The History Mystery

Two social studies methods instructors created an assignment that places teacher candidates in leadership roles in partnerships with community organizations to plan and implement projects to increase student learning. This article outlines the project requirements, past project results, and student reflections on the collaborative effort. It provides evidence of the success and effectiveness of collaborative projects at increasing student learning, providing opportunities for leadership, and challenging students to become involved in community issues.     

It Attacked My Change: An Exploratory Study with Young Adults on the Impact of Divorce and Their Adjustment Processes During Adolescence

Semistructured interviews were conducted with 2 female students, 21 and 24 years old. The participants experienced parental divorce during early adolescence (12 years old). This research examined the participants’ own views on the impact of parental divorce and their adjustment processes. The majority of participants’ narratives indicated that they had experienced negative effects of parental divorce. Results suggested that their adjustment was a long process in which mothers, peers, and psychologists had an important role in their coping process. Divorce and associated events were found to have a direct impact on participants’ development of identity, emotions, intimate relationships, father–child relationships, and views about forming their own families. The results were discussed in relation to the previous literature. Additionally, areas for psychotherapeutic emphasis are presented.     

Mental Health Practitioners' Views of the Families of Individuals With Schizophrenia and Barriers to Collaboration: A Mixed Methods Study

Family involvement has been identified as a best practice in the treatment of schizophrenia. Yet studies show a small number of families of individuals with schizophrenia are involved in treatment. In this mixed method study, community mental health practitioners from different disciplines responded to a quantitative survey (N = 88), a qualitative structured question guide (N = 8), and open-ended questions (N = 43) that explored their views of families of individuals with schizophrenia and barriers to collaboration with them. Practitioners did not blame the family for causing their family member's schizophrenia. Barriers to collaboration were reported in three main areas: (a) time/workload barriers, (b) agency/system barriers, and (c) family barriers, while at the same time recognizing family collaboration as effective practice and reporting a desire to engage more families in the treatment process. Younger practitioners viewed organizational factors as more significant barriers to collaboration. Substance use factors emerged as a theme as a barrier to collaboration.     

Displacement,caregiving, and the ecological system of youth in foster care: a theoretical perspective

Children involved in the child welfare (i.e., foster care) system are at a greater risk for numerous negative outcomes in adolescence and adulthood (e.g., lower educational attainment, higher risk for a criminal record). For children in foster care who experience placement disruption (i.e., removed from a foster home and placed in another nonpermanent placement), the risks significantly increase. Informed by the ecological systems model, the authors propose a theoretical perspective to explain the unique aspects of a foster child’s development and discuss how this framework informs child welfare practice and intervention for foster children at risk for placement disruption. This perspective has the potential to provide a framework that has implications for foster caregivers and child welfare professionals and to inform future policies.     

Using family circles to increase competency and confidence in social work

The family circle instrument is a self-constructed diagram that has been used by family physicians for more than 40 years to gather and assess information about patients’ family connections and relationships. Even though healthcare professionals have found the family circle instrument to be effective and easy to administer, the literature is silent on social workers’ use of this instrument to engage and assess individuals and families. This article describes the effectiveness of the family circle interviewing method in increasing the confidence and skill of graduate social work students in assessing families. The author also presents the results of an evaluative study that examined graduate social work students’ use of the family circle instrument. Graduate social work students received instruction on how to administer the family circle interview as a method of engaging and assessing families from a family systems perspective. Thus, a primary focus of this article is upon how using the family circle interview can promote competency and confidence among students to engage and assess families. A majority of the students that completed family circle instruction felt the instrument helped them understand families from a systems perspective and increased their confidence in their ability to assess families.     

The Extent and Rate of Divorce in Plateau State,Nigeria 1980 to 1988

The major issue for this research was to investigate the extent and rate of divorce, its causes and attitudes toward divorce laws. This study surveyed 3500 people from the selected local government areas. The findings show high divorce rate, and 71.2% of the husbands had their divorce in courts as opposed lo 76.6% of the wives who had their marriages annulled in courts. Adultery ranked the highest among the reasons for divorce, while the wives were more likely than their husbands to have negative attitudes toward divorce laws because they are always the victims of divorce not protected by the law.     

Geographic Information Systems and Human Services

Geographic Information Systems (GISs) are pictorial representations of information and are quite useful in understanding social welfare problems and showing social work clients in their environment. This paper presents GIS as a potential tool for social work research, planning, management, and administration. It includes sections defining GID, explaining the possibilties for GIS use in human services, presenting a case study using geographic information, advising potential GIS users, and discussing the implications for social work education.     

Towards Interdisciplinary Community Collaboration and Development

SUMMARY

This article looks at the conceptualization and practice of interdisciplinary community collaboration and development (ICCD) in Israel and the US. It is based on the work of two interdisciplinary professional groups which were initiated by social workers—one in Israel and one in the US. This article presents a mapping of key issues and concepts, including distinguishing between mono-, multi-, and inter-, trans-disciplinary and inter-perspectives. The article addresses the issues of multiple professional identities, identification of a common core knowledge base and skills among disciplinary specializations for community development practice, and an understanding of inter-organizational perspectives. A qualitative methodology was used to conduct a content analysis of data from dialogues among professional practitioners in the Israeli and the US groups. Despite differences in the purpose, frequency and intensity of the two forums, there is an underlying belief in the importance of these discussions and in the commitment to interdisciplinary practice. Both groups believe that multiple types of expertise are needed, alongside new models of both inter-organizational and interdisciplinary relationships as well as professional-community interactions. Recommendations include the need for further examination of interdisciplinary community collaboration and development.     

Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Using Dynamic Systems Theory to Understand “Stress and Coping” and “Trauma and Resilience”

Although research is beginning to capture the complex interactions of biopsychosocial variables operating within experiences of stressors and trauma, the bodies of research have remained largely separate and limited. This study describes a scaffold of factors and pathways based on principles from dynamic systems theories (DST) to organize the literatures on stress and coping and trauma and resilience. As a process model, DST provides the language to understand both impact and response to stressors and trauma: not as a list of symptoms but as interactive processes within persons and between persons and their surroundings.     

Whole Family Theraplay: Integrating Family Systems Theory and Theraplay to Treat Adoptive Families

This article regarding the effectiveness of Theraplay for the clinical treatment of adoptive families both outlines a model for integrating family systems theory with Theraplay to create a new approach entitled Whole Family Theraplay (WFT), as well as provides a preliminary report of a pilot study demonstrating the efficacy of that model. WFT integrates Theraplay with family systems approaches (Structural and Experiential Family Therapies) to treat parents and all the siblings within adoptive families. The findings indicate that WFT treatment may lead to statistically significant benefits in regard to family communication, adults’ interpersonal relationships, and children's overall behavioral functioning.