within the age-friendly cities (AFC) in Quebec (AFC-QC), Canada. Based on a community-building approach that emphasizes collaborative partnership, the AFC-QC implementation process is divided into three steps: (1) social diagnostic of older adults' needs; (2) an action plan based on a logic model; and (3) implementation through collaborations. AFC-QC promotes direct involvement of older adults and seniors' associations at each of the three steps of the implementation process, as well as other stakeholders in the community. Based on two contrasting case studies, this article illustrates the importance of collaborative partnership for the success of AFC implementation. Results show that stakeholders, agencies, and organizations are exposed to a new form of governance where coordination and collaborative partnership among members of the steering committee are essential. Furthermore, despite the importance of the senior associations' participation in the process, they encountered significant limits in the capacity of implementing age-friendly environments solely by themselves. In conclusion, we identify the main collaborative partnership conditions and factors in AFC-QC.     

Empowerment in Coalitions Targeting Underage Drinking: Differential Effects of Organizational Characteristics for Volunteers and Staff

Social work has adopted the Grand Challenge to reduce and prevent alcohol misuse and related consequences. This study extends previous research through a macro examination of distinct roles within coalitions implementing prevention strategies targeting underage alcohol use. The purpose was to determine whether hypothesized relationships among organizational characteristics, empowerment variables, and perceived effectiveness differed for 2 subgroups (i.e., volunteers and paid staff). The sample was comprised of 357 survey participants affiliated with a statewide substance abuse initiative. Structural equation modeling was used to examine hypothesized relationships between study variables and found differences among subgroups. Results can inform organizational processes within coalitions that focus on engaging different groups to have a stronger impact on community issues, such as substance use consequences.     

Responding to the needs of youth who are homeless: Calling for politicized trauma-informed intervention

Trauma in the lives of youth who are homeless is a pervasive reality. In this article, a politicized understanding of trauma is taken up to explore the complex psychological, relational, and social/political challenges experienced by many young persons facing homelessness. Their needs are contrasted with the dominant framework for assessing and addressing homelessness among youth, which fails to adequately account for the effects of trauma in their lives. The authors argue for therapeutic approaches to address the negative effects of trauma; development of community services that adequately respond to the consequences of traumatic life experiences; and socially responsible policies that ensure provision of adequate services and also aim to address root causes of youth homelessness. While current conceptualizations of trauma-informed services go some distance toward achieving these goals, the authors argue that it is only by taking up a more radical understanding of trauma that interventions will be employed to better achieve these targets. Toward this end, the authors introduce a framework that integrates the SPECs model (Evans & Prilleltensky, 2007; Prilleltensky, 2005) with trauma-informed service provision, thereby infusing a social and political analysis to guide more effective trauma-informed solution building in response to the issue of youth homelessness.     

Supporting pupils with special health needs in mainstream schools: policy and practice

Education policy favouring ‘inclusion’, together with medical advances, mean that a growing number of pupils in mainstream schools may have health‐related support needs in respect of a chronic illness or physical disability. Data from an empirical research study investigating these needs and carried out between 1996 and 1998 are used to reflect on the position of this group of pupils within policy guidance on special educational needs (SEN) and medical needs. Evidence of confusion and ambiguity, both in the guidance and its interpretation, suggests that the needs of this group remain somewhat hidden. More recent developments in special needs policy guidance are discussed in terms of the prospect for strengthening support for this group of pupils. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.