Underserved parents,underserved youth: Considering foster parent willingness to foster substance-using adolescents

Adolescents involved with foster care are five times more likely to receive a drug dependence diagnosis when compared to adolescents in the general population. Prior research has shown that substance use is often hidden from providers, negating any chance for treatment and almost guaranteeing poor post-foster care outcomes. There are virtually no studies that examine the willingness (and its determinants) to foster youth with substance abuse problems. The current study conducted a nationally-distributed survey of 752 currently licensed foster care parents that assessed willingness to foster youth overall and by type of drug used, and possible correlates of this decision (e.g., home factors, system factors, and individual foster parent factors such as ratings of perceived difficulty in fostering this population). Overall, willingness to foster a youth involved with alcohol and other drugs (AOD) was contingent upon the types of drugs used. The odds that a parent would foster an AOD-involved youth were significantly increased by being licensed as a treatment foster home, having fostered an AOD-involved youth in the past, having AOD-specific training and past agency-support when needed, and self-efficacy with respect to positive impact. Surprisingly, when religion played a large part in the decision to foster any child, the odds of willingness to foster an AOD-involved youth dropped significantly. These results suggest that a large proportion of AOD-involved youth who find themselves in the foster care system will not have foster families willing to parent them, thereby forcing placement into a variety of congregate care facilities (e.g., residential treatment facilities, group homes). Specific ways in which the system can address these issues to improve placement and permanency efforts are provided.     

The changing fertility of the Japanese

The Japan of the middle of the nineteenth century was a backward agrarian state of perhaps 35 million people. Three-quarters of a century later, the 75 million people of an industrialized and urbanized Japan had challenged the industrial and military power of the West itself in a daring attempt to achieve economic and political control over eastern Asia and the islands of Oceania. Population growth had stimulated economic and political expansion, but in 1940 when the Planning Board of the Cabinet reported to the Imperial Japanese Government that the country would need perhaps 200 million people to maintain the hegemony of the East, population growth was already slowing. Japanese projections of the trends of the interwar period indicated that the maximum population would be reached by the end of the twentieth century, and that it would be slightly less than 125 million.²     

Non-uniqueness of equilibrium action profiles with equal size in one-shot cheap-talk games

For strategic communication games à la Crawford and Sobel (Econometrica 50:1431–1451, 1982) the paper shows that under some prior beliefs different equilibrium partitions of the state space can have equal cardinality. Hence, there can be different equilibrium action profiles with the same size.     

A comprehensive workplace intervention and its outcome with regard to lifestyle, health and sick leave: the AHA study

This study is a prospective multicentre cohort study entitled Work and Health in the Processing and Engineering Industries, the AHA Study (AHA is the Swedish abbreviation for the study). Four large workplaces in Sweden participated during the years from 2000 to 2003. The present report has two objectives: (1) to present a comprehensive occupational health intervention programme and (2) to evaluate this programme with a focus on lifestyle (smoking and exercise), health related quality of life (HRQoL) and sick leave. Interventions were provided on an individual and group level, including evidence-based methods for four health/focus areas (individual level) and a group intervention based on a survey-feedback methodology. The analyses in this report were exclusively employed at an organizational level. The proportion of smokers decreased at three companies and the course of the HRQoL was advantageous at two of the companies as compared to a gainfully employed reference group. A significant decrease in sick leave was revealed at one company, whereas a break in an ascending sick-leave trend appeared at a second company as compared to their respective corporate groups. This comprehensive workplace intervention programme appears to have had positive effects on smoking habits, HRQoL and sick leave.     

Risk Assessment Tools and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in the Juvenile Justice System

This paper addresses the possible consequences for racial and ethnic disparities of the growing reliance on risk assessment tools for sentencing in juvenile justice systems. These tools consider both legal factors (i.e. criminal history) and personal background factors (e.g. household composition, parents’ arrest history, the youth’s mental health, attitudes, school status, and current employment status) to predict the likelihood of recidivism, which then informs punishment decisions. Because they decontextualize race, the associations between race and risk factors linked to race could possibly create higher risk scores and harsher punishments for minority youth.     

Toward a Concept of a Migrant Personality

In this article we argue that individuals who want to emigrate possess a syndrome of personality characteristics that differentiates them from those who want to stay in their country of origin. Based on our own research, as well as other research findings, we show that those who want to resettle in another country tend to be more work-oriented and to have higher achievement and power motivation, but lower affiliation motivation and family centrality, than those who do not want to leave their country of origin. This migrant personality syndrome is seen as only one of the variety of factors that determine migratory behavior. We further discuss some of the possible implications of our findings for the receiving and the sending countries and possible psychological interventions that can ease the acculturation of immigrants.     

Alternative to incarceration for low‐income non‐custodial parents

Increasingly, low‐income non‐custodial parents in the USA, primarily fathers, are at risk of incarceration for failure to make child support payments, clogging the prison system, preventing already at‐risk fathers from holding a job and removing them from relationships with their children. This paper examines an innovative programme in one south‐eastern state that provides an alternative to incarceration for non‐compliant parents, also allowing fathers an opportunity to find gainful employment; to learn valuable life skills; and to establish healthier relationships with their children. Data analysis from 3 years of programme implementation suggests that low‐income non‐custodial fathers enrolled in the Alternative to Incarceration programme have a much greater chance to fulfil their obligations, both as wage earners and as parents, when they are in a programme that provides life skills, helps them find employment and provides other supports to help them improve their life situation rather than incarcerating them for non‐payment of child support. Furthermore, this programme represents a substantial cost savings to the state, as hundreds of fathers have remained outside of the prison system. To date, this alternative to incarceration is a promising solution to a previously intractable problem.     

Sensitizing nursing home staff to residents' psychosocial needs

Most of the direct care of nursing home residents is provided by nursing aides. Aides generally have had limited training and experience working with the frail elderly and may not be attuned to residents' psychosocial needs. This can result in aides working at cross purposes with the social worker, producing a system that is counterproductive. This paper describes a situation where inservice training was utilized to help aides gain a greater understanding of the residents in their care. Advantages of using in-service are discussed, potential pitfalls are considered, and illustrations of in-service training techniques are presented.