Young People Leaving Care: Participatory Research to Improve Child Welfare Practices and the Rights of Children and Young People

Abstract

This paper discusses participatory research with young people who are leaving public care in Finland to begin independent lives. The aim of the research, organised by SOS Children's Villages International, was to bring about change in alternative care arrangements, particularly those involving young people's transition to independence. The project used a participatory research design based on employing care-leaving peers as co-researchers. This paper adheres to the methodological principles of empowerment in analysing the personal experiences of young people leaving alternative care with the goal of informing good practice. The findings suggest that the peer research method can be an effective means of empowering young people to develop research skills and to be involved in knowledge production, as well as serving as a means of promoting improved services for “care-leavers”, those young people who are leaving either foster care or institutional care. The participatory and peer research method challenges the traditional understandings of expertise and knowledge production. Although the hierarchy between adult researchers and young people as co-researchers is still evident, the method provides possibilities for better understanding the social- and health-service systems and their challenges and pitfalls from a user's perspective.     

Bling bling taxation and the fiscal virtues of hip hop

The article extends Ng’s (Am Econ Rev 77(1):186–191, 1987) model of optimal taxation of diamond goods—goods that are valued solely for their costliness. We extend his findings by analyzing how other goods should be taxed in the presence of pure diamond goods; modified Ramsey rules are derived in a basic single-type model as well as in a two-type model with redistribution. One key finding, that may be surprising and rather provoking, is that close complements (hip hop music) to diamond goods (bling bling) should be heavily subsidized.     

Children’s Experiences of Completing a Computer‐Based Violence Survey: Ethical Implications

This article aims to contribute to the discussion about the ethics of research on children when studying sensitive issues such as violence. The empirical analysis is based on the accounts given by children (11 377) who completed a computer‐based questionnaire about their experiences of violence (‘The Finnish Child Victim Survey 2008’) and their reflections on the survey. We argue that experiences of violence should not be excluded from the research agenda on children due to ethical reasons, but that a more sophisticated practice should be developed instead to meet the needs and rights of children as informants. © 2010 The Author(s). Journal compilation 2010 National Children’s Bureau and Blackwell Publishing Limited.     

Social workers' assessments of needs and interventions for adolescents with substance misuse problems,criminal behaviour and mental health difficulties: a vignette study

The aim of the current vignette study was to examine how social workers assess adolescents with substance misuse problems, criminal behaviour and mental health difficulties, and how they make decisions about treatment interventions to reduce these problems. Earlier research has shown lack of knowledge concerning factors and processes that govern assessments and decisions in social work practice. In this anonymously administered survey, social workers in Stockholm, Sweden, were invited to assess fictitious youth issues. We found that social workers recognise the problems and needs of young people, but that they find it harder to link needs to evidence-based interventions. Also, there is a tendency to overrate alleged non-serious problems in the vignettes. We conclude that there is a need for increased knowledge about evidence-based methods and more structured procedures to broaden the basis for decisions.     

Authority and the pursuit of order in organizational performance

The paper seeks to examine the site of performance, the spatial context of the dramatic act, and to consider the various ways in which performance is regulated, ordered and sustained. In particular, the paper is concerned with the relationship between authority and propriety in the regulation of the performance site and with the transformational metaphors which sustain the trajectory of the performance. The basic premise on which the argument rests is that there is a equivalence of sign-imagery as appropriate to liturgical performance which is the basis of some forms of organisational behaviour and that this equivalence permits more than the mere playing out of ritualistic behaviour: it appropriates the image in the reproduction and re-presentation of its forms. Consequently, the significance of the elevation, for instance, of The Cross or the consecrated Host, the notion of ritualistic cleansing, of humiliation, of redemptive acts, of public confession, become emblematic means of achieving organisational incorporations and of achieving movement from the isolated “I” to the collective “We”.     

The power of discourse: Michel Foucault and critical theory

Abstract

The debate that contrasts Marxism and the work of Michel Foucault often overlooks that both projects share a political and ethical commitment. Both have moreover engaged that commitment by challenging what Marx called ‘traditional ideas’, viewing them as historically compilcit with the exercise of power. This ‘radical rupture’ with traditional ideas has been the hallmark of the critical theory project since The Communist Manifesto. By challenging traditional notions of power and language, however, Michel Foucault went further than the Marxist tradition in carrying out the critical theory project. Foucault's alternative ideas of discourse/practice and of power as ‘positive’ are moreover intricately linked in a way that has not been sufficiently appreciated. This is evident in a genealogy of Foucault's early work, where neither notion is able to take hold in the absence of the other. It only after The Archaeology of Knowledge, where Foucault rethought the relationship of language to reality, that he was able to formulate the notion of power as positive in works to come. This link should cause us to rethink our relationship to Foucault's work, of it to Marxism, and of the critical theory project to the power.     

Flexible pair-copula estimation in D-vines using bivariate penalized splines

The paper presents a new method for flexible fitting of D-vines. Pair-copulas are estimated semi-parametrically using penalized Bernstein polynomials or constant and linear B-splines, respectively, as spline bases in each knot of the D-vine throughout each level. A penalty induce smoothness of the fit while the high dimensional spline basis guarantees flexibility. To ensure uniform univariate margins of each pair-copula, linear constraints are placed on the spline coefficients and quadratic programming is used to fit the model. The amount of penalizations for each pair-copula is driven by a penalty parameter which is selected in a numerically efficient way. Simulations and practical examples accompany the presentation.     

The performativity of surveys: Teenagers’ meaning-making of the 'Health Behavior in School-aged Children Survey' in Sweden

The Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children survey contains scales intended to measure life satisfaction, mental health problems and socioeconomic status. This article takes inspiration from science and technology studies and analyse the survey as performative. It also examines subjective meaning-making through an analysis of interviews with 15-year-old teenagers. It shows how the survey enacts the subject position of an accountable teenager and how teenagers experience the survey as sending a message about how one should live. While some teenagers experience this as positive, others narrate feelings of shame. This could be interpreted as a way for them to be accountable for themselves.     

Gentrifikation in zwei Wohngebieten von KölnGentrification in two residential areas of Cologne

We examine the process of Gentrification in two residential areas of Cologne, Germany: Deutz and Mülheim. The theory underlying the study is a phase (or stage) model of Gentrification in which indicators and their values are attributed to each phase. The hypotheses derived from the model pertain to changes in the social structure, rents and the spatial distribution of social groups such as “pioneers”, “gentrifiers” and “others”. We further assume both areas to be in different phases of Gentrification.