Long-term care in Spain: Difficulties in professionalizing services

The aim of this article is to analyze the difficulties in professionalizing the long-term care system in Spain. Since 2006, the new Spanish law has recognized care as a subjective right, and regulations are being designed to create a framework for its professionalization. Nowadays, family remains the most important group of providers who care for their elders, and women remain the main informal caregivers. Why do families resist using public long-term care services and professional carers included in the new law? The hypothesis highlights sociocultural factors as an obstacle to professionalization of long-term care services in addition to political and economic factors. The results show qualitative data about expectations, preferences, and discourses that women caregivers have in relation to their responsibility. The empirical material includes 25 interviews with different profiles of caregivers and six focus groups with family caregivers. The article suggests that the Spanish ideal of care is a problem for the professionalization of services because the family remains as the main provider of care—without specific skills, knowledge, and abilities.     

Humanitarian response and stress in Kenya: gendered problems and their implications

ABSTRACT

Stress-related conditions such as burnout and post-traumatic stress disorder are a growing concern in the humanitarian sector. Aid workers themselves report not only that mental health problems are common, but that the support they receive from their employers is insufficient. Problematically, the experience of the international aid worker – particularly those who are white and from the global North – is often foregrounded in explaining what constitutes stress and related mental health problems. This indicates a wider problem of what is required of ‘the perfect humanitarian’ – a personality that is gendered and racialised – and how this influences the different experiences and treatment of national and international staff from aid agencies. This article explores the organisational culture and working conditions of humanitarian settings and their impact on the mental health and well-being of staff. It argues that there is a structural dimension to stress that is less to do with external security threats and more to do with the specific infrastructure, policies, and practices of humanitarian operations, with implications for aid workers which cut across dimensions of race, gender, and nationality.     

Grandparental childcare in Australia: gender differences in the correlates of providing regular grandparental care while parents work

Grandparents’ regular care for children while parents work has been mostly studied from the parental perspective. This paper focuses on the grandparents. Using the Australian Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey 2006 (N = 7672) we investigate regular-caring grandparents’ demographic characteristics, which childcare activities they undertake, and how regular childcare provision relates to their time in other activities, subjective time pressure and satisfaction. Results indicate the correlates and nature of regular care differ by gender. Regular and non-regular-caring grandmothers’ relative time allocation to different childcare tasks barely differs, while regular-caring grandfathers’ care includes a much higher proportion of active care and travel than non-regular-caring grandfathers’. Regular care provision is associated with less leisure than non-regular-caring counterparts for both genders, but with only grandmothers’ housework, personal care and sleep time. Providing regular care doubles the likelihood of grandmothers reporting high subjective time pressure compared to non-regular-caring grandmothers; there is no association between regular care and time pressure for grandfathers. We conclude that in taking on regular care, grandparents echo the gender patterns found among parents, namely that it is women who are disproportionately impacted by meeting family care needs.     

Whither practice-near research in the modernization programme? Policy blunders in children's services

In this article, we lament the effects of practice-distant research and associated policy initiatives on contemporary children's services in England. In the last decade, as a result of high profile inquiries into non-accidental child deaths, statutory children's social care services in the UK have been subject to a wide-reaching ‘modernization’ programme. We studied decision-making in the high blame environment of local authority children's services. Our research sought to examine the relationship between performance management and the impact of anticipated blame within the decision-making practices of those providing, supervising and managing these services. We show that systems and technologies can be developed which both assist the users in their daily work and achieve desired organizational goals, but without an ethnographically informed, practice-near approach, unsafe work regimes and practices can ensue.     

Searching for self in a world of labels

Searching for Self is a performance poetry piece that demonstrates the difficulties of identity construction in contemporary life. The author challenges the ‘self’ and ‘other’ dichotomy, and in so doing she attempts to reduce the distance between the ‘client’ and ‘expert’; the researcher and researched; the service provider and service user; and theory and practice. The poems are linked to the authors’ experiences of being labeled with a disability.     

学习迁移的系统理论:PPEE理论模型的建构和意义

学习是人类社会永恒的主题。为了更好地利用过去的经验，增强学习效果，个人和组织进行学习迁移具有重要意义。学习迁移是指将在以往通过学习或解决问题所获得的经验，用于解决之后所遇到的问题。本文力图建立系统的学习迁移理论，研究人、问题、环境的因素对于学习迁移的影响。本文采用理论推导的研究方法，在前人研究的基础上，提出相应的理论模型。本文运用系统的观点，构建了学习迁移的PPEE理论模型，认为人的因素、问题的因素、人和问题的交互作用、以及环境的调节作用，会共同影响学习迁移的效果。本理论主要从五个方面论述学习迁移的机制。首先，将人的因素按照不同层面划分为后端基本能力、中端心理过程、前端知识结构，讨论了其各自对学习迁移效果的直接影响。其次，将问题的因素划分为形象相似性和抽象相似性，并根据这两个维度构建了四种问题间关系类型，并探究了其与学习迁移效果之间的关系。第三，同时考虑人的因素和问题的因素，研究了二者之间的互动对于学习迁移效果的影响。第四，将环境因素划分为时间紧迫性和空间重要性两个维度，探讨了人和环境，以及问题和环境之间的互动对学习迁移效果的影响。第五，基于系统整体的方面，研究人、问题、环境三者之间的互动对学习迁移效果的交互影响。本文还认为，该模型不仅适用于个人，也同样适用于团队、组织、地区、甚至国家和社会等各个层面，影响各个层面主体的学习迁移。本文最后总结了研究的理论和实践贡献，并提出了未来研究课题。本文对丰富学习理论、特别是学习迁移理论，以及推动教育和管理实践的发展进步具有重要的意义。     

Demand for gambling: development and assessment of a gambling purchase task

Self-report purchase tasks are a novel approach examining the reinforcing value of addictive behaviour relative to increasing monetary costs required to access the addictive behaviour (i.e. demand). These measures reveal a positive relationship between the indices of demand and addiction problem severity and can elucidate factors associated with motivation for substance use. Gambling is an addictive behaviour that has not been examined using this paradigm. This study seeks to adapt and examine the purchase task for gambling behaviour. A gambling purchase task was devised that asked individuals how often per month they would gamble at various cover charges. Participants were 73 adults from the community with either gambling disorder (n = 28) or alcohol use disorder (n = 24) or were a healthy control (n = 21). Both the alcohol and gambling purchase tasks were administered. Results demonstrate discriminant validity of the gambling purchase task, as individuals with gambling disorder have significantly greater demand for accessing gambling than other groups. The alcohol purchase task also evidenced discriminant validity in that individuals with alcohol use disorder have significantly greater demand for alcohol than other groups. These findings support the use of the gambling purchase task to assess the demand for gambling.     

冯铿寻求女性解放道路的心路历程

潮籍革命女作家冯铿的创作始终贯穿着一条关注女性命运、寻求女性解放道路的主线。冯铿的作品序列展示了她寻求女性解放道路的心路历程,从早期强烈呼吁社会为正在遭受苦难的女性"快谋救护的法子",到批判像"一团肉"似的所谓的"时代女性",指明女性"最后的出路"是参加革命,认为真正的新女性是"把自己是女人这一回事忘掉干净"的革命女性。     

Consultancy to a Care Home: The Influences of Family and Gender Roles,and of Race and Colonialism

This paper is an account and critical analysis of the psychodynamic and systemic consultancy that the author provided to a care home (and the voluntary organisation running it) over a period of about 16 months. In addition two emergent, linked themes are identified and discussed: family and gender roles in care homes, and racism and colonialism. Care homes are of course part of the society in which they exist and of which they are a product. This means that all the overt and covert psychological and social pressures, defences and trends that occur in the wider society, for individuals, families, groups and communities are also to be found in care homes and in the organisations that run them. They are not isolated from these forces, indeed, it is argued in this paper, the forces are intensified in the ‘hot house’ environment of a care home and, if ignored, avoided and denied, result in the exploitation, abuse and neglect of both staff and residents.     

魔幻现实主义在旅游环境设计中的运用

魔幻现实主义设计手法在旅游环境设计中具有广泛的运用空间。文章基于魔幻现实主义概念与特点,多视角地分析了魔幻现实主义作为一种"新现实主义"在旅游环境设计中的独特价值。