Lesbian and gay individuals' path into foster parenting in Norway—Barriers and facilitators at the person and system levels

Growing numbers of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning (LGBTQ) people are becoming foster parents in several western countries. The LGBTQ perspective on the child welfare system has received little attention in practice, research and policy. Despite their increased rights, LGBTQ foster parents continue to face challenges related to fostering. Knowledge is needed on LGBTQ individual perceptions of the process of becoming foster parents, including barriers and facilitating factors. This paper reports on the experiences of 13 gay or lesbian foster parents in Norway. The study shows a lack of knowledge about the possibility of becoming foster parents due to lack of information directed at them as a minority group. Participants felt vulnerable and experienced “minority stress” before encountering the child welfare system, while mainly experienced the encounter with the staff as good and respectful. Although several valued being treated “like everyone else” by the system, others questioned why LGBTQ-specific parenting issues were not raised and discussed. Apart from lack of information, the process towards foster parenting seemed mostly hampered by participants' own assumptions that sexual identity would be a barrier and to some extent biological parents' refusal. The study suggests that foster care and child welfare services would benefit from information in recruitment of foster parents, aiming at being more inclusive. Furthermore, we address gender and sexuality diversity related to foster care work and highlight the strengths and challenges it may offer.     

数字地球及其在知识经济中的地位和作用

数字地球是从更高的层次、系统论和一体化的角度来整合、应用已有的或者正在发展的理论、技术、数据和能力 ,它把遥感技术、地球信息系统和网络技术与可持续发展等社会需要联系在一起 ,为全球信息化提供一个基础框架 ,它的提出及实现具有重大意义。众所周知 ,人类社会正以前所未有的速度发展 ,一个以知识资源的占有、配置、生产、分配和使用为最重要因素的新经济时代已经来临 ,用数字化手段统一处理地球问题 ,最大限度超时空地利用信息资源是促进知识创新的源动力和主要技术依托 ,因此实现数字地球对未来以知识经济为主体的经济建设具有重大的作用     

Family involvement in child welfare services: The association between socio-economic status and self-reported parenting practices

In child welfare policies, as in contemporary society in general, great attention has been given to parenting roles and investing in ‘positive’ parenting practices. Several studies have suggested that socio-economic factors frame parenting practices. There is broad evidence of a significant correlation between socio-economic inequalities and child welfare intervention rates. Nevertheless, few studies have investigated parenting practices in a child welfare population. The aim of the present study was to investigate the association between socio-economic status (SES) and parenting practices in a Norwegian child welfare population. The study was based on a cross-sectional survey conducted in 2018–2019. The sample consisted of 256 parents (71.5% females). Linear regression analysis, adjusting for potential confounding and intermediate factors, was conducted. Lower SES was associated with higher levels of positive parenting/involvement practices (b = 0.146, CI: 0.026–0.266, P = 0.018), indicating an inverse pattern compared with the general population. When adjusting for symptoms of anxiety and depression, the association was slightly attenuated but remained statistically significant. No significant association was found between SES and inconsistent discipline/other disciplinary practices. The present study offers insights that should be useful in practice and further large-scale studies.     

Theorizing theory: Invitation to a broader conversation about ‘theory’ in sociology

‘Theory’ is a seminal term in sociology. Sociologists tend to ask that articles, chapters and monographs are ‘theoretical’, ‘develop theory’ or ‘make a theoretical contribution’. Yet, as demonstrated in Gabriel Abend’s 2008 article ‘The Meaning of ‘Theory’, it is generally unclear what sociologists mean when they talk about theory. Abend distinguishes seven different meanings sociologists tend to impute to ‘theory’ and argues that no single definition can usefully capture these substantively different meanings. Counter to Abend, we propose and defend a minimal and versatile theory of theory, which does capture the important common denominators in sociologists' various uses of the term theory. The major strengths of our proposal are that it enables informed and synthetic discussion and fosters reflexivity about differences and similarities between different types of theory. Our minimal theory of theory thus serves as an invitation to a broader conversation about theory in sociology.     

Evidence in Norwegian child protection interventions – Analysing cases of familial violence

How is expert evidence used in care order proceedings when children are considered for foster care placement because of familial violence? What are important factors and how do the decision-makers use and evaluate evidence from specialists and experts? In this in-depth analysis of 104 published care order decisions from the Norwegian County Boards, I investigate how decision-makers use and evaluate evidence from expert witnesses to determine whether a care order may be granted. The analysis shows that the evidence largely revolves around social functioning, care context and topics about how parents and children relate to each other. Led by the law, the decision-makers use this evidence to determine whether the child's situation is harmful, whether support services are viable and whether a care order is in the child's best interests. I find that decision-makers draw unevenly on evidence with regards to these legal requirements, and that the use predominantly defers to expert authority. However, there is also evidence of independent reasoning, where deferral to the epistemic authority of the experts is weakened. This is shown through evaluative and critical assessments and scrutiny of the disciplinary evidence.     

Prior distributions expressing ignorance about convex increasing failure rates

This paper deals with the specification of probability distributions expressing ignorance concerning annual or otherwise discretized failure or mortality rates, when these rates can safely be assumed to be increasing and convex, but are completely unknown otherwise. Such distributions can be used as noninformative priors for Bayesian analysis of failure data. We demonstrate why a uniform distribution used in earlier work is unsatisfactory, especially from the point of view of insensitivity with respect to the time scale that is chosen for the problem at hand. We suggest alternative distributions based on Dirichlet distributed weights for the extreme points of relevant convex sets, and discuss which consequences a requirement for scale neutrality has for the choice of Dirichlet parameters.