区域性贫困地区儿童福利服务的思路与实践——以中国儿童福利示范区项目为例

本文通过中国儿童福利示范区项目探讨了在区域性贫困地区如何建立儿童福利服务的递送体系。文章从项目背景、对于儿童福利的理解、项目设计理念以及儿童福利服务体系的内容设计安排几个方面,以实际的项目运行为依托,清晰地描述了区域性贫困地区儿童福利服务递送体系在岗位设置、人员培训、硬件配套和管理制度方面的思路。     

High School Students' Contact with and Attitudes towards Persons with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities in Kuwait

Abstract

This study aims to investigate demographic variables, contact-related correlates, and attitudes towards persons with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) among Kuwaiti high school students (N = 700). The study focuses on variables that few studies have investigated and attempts to raise awareness among social workers to advocate for the inclusion of people with IDD and reform social policy that would improve the inclusion in society. The adapted Mental Retardation Attitude Inventory—Revised (MRAI-R) was used. A set of demographic variables and known predictors of attitudes to people with IDD were tested in multivariate analyses. Except for age, differences in global attitudes were found to be a function of gender, knowing persons with IDD, intimacy, frequency of contact, intensity of contact, and knowledge of IDD. Higher levels of Contact-Intensity and higher age were associated with more positive attitudes on the Integration–Segregation, Social Distance, Private Rights, and Subtle Derogatory Beliefs subscales. These findings support the development of legislation aimed at promoting successful inclusion that contributes to positive attitudes of students towards a person with IDD.     

A Faith-Based Alternative Youth Education Program

Abstract

Community-based and faith-based programs are on-going partners in the social welfare mix which characterizes U.S. welfare provision. In the face of calls for more rigorous research on the capacity and impact of faith-based and community-based programs which use public funds, the research community must gain sophistication in addressing methodological issues inherent in participatory designs for the study of such programs. This article describes concerns which arose while implementing participatory research during a federally-funded, intensive 10-month long case study of a faith-based alternative education program for at risk youth. The project was funded through the Department of Health and Humans Services, Administration for Children and Family. The challenges to data collection are presented and suggestions for doing participatory research in similar settings are discussed.     

Women in Substance Use Treatment

Abstract

The objective of this study was to examine the differences between women with children in substance use treatment who are involved in Child Protective Services (CPS+) and those who are not involved (CPS-). Using a sample of all alcohol and other drug (AOD) clients (N = 6,023) receiving substance use treatment over a three-year period (1997-99), the study found that CPS+ women were more likely to be younger, have more children, have been arrested less often, be mandated to receive treatment, to have an unsatisfactory exit status or be transferred to another treatment program at discharge. CPS+ women were also more likely to have attended outpatient or day treatment for the AOD treatment. This study points out that there may be specific risk factors in place for a subgroup of women with children in AOD treatment.     

The intersection of employment and care: evidence from a UK case study

Working carers are a key focus of UK policies on health and social care and employment. Complementing national and European evidence, this paper presents a local case study of working carers. It draws on data from a county-wide survey containing a module on caring. Data were primarily categorical and were analysed using SPSS. Three quarters of all carers who responded to the survey were of working age: two thirds were employed and one third had been employed previously. The majority of working carers were mid-life extra-resident women. Over half of cared for relatives were elderly parents/in law; ‘physical illness’ was the primary cause of dependency. A tenth provided intensive care and half reported that caring adversely affected their health. Both were triggers for leaving employment. Two thirds of households received input from services and/or friends/family; being a co-resident carer appeared to mitigate against service allocation. Four issues were identified as pivotal to facilitating employment: access to advice and information, the availability of a matrix of affordable good-quality social-care services, ‘joined up’ needs assessment of the carer and cared for person, and employers identifying carers in their workforce. Europe's ageing profile underscores the study's timeliness.     

