No wonder social workers feel uncomfortable in court

The present article assesses the adversary systemper se and asks the question, Is there any place for courtroom antics and histrionics in cases involving children? Social workers are uncomfortable before the august body of thecourt, not because of any lack of education or knowledge on their part but because of the nature of the adversary process itself.     

Poor children1

This article explores trends in child poverty in the UK since 1979 and examines the extent to which the government is making progress in pursuit of its objective to abolish child poverty in 20 years. The spatial distribution of child poverty is examined by country, local authority and ward. The characteristics of households containing poor children are presented and research on the dynamics of child poverty reviewed. Child poverty in the UK trebled during the 1980s and has only just begun to fall slowly. Child poverty is heavily spatially concentrated and the risks of child poverty are concentrated in certain types of household. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comparing Networks Across Space and Time, Size and Species

We describe and illustrate methodology for comparing networks from diverse settings. Our empirical base consists of 42 networks from four kinds of species (humans, nonhuman primates, nonprimate mammals, and birds) and covering distinct types of relations such as influence, grooming, and agonistic encounters. The general problem is to determine whether networks are similarly structured despite their surface differences. The methodology we propose is generally applicable to the characterization and comparison of network–level social structures across multiple settings, such as different organizations, communities, or social groups, and to the examination of sources of variability in network structure. We first fit a p^* model (Wasserman and Pattison 1996) to each network to obtain estimates for effects of six structural properties on the probability of the graph. We then calculate predicted tie probabilities for each network, using both its own parameter estimates and the estimates from every other network in the collection. Comparison is based on the similarity between sets of predicted tie probabilities. We then use correspondence analysis to represent the similarities among all 42 networks and interpret the resulting configuration using information about the species and relations involved. Results show that similarities among the networks are due more to the kind of relation than to the kind of animal.     

English Language Proficiency of Immigrants and Refugees in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area

Studies of the determinants of English language ability have generally focused on the largest immigrant groups in the United States. Much less is known about smaller, but significant regional concentrations of immigrants and refugees. This article presents data on four very distinct and understudied groups: Russians, Somalis, Hmong, and Mexicans in the Midwest. We found large differences in English language proficiency across the different national origin groups, even after controlling for background variables. These differences were not attributable to refugee status or to linguistic distance from English. Being Somali, migrating to the United States at a young age and having a college diploma were the best predictors of both spoken and written proficiency. The returns to higher education were particularly noteworthy — respondents with college diplomas were more than 29 times more likely than non‐high school graduates to speak English well, and more than 20 times as likely to read well. Women appear to have benefited more than men from completing college in terms of spoken English proficiency since the male‐female gap narrows among the highly educated. Length of time in the United States was a good predictor of whether an individual speaks English at home, regardless of age of entry to the country.     

'The Tribunal was the most stressful thing: more stressful than my son's diagnosis or behaviour': the experiences of families who go to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (SENDisT)

It is more than 10 years since the Special Educational Needs Tribunal was established in 1994 as an independent panel which arbitrates in disputes between parents of children with the label special educational needs and Local Education Authorities (LEAs) in England. In 2002 the Tribunal began hearing claims for disability discrimination and was re-named the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (SENDisT). Since 1994 over 20,000 appeals have been registered. This article, which forms part of my ongoing Ph.D. thesis 'Parents as advocates: the experience of parents who register an appeal with SENDisT', offers an analysis of parents' Tribunal stories. Here, the key question is what affect the process of going to SENDisT has on the social, emotional and financial well-being of the family. Through a process of narrative inquiry the aim is to foreground parents' unheard stories and to reveal their 'hidden' experiences.     

Public Meetings and Risk Amplification: A Longitudinal Study

This article offers longitudinal data tracking people who did and did not attend a series of public meetings in an upstate New York rural community grappling with the expansion of an existing solid waste landfill and remediation of an adjacent inactive hazardous waste site. Before and after the public meetings, mailed questionnaires measured risk perceptions and perceived credibility of risk managers (here, the state government agencies and the responsible industry) conducting the meetings. Respondents at each measurement point included meeting attendees and nonattendees, with some fluctuation over time when attendees at one measurement point were nonattendees at the next and vice versa. The results from the first survey indicate that following the first two public meetings, attendees perceived greