The Continuum of Care System

Abstract

The Continuum of Care System is a Decision Support System designed to assist social workers responsible for identifying and selecting alternative living arrangements for children unable to remain in their own families. The Continuum of Care System consists of two software packages called MATCH and PROFILE. MATCH produces a rank-ordered list of prospective placement alternatives by statistically comparing an individual child to groups of children previously admitted into different residential facilities. PROFILE summarizes the characteristics and problems of children at each facility in the system.     

How Japanese Families Cope with Fragile Elderly

Coping with caring for ill, fragile elderly is taxing the families in Japan, where longevity statistics predict early in the twenty-first century it will have the highest percentage of aged in the world. Interviews with 20 families revealed that although the culture mandates families care for their elderly, many are having considerable ambivalence and conflict, and caretakers suffer in the process unless they have assumed the defense of a martyr stance. Most do not seek nursing homes but are turning to government for supportive services. The trend in Japan, in spite of tradition, is for adult children to delay taking parents into their homes until they are unable to care for themselves.     

Collaborative Data-Mining in an Adolescent Mental Health Service

Summary

As full participants in a collaborative clinical data-mining project intended to promote staff reflection and to improve services, clinicians discovered just how valuable their practice expertise was in maintaining project relevance. In this paper, they describe challenges they faced as non-experienced researchers and writers and how their practice skills enabled them to overcome these challenges. Benefits derived include: enhanced skills (in both practice and research), sensitization to previously overlooked areas of practice, and an increased sense of professionalism.     

Oiling the wheels? Flexible labour markets and the migration industry

ABSTRACT

The growing commercialisation of migration, often through a multiplicity of labour market intermediaries, is an issue of increasing academic interest. We seek to contribute to an emerging research agenda on the migration industries by exploring how one of the key actors that constitutes it, recruitment agencies, sits at the nexus between flexible labour market structures and migrant labour. Interviews with U.K. labour providers and low-wage employers form the evidence base for an analysis of the strategies developed by recruiters to derive commercial gain from connecting the so-called ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ sides of the flexible international labour market. We seek to contribute to understandings of the analytical categories within migration systems by illustrating how the migration industry interacts with other key stakeholders to structure international migration.     

A Critical Review of Chinese Ethnic Law Studies in 2014

I. Basic Theory of Ethnic Law Studies
As a mature discipline,research on the basic theory of ethnic law studies is no longer the focus of research. Nonetheless,this does not deny that it is a rese...     

大数据对中国电子政务发展的影响及应用

大数据技术作为电子政务发展的推进器,不仅给技术进步带来深刻变革,而且给政府协同和公共服务模式带来了创新性发展。大数据作为“未来的石油”,已经成为一种重要的国家战略资源,正引领着新一轮科技创新,对中国电子政务可持续快速发展具有重要影响和推动作用。利用大数据来加强顶层设计、创新体制机制、整合信息资源、分析处理数据、促进政务协同、提供决策管理、提升公共服务和确保信息安全等方面已经得到重视和应用。“用数据说话、用数据决策、用数据管理、用数据创新”已经成为提升政府治理能力的新途径。     

Strengths-Based Approach and Coping Strategies used by Parents Whose Young Children Exhibit Violent Behaviour: Collaboration Between Schools and Parents

This research study explores the strategies adopted by 60 parents of children between 3 and 9 years of age considered to have engaged in violent behaviour, within the meaning of the Safe Schools Act (Ontario Ministry of Education, Canada, 2000). This legal framework requires parents to be involved in the decisions concerning their children. Parents’ perceptions of their involvement lead them to develop coping strategies enabling them to play a more active role in such decision making. This article analyzes their perceptions according to a strengths-based approach and seeks to provide a mediation perspective to social work practice with families.

高校实施ISO9000标准的若干问题探讨

ISO9000族标准是国际标准化组织颁布的世界通用的质量管理标准。目前,国内一些高等学校开始按照ISO9000标准建立质量管理体系。电子科技大学中山学院在这种背景下,在全院范围内推行ISO9000质量管理体系。在这一过程中,产生了一些值得探讨的问题,出现了一些实际操作的难点,现提出来与大家共同探讨。     

建设节约型社会的理性思考

工业文明以来,石油危机、海啸等一系列生态危机就人类对资源的保护和利用问题敲响了警钟。为了实现人与自然的和谐、可持续发展,实现全面建设小康社会的目标,2004年初,我国政府正式提出建设节约型社会,使资源得到节约使用,环境得到保护,人民生活更加文明、健康、科学,经济与社会持续发展。建设节约型社会是可持续发展不可分割的部分,是构建和谐社会的重要保证,是中国现代化的根本出路,关系到中华民族的兴衰与长期发展,也关系到全人类的幸福与明天。本文主要研究节约型社会作为节约系统工程的评价及体系构建,以期更好地建设节约型社会。     

Clarifying the role of belief-motive explanations in multi-stakeholder realist evaluation

In realist evaluation, where researchers aim to make program theories explicit, they can encounter competing explanations as to how programs work. Managing explanatory tensions from different sources of evidence in multi-stakeholder projects can challenge external evaluators, especially when access to pertinent data, like client records, is mediated by program stakeholders. In this article, we consider two central questions: how can program stakeholder motives shape a realist evaluation project; and how might realist evaluators respond to stakeholders’ belief-motive explanations, including those about program effectiveness, based on factors such as supererogatory commitment or trying together in good faith? Drawing on our realist evaluation of a service reform initiative involving multiple agencies, we describe stakeholder motives at key phases, highlighting a need for tactics and skills that help to manage explanatory tensions. In conclusion, the relevance of stakeholders’ belief-motive explanations (‘we believe the program works’) in realist evaluation is clarified and discussed.