Squaring the welfare circle and government ideology: Greece and Spain in the 1990s

This article examines the "squaring the welfare circle" thesis and its usefulness to our understanding of welfare developments in Greece and Spain in the 1990s. The welfare state in both Greece and Spain was expanded considerably in the early 1980s by the newly elected socialist governments, only to hit the buffers of diminishing resources and rising demands in the late 1980s as well as the hostile neo-liberal welfare ideology. The process of welfare expansion was halted in the 1990s, labour market deregulation was encouraged and containment of welfare expenditure became the dominant aim of government policies. This article concentrates on the actual policies of governments in the 1990s rather than on the rhetoric of political parties. It concludes that governments of both the Left and the Right in both countries attempted to "square the welfare circle" mainly through reductions in the supply of welfare. This general conclusion is country-specific and may not apply to other countries involved in welfare restructuring. While recognizing the significance of institutional factors to welfare reform, the article concentrates on the outcomes of reforms rather than on the political process leading to them.     

When Precaution Creates Misunderstandings: The Unintended Effects of Precautionary Information on Perceived Risks,the EMF Case

In the past decade, growing public concern about novel technologies with uncertain potential long‐term impacts on the environment and human health has moved risk policies toward a more precautionary approach. Focusing on mobile telephony, the effects of precautionary information on risk perception were analyzed. A pooled multinational experimental study based on a 5 × 2 × 2 factorial design was conducted in nine countries. The first factor refers to whether or not information on different types of precautionary measures was present, the second factor to the framing of the precautionary information, and the third factor to the order in which cell phones and base stations were rated by the study participants. The data analysis on the country level indicates different effects. The main hypothesis that informing about precautionary measures results in increased risk perceptions found only partial support in the data. The effects are weaker, both in terms of the effect size and the frequency of significant effects, across the various precautionary information formats used in the experiment. Nevertheless, our findings do not support the assumption that informing people about implemented precautionary measures will decrease public concerns.     

Child sexual abuse in Leeds before and after Cleveland

We report a retrospective cohort study in which clinical and outcome features of 237 cases of child sexual abuse diagnosed by Leeds paediatricians after Cleveland in 1989 were compared with previously published characteristics of 337 children diagnosed by the same paediatricians before Cleveland in 1985 and 1986. Clinical and diagnostic features also were analysed in two subgroups of the 1989 cohort, those for whom there was no case conference and those in whom further abuse was detected at follow-up examination. The number of cases diagnosed annually remained high, and source of referrals and age and sex distribution were similar. Most suspected perpetrators were from within the home in both cohorts. Some clinical features of the 1989 cohort suggested more physically severe abuse. In 1989 fewer children were registered as sexually abused, or were taken into care, and fewer suspected perpetrators were convicted. From the 1989 cohort those children for whom there was no case conference tended to be older, to disclose and were abused less severely by someone outside their home as compared to those for whom a case conference was held. The children in whom further abuse was detected tended to be younger, to not disclose. to be more severely abused by a perpetrator within the home and to be taken into care as compared to those in whom further abuse was not detected. One or more case conferences were held for nearly all of the children in whom further abuse was detected. For most of the 1989 children no evidence was found indicating receipt of mental health services from other than the key social worker. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of professional and public knowledge and attitudes regarding children's and parental rights and family preservation.     

Boards of directors in nonprofit organizations do they follow a life-cycle model?

In this study the authors used data from a survey of Canadian nonprofit organizations to empirically test hypotheses derived from models of nonprofit board “life cycles.” The authors suggest that while formal structural elements of board behavior change in the manner suggested by life-cycle models, the more enacted or behavioral aspects of nonprofit boards do not. The data further suggest caution in the use of life-cycle or age-dependent models to either explain or guide nonprofit board behavior.     

THE RECOVERY OF MASADA: A STUDY IN COLLECTIVE MEMORY*

The battle of Masada in 73 A. D. was one of the least significant and least successful events in ancient Jewish history. Our concern is to understand why, after almost two thousand years of obscurity, this event was suddenly remembered and commemorated by Palestinian Jews. Precipitating the 1927 recovery of Masada was the appearance of a very popular poem which used the ancient battle as an allegory of the Jewish settlers' struggle. By restoring this poem to its social context, and by analyzing both in terms of George Herbert Mead's theory of symbolically reconstructed pasts, this article explains the modern appeal of Masada, then brings it to bear on our general knowledge of collective memory.     

Developing geriatric social work competencies for field education

Preparing social workers to effectively practice with the growing older population requires the identification of geriatric competencies for the profession. The John A. Hartford Geriatric Social Work Initiative provided the impetus and direction for a national strategy to improve the quality of preparation of geriatric social workers. The Geriatric Social Work Practicum Partnership Program (PPP) is the project with the Hartford Initiative that emphasizes field education. The Geriatric Social Work Education Consortium (GSWEC), one of the PPP programs, initiated the development of competencies for work with older adults. GSWEC utilized Geriatric Social Work White Papers and the pioneering work of the Council on Social Work Education's (CSWE) Strengthening Aging and Gerontology Education for Social Work's (SAGE-SW) comprehensive competency list as well as conducted focus groups locally to delineate key competencies for field education. The Coordinating Center for the PPP, located at the New York Academy of Medicine, led in collaboratively developing knowledge based skill competencies for geriatric social work across all 6 demonstration sites (11 universities). The competencies adopted across sites include skills in the following five major domains: values and ethics; assessment (individuals and families, aging services, programs and policies); practice and interventions (theory and knowledge in practice, individual and family, aging services, programs and practice) interdisciplinary collaboration; and evaluation and research. The identified competencies have proven effective in evaluating students (n = 190) pre- and post PPP field education. The implications for further development of competency driven education for geriatric social work are discussed.     

Financial-Firm Production of Monetary Services: A Generalized Symmetric Baroett Variable-Profit-Function Approach

An alternative monetary-production model of financial firms is employed to investigate supply-side monetary aggregation. Financial firms are conceived to produce monetary services as outputs through financial intermediation. A new method for testing the existence of consistent monetary-output aggregates in financial firms' production technology is developed in terms of a multiproduct firm's variable profit function, and the method does not require homotheticity of the aggregator function. We use a generalized symmetric Barnett flexible functional form. That specification satisfies global curvature conditions and retains its flexibility under the null hypothesis of weak separability. Neither of those properties is possessed by other flexible functional forms.