The Capacity of Community‐Based Organizations to Lead Local Innovations in Welfare Reform: Early Findings from Texas

Community‐based organizations (CBOs) are now cast among the lead actors in welfare reform. But do they have adequate capacity to perform this critical leadership function? Early findings from fifteen state‐funded projects in Texas show that state planners must carefully assess the capacity of a CBO to initiate and sustain an innovation at the local level. The authors examine six organizational variables that predict success or failure: goals, management, technology, funding, community involvement, and performance.     

Successful Aging And Creativity In Later Life

This study examined the meanings older people attached to successful aging and its relationship to creative activity. Thirty-six contributors to a senior art exhibition participated in this study and ranged in age from 60–93. Interviews with participants explored their understandings of successful aging and creativity, the factors viewed as necessary for each, and the benefits of creative activity and its relationship to successful aging. Qualitative data were coded by two independent reviewers. Content analysis confirmed six features of successful aging: a sense of purpose, interactions with others, personal growth, self-acceptance, autonomy, and health. The findings indicate that creative activity contributes to successful aging by fostering a sense of competence, purpose, and growth. Artistic creativity also facilitates successful aging by encouraging the development of problem-solving skills, motivation, and perceptions that translate into a practical creativity in the way these individuals manage their everyday lives.     

Addressing common forms of child maltreatment: evidence‐informed interventions and gaps in current knowledge

This paper reviews interventions for preventing the occurrence and recurrence of major types of child maltreatment. We begin with an overview of the challenges of establishing evidence‐based interventions to prevent child abuse and neglect in many countries, and underscore the importance of this need with child maltreatment incidence rates in the USA, and how much each type and subtype contribute to child out‐of‐home placement. Next, we identify the well‐supported, supported and promising interventions for each child maltreatment type and subtype, according to their level of research evidence using an evidence‐based clearing house. The paper closes with a discussion of the implications for practice, evaluation, policy and agency management, including intervention knowledge gaps that showcase areas that need additional practice research.     

Positive Changes in Perceptions and Selections of Healthful Foods by College Students After a Short-Term Point-of-Selection Intervention at a Dining Hall

Abstract

Objective: Determine the effects of a short-term, multi-faceted, point-of-selection intervention on college students’ perceptions and selection of 10 targeted healthful foods in a university dining hall and changes in their self-reported overall eating behaviors. Participants: 104 college students, (age 18–23) completed pre-I and post-I surveys. Methods: Pre-survey collected at dining hall in April 2007, followed by 3-week intervention then post-survey collected via email. Healthy choice indicators, large signs, table tents, flyers and colorful photographs with “benefit-based messages” promoted targeted foods. Response rate to both surveys was 38%. Results: Significantly more participants reported that healthful choices were clearly identified in the dining hall after the intervention. Over 20% of participants reported becoming more aware of healthful food choices in the dining hall after the intervention. Significant increases in self-reported intake were reported for cottage cheese and low-fat salad dressing, with a trend toward increased consumption of fresh fruit. Seven of the 14 assessed eating behaviors had significant changes in the desired direction. Increased awareness of healthful foods was the top reason for self-reported changes in overall eating behaviors. Conclusion: Short-term, multi-faceted, point-of-selection marketing of healthful foods in university dining halls may be beneficial for improving college students’ perceptions and selections of targeted healthful foods in the dining hall and may improve overall eating behaviors of college students.     

Cultural integration through shared learning among resettled Bhutanese women

ABSTRACT

The multidimensional needs of recently resettled refugees have been well documented and range from elevated rates of mental illness and health care challenges to difficulties accessing resources due to language and literacy barriers. These factors are largely responsible for the challenges resettled refugees face in acquiring and maintaining stable employment. It is possible that achieving financial stability through steady employment and purposeful money management may alleviate some stressors associated with the resettlement process, though research in this area that is specific to refugees is in its infancy. What is clear, however, is that a traditional approach to mental health treatment (i.e., therapy in a traditional office setting) may lack effectiveness because of the lack of attention to extraneous stressors such as poverty, transportation, and language and literacy challenges that impact resettled refugees. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively assess the impact of a group-based financial education course and social enterprise on the self-reported mental health (i.e., post-traumatic stress symptoms, depression, anxiety, and somatization) of Bhutanese refugee women resettled in the United States. The study also sought to evaluate the acceptability and overall satisfaction with various components of the intervention. This qualitative study was a follow-up to a larger quantitative study that included 65 Bhutanese women who were resettled to the southwestern United States by a large resettlement agency. The results of this study offer insights into the lived experiences of Bhutanese refugees in the United States, particularly related to cultural integration bolstered by group-based education and shared learning opportunities.     

Military Invasion and Women's Political Representation

The bodies produced by the violent practice of suicide bombing are a source of horror and disgust. They are, in feminist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva's concept, abject: that which defies borders and is expelled to create the self. As ‘abject bodies’, suicide bombers' bodies frustrate attempts at calculation and rational control of security risks, and, in their mutilated flesh, expose as unstable the idea of the body as a whole with clearly defined boundaries between inside and outside. Female suicide bombers, whose bodies are already considered ‘abject’, produce a politics of the body that exceeds narratives of victimhood, and whose very monstrosity symbolically threatens the foundations of the nation-state. Attempts at constructing subjects out of the mutilated bodily remains of victims and perpetrators of suicide bombings are key practices in the production of the state and gendered subjects. The practice of suicide bombing and efforts to recover and resignify bodies reveals how power molds and constitutes the border of the body and state simultaneously. The explosive body of the suicide bomber thus has destabilizing effects beyond the motivations of its perpetrators and exposes the political work necessary to maintain the illusion of secure, bounded bodies and states.     

Evaluation of a Distance Learning,Post Graduate Advanced Award in Social Work Programme for Child and Family Social Work Supervisors and Mentors

This paper discusses open and distance learning and supervision in child and family social work, and presents the results of an evaluation by students of a distance learning, post graduate certificate programme for first‐line managers and supervisors in child and family social work. The programme also leads to an Advanced Award in Social Work. Eighteen students returned a postal questionnaire designed to gain their experiences of studying on the programme and their views about its different elements and its outcomes for themselves, their work, their organisations and service users. Most respondents thought that there were more advantages than disadvantages to studying by distance learning and to studying part‐time while working full‐time, but that self‐discipline is required and that workload constraints and difficulties in taking study time away from work impinged on their studies. More than half rated as good or very good the support provided by their mentors. Reported outcomes of studying on the programme included increased self‐confidence, enhanced supervisory practice, greater involvement of service users in service provision, and increased attention to gaining service user feedback. Key messages regarding the organisation of distance learning programmes are outlined, and pedagogical issues in post qualifying social work education are discussed, including the role of the mentor and the training needs of experienced staff or those working in specialised roles.     

Inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to population–environment research for sustainability aims: a review and appraisal

The causes and consequences of demographic changes for the environment, and the possible ways of influencing population dynamics to achieve ‘sustainability’, have been the subject of many debates in science and policy in recent decades. However, the body of knowledge concerning relationships between population dynamics and sustainability is quite fragmented, dispersed over many disciplines, and encompasses diverse theories, paradigms and methodologies. This paper reviews four selected frameworks: linear, multiplicative, mediated, and system-theoretical approaches and perspectives. We represent how population–environment relationships are conceptualized, provide examples of research questions and accepted approaches, and critically assess their utility for different sorts of research for sustainable development. We note the growing recognition of the value of embracing complexity in population–environment research, and how this is consistent with normative aims of development.     

Biblical nationalism and the sixteenth-century states

The emergence of Protestant nations in sixteenth-century Europe was driven by the sudden rediscovery of biblical nationalism, a political model that did not separate the religious from the political. Biblical nationalism was new because pre-Reformation Europeans encountered the Hebrew Bible through paraphrases and abridgments. Full-text Bibles revealed a programmatic nationalism backed by unmatched authority as the word of God to readers primed by Reformation theology to seek models in the Bible for the reform of their own societies. Sixteenth-century biblical nationalism was the unintended side effect of a Reformation intended to save souls.