数字校园数据共享与交换的实现方式的讨论

文章应用Web Services技术、SOAP协议(simple object access protocol)和XML语言(Extensible Markup Language,可扩展标记语言),并参考借鉴了基于中间件技术中的异构数据共享与交换方案和Web Service异构数据共享与交换方案中的设计思想与部分成熟技术进行架构,结合"数字校园"过程中的实际需求与特点设计和构建了统一数据库平台。然后提出了在统一数据库平台下如何实现数据共享和交换的一些方法。     

Child global rating scales: Selecting a measure of client functioning in a large mental health system

The Global Assessment Scale for Children (GAS-Children) and the Children's Impairment Scale (CIS) were examined for inter-rater reliability, discrimination of outpatients from inpatients, and clinician acceptance. Forty-four clinicians used the two scales to rate 146 recently admitted children and adolescents in eight mental health programs. An additional study assessed the inter-rater reliability of the two scales compared with the Connors Parent-Teacher Questionnaire and the correlation of the GAS-Children with both the Connors Parents Questionnaire and Achenbach's Child Behavior Checklist. The GAS-Children showed better interrater agreement than any of the four subscales of the CIS, although the sum of the CIS subscales also showed adequate inter-rater reliability. Among adolescents, the GAS-Children correlated highly with the adult GAS, but the scales showed different mean values. Clinicians slightly preferred the GAS-Children over the CIS. To assess comparability of scale usage across sites, clinicians rated six case vignettes. Inpatient clinicians rated the vignettes as more dysfunctional than did their outpatient counterparts. Bias-adjusted scores still discriminated outpatient from inpatient children. Nevertheless, these rater biases should make evaluators cautious about comparing functioning scores across programs, even when the rating scale is ostensibly the same.     

Youth service caseworkers: Social and legal factors affecting their recommendation to place youths in secure care facilities

This study examines the effects of social and legal variables on youth service caseworkers' recommendation to place youths in a secure care setting. While the findings of this study indicate that caseworkers' recommendation to place youths in such a facility is primarily influenced by their juvenile delinquency or legal background characteristics, the social variable “family composition” has a significant impact on the recommendation. This suggests that caseworkers view single-parent families as less capable than two-parent families of managing youths' serious delinquency problems and, therefore, are more likely to recommend youths from single-parent families for secure care placement consideration. The fact that legal variables are the strongest predictors of secure care decision outcomes indicates that objective criteria are being used to determine which youths to consider for secure care placement. Also, it is found that the more offenses that are committed the more likely that one will be a violent offense. This finding implies that the issue of serious juvenile delinquency should be examined and dealt with from a broad juvenile justice perspective directed at prevention as opposed to a limited focus on only the secure care process.     

Toward overcoming problems in evaluation research: A beginning perspective on power

An information feedback model and an ideology of evaluation is posed. The authors' experiences in actually doing evaluation research are then contrasted with the model and ideology. Suggestions are made for closing the gap between reality and the model, primarily by altering the structural constraints that present obstacles to achieving the model. The authors assume that impact on policy is the appropriate criterion for the success of an evlauation, and they conclude that political constraints are primary in preventing evaluation research from having this impact. It is proposed that evaluators need to develop more explicitly political ways of acquiring power of their own in order to maximize such impact. Some ways social researchers might conceptualize and construct an appropriate base of power are considered.     

Closed Sequential and Multistage Inference on Binary Responses With or Without Replacement

Logistic regression is used by practitioners and researchers in many fields, but is undoubtedly used most frequently in medical and biostatistical applications. Maximum likelihood is generally the estimation method of choice, but we show that maximum likelihood can produce very poor results under certain conditions. Specifically, the poor performance of maximum likelihood in the case of rare events is known and we review research on this topic. We primarily examine the performance of maximum likelihood in the presence of near separation, which has apparently not been studied. Exact logistic regression is the logical alternative to maximum likelihood. We offer a comparison of the two methods of estimation.