From the Mouths of Mothers: Can Drama Facilitate Reflective Learning for Social Workers?

This article explores and evaluates a cross-disciplinary small-scale project using applied theatre in social work education. The aim was to provide an ‘Affective Encounter’ where students could practice empathic engagement, understanding of the needs of children who have been sexually abused and their protective parents/carers and engage in the complexities of working with family members who may be resistant. The workshop took place five times over a period of three years and was attended by children and families social workers on a one year post-qualifying graduate diploma course. While the use of verbatim theatre does not offer a guarantee of factual truth, it provided the students with some performed moments of personal testimony which was taken word-for-word from mothers whose children had been sexually abused. This allowed the social workers to hear the marginalised narratives of the protective mothers and to practice without a negative impact on the service user. The evaluation identified from self-report the development of emotional and practical skills and knowledge of available resources. This paper focuses on the emotional skills reported and two emerging themes are discussed: learning for humane practice, and the use of this pedagogical approach to encourage affective reflection.     

ADAPTING THE MODEL: THERAPEUTIC WORK WITH CHILDREN FROM ARMY FAMILIES

This paper describes the development of a specialised therapeutic service for parents and their young children in an inner city social services family centre. The Under five's counselling service, based on the Tavistock Model, offers brief psychoanalytic interventions to parents who are worried about their young child's development e.g. crying, eating, persistent crying etc. The premise behind setting up such a service was to provide therapeutic intervention to the parent-child relationship at the earliest possible stage, preventing further ongoing difficulties. The paper draws upon observations and interventions with families I have seen in the first year the service was opened. Particular themes which emerged in the work with these families will be highlighted. In particular a link is made between early childhood difficulties and unresolved loss in the mother's lives. Furthermore, the impact of the service upon the rest of the social services family support services is commented upon.     

Lesbian-Headed Stepfamilies

Abstract

This paper examines the lesbian stepfamily. It considers the family structure, parenting roles, gender composition of the couple, the distribution of family labor, and the impact of familial and community support. It discusses some of the challenges facing lesbian-headed stepfamilies, their strengths, capacities and competencies, and the strategies these families use for coping with stigma and intolerance. The paper concludes with implications for policy and practice with lesbian stepfamilies.     

Using power transformations when approximating quantiles

Estimators are obtained tor quantiles of survival distributions. This is accomplished by approximating Lritr distribution of the transtorrneri data, where the transformation used is that of Box and Cox (1964). The normal approximation as in Box and Cox and, in addition, the extreme value approximation are considered. More generally, to use the methods given, the approximating distribution must come from a location-scale family. For some commonly used survival random variables T the performance of the above approximations are evaluated in terms of the ratio of the true quantiles of T to the estimated one, in the long run. This performance is also evaluated for lower quantiles using simulated lognormai, Weibull and gamma data. Several examples are given to illustrate the methodology herein, including one with actual data.     

Women's Work in the Home

No abstract available for this article.     

CHAPTER 12: Services to Families During Three Stages of a Handicapped Person's Life

No abstract available for this article.     

Failure Probability Under Parameter Uncertainty

In many problems of risk analysis, failure is equivalent to the event of a random risk factor exceeding a given threshold. Failure probabilities can be controlled if a decisionmaker is able to set the threshold at an appropriate level. This abstract situation applies, for example, to environmental risks with infrastructure controls; to supply chain risks with inventory controls; and to insurance solvency risks with capital controls. However, uncertainty around the distribution of the risk factor implies that parameter error will be present and the measures taken to control failure probabilities may not be effective. We show that parameter uncertainty increases the probability (understood as expected frequency) of failures. For a large class of loss distributions, arising from increasing transformations of location‐scale families (including the log‐normal, Weibull, and Pareto distributions), the article shows that failure probabilities can be exactly calculated, as they are independent of the true (but unknown) parameters. Hence it is possible to obtain an explicit measure of the effect of parameter uncertainty on failure probability. Failure probability can be controlled in two different ways: (1) by reducing the nominal required failure probability, depending on the size of the available data set, and (2) by modifying of the distribution itself that is used to calculate the risk control. Approach (1) corresponds to a frequentist/regulatory view of probability, while approach (2) is consistent with a Bayesian/personalistic view. We furthermore show that the two approaches are consistent in achieving the required failure probability. Finally, we briefly discuss the effects of data pooling and its systemic risk implications.     

社会工作视域下的土家族族内社会支持网络特征研究

恩施土家族族内成员相同的心理与思维方式在人际关系、家庭、宗族和互助团体等社会支持网络上体现出了不同的特征,这些特征对于维系土家族地区当代社会的稳定具有重要意义。     

“The Compass of Our Life”: A Qualitative Study of Marriage and Faith Among Chinese Immigrants

Twenty highly religious Chinese Christian married couples (n = 40) were interviewed to examine how religious faith influenced their perceptions of marriage and family life. Most participants held advanced graduate degrees (14 PhD and 13 MS degrees). Their ages ranged from 28 to 66, and the number of children ranged from one to four. Grounded theory methods (including open coding and axial coding) were applied to analyze the data. Based on the interview data three emergent themes were identified: (1) Moving from atheism to theism (“God is love”), (2) changing perceptions of marriage (“Marriage is established by God”), and (3) a new priority (“Put God first”). Supporting qualitative data are presented in connection with each theme. Implications for research and practice related to Chinese immigrants’ marriage and family in the United States are discussed.     

Social Work with Homeless Mothers: A Strength-Based Solution-Focused Model

ABSTRACT

Social workers are increasingly called upon to provide services to homeless families, the vast majority of which are mother-headed. Drawing on empirical findings from the literature on homeless families and the practice literature on solution-focused and strength-based practice, this article describes and illustrates how principles and techniques of these two approaches to practice can be used to empower homeless mothers to resolve their housing crisis and restabilize their families after an episode of homelessness. Examples are given for how social workers can use these principles and techniques in various stages of the helping process.