A model of culture-centered child welfare practice

This article presents a framework for culture-centered child welfare practice, including child-family-system interactions, service provision, recruitment and retention of homes, and culturally responsive legislation. There should be no one-size-fits-all approach to child welfare practice. In a diverse society, child welfare practice must be responsive to the particularities of various cultures. A culture-centered framework allows for a holistic system of child permanence, with consideration of a child's mental, physical, and emotional growth. This framework cherishes the distinctiveness of America's cultures.     

Needed and Wanted? The school experiences of some minority ethnic trainee teachers in the UK

This paper considers the school experiences of a small group of black and other minority ethnic student teachers in the UK at key points during their postgraduate initial teacher education (secondary) course. Their views are examined against the backdrop of the continuing stated need to increase numbers entering the teaching profession from black and other minority backgrounds.     

Are game theoretic concepts suitable negotiation support tools? From Nash equilibrium refinements toward a cognitive concept of rationality

If game theory is to be used as a negotiation support tool, it should be able to provide unambiguous recommendations for a target to aim at and for actions to reach this target. This need cannot be satisfied with the Nash equilibrium concept, based on the standard instrumental concept of rationality. These equilibria, as is well known, are generally multiple in a game. The concept of substantive or instrumental rationality has proved to be so pregnant, however, that researchers, instead of re-evaluating its use in game theory, have simply tried to design concepts related to the Nash equilibrium, but with the property of being unique in a game — i.e., they have devised ways ofselecting among Nash equilibria. These concepts have been labeledrefined Nash equilibria. The purpose of this paper is to show the following.

1. The different types of refined Nash equilibria, based on the principle of backward induction, can lead to severe contradictions within the framework itself. This makes these concepts utterly unsatisfactory and calls for a new appraisal of the reasoning process of the players.
2. The degree of confidence in the principle of backward induction depends upon the evaluation of potential deviations with respect to the extended Nash equilibrium concept used and upon the possible interpretations of such deviations by the different players. Our goal is to show that the nature of these possible interpretations reinforces the argument that a serious conceptual reappraisal is necessary.
3. Some form of forward induction should then become the real yardstick of rationality, extending Simonianprocedural rationality towards the concept ofcognitive rationality. This could open the way to a renewed game theoretic approach to negotiation support systems. Such a research program, which would be a revision of the basic game theoretic concepts, is dealt with in the end of the paper.

     

Transnational Fundraising in a Good Cause: A North–South European Example

This paper documents the experience of a one-time famous, longstanding, charismatically led and transnationally funded welfare project in Naples, Italy. It details the manner of the project's original funding success and reviews the implications of its subsequent shift from child rescue to community development, in conjunction with its founder's decision to resign from the priesthood. It comments on the project's funding fortunes thereafter, up until its founder's retirement, and argues that, whilst the activities of the project advanced from what might be termed first-generation (humanitarian relief) to second-generation (community development), its styles of management and fundraising remained essentially unchanged. The paper comments on the project's qualities of charismatic leadership in conjunction with "friendship style" fundraising, and suggests ways in which its life might have been prolonged with less upheaval, beyond the first generation. This account could furnish useful learning material for other, later North–South NGO projects.     

Free,free, set them free? Are programmes effective that allow job centres considerable freedom to choose the exact design?

Active labour market programmes are expected to be quite effective if job centres have a substantial degree of freedom to deliver tailor‐made individual services. For Germany, we studied the effectiveness of Schemes for Activation and Integration (SAI), which were introduced in 2009 to grant such freedoms to implement short training and private placement services. We estimated SAI participation effects on welfare recipients’ earnings and employment rate using propensity score matching and rich administrative data. We distinguished between participation in in‐firm training or training in other settings, and considered effect heterogeneity by gender, region and non‐employment duration. Participation substantially improved the participants’ earnings and employment rate, in‐firm training more so than training in other settings. Our employment effect estimates were not considerably larger than those previously found for comparable pre‐reform programmes. A lack of experience with SAI and a still inadequate client focus in the period studied might explain this.     

Falling through the social safety net? Analysing non-take-up of minimum income benefit and monetary social assistance in Austria

Non-take-up of means tested benefits is a widespread phenomenon in European welfare states. The paper assesses whether the reform that replaced the monetary social assistance benefit by the minimum income benefit in Austria in 2010/11 has succeeded in increasing take up rates. We use EU-SILC register data together with the tax-benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD/SORESI. The results show that the reform led to a significant decrease of non-take-up from 53 to 30% in terms of the number of households and from 51 to 30% in terms of expenditure. Following the three-t's (threshold, trigger, and trade-off) introduced by Van Oorschot, estimates of a two-stage Heckman selection model as well as expert interviews indicate that the taken measures include both threshold and trade-off characteristics. Elements such as the higher degree of anonymity within the claiming process, the provision of health insurance, binding minimum standards, the limitation of the maintenance obligations, new regulations related to the liquidation of wealth, as well as the general coverage of the benefit reform in the media and in public discussions led to an improved access to the benefit.     

Positive You: a self-advocate’s arts-based approach for building self-esteem

Positive You is an inclusive arts project supporting learning disabled people to explore self-esteem through art-making. The project was developed by self-advocate Leah Jones who observed a gap in service provision after struggling with her own confidence and self-esteem for many years. This article has been co-written by Leah and her support Jade French using a life-story approach. Leah hopes that by sharing her story, this article will not only demonstrate the value of art-making in developing self-esteem, but also that learning disabled people can develop their own employment opportunities with the right support.     

Networked heirlooms: the affective and financial logics of digital estate planning

This article outlines the emergence of digital estate planning, a new way of managing post-mortem data, considering its cultural history and political stakes. I argue that Web 2.0 logics of interaction and inclusivity, and the subsequent valorization of social data, have led to a new form of accumulation. Unlike estate planners, who are legal professionals paid to manage the finances of wealthy clientele, digital estate planners are start-up company founders who handle the digital possessions of the masses. Because digital estate planning companies are not lucrative, often providing free services, they tend to quickly fold and vanish. Communicative traces do not contain intrinsic monetary worth in isolation. They are, however, speculatively valuable in aggregate, becoming potential networked heirlooms. They provide legible personality profiles of individuals to advertisers, government agencies, and companies such as Facebook and Google. Communicative traces also contain value in their capacity to produce and maintain social networks and affective bonds. Despite the failures of digital estate planning as an enterprise, networked heirlooms point to the dual financial and affective value of personal data under late capitalism.     

What's Race Got to Do With It? Racial Socialization's Contribution to Black Adolescent Coping

While youth generally experience stressors from developmental milestones, Black youth also face racialized stressors. Racial socialization has been found to help Black youth cope with racialized stressors, but research has yet to show its contribution to coping beyond general socialization practices. This study examines how racial socialization contributes beyond that of general coping socialization to coping behaviors. Fifty‐eight third–eighth‐grade (M_age = 11.3, SD = 1.54) youth reported general coping socialization and racial socialization practices and coping behaviors. Results indicate that for engagement coping, racial socialization messages contributed significantly to parent‐provided engaged socialization strategies. Implications are considered for the ways in which Black youth experience stress and require culturally specific practices for successful coping with frequently encountered stressors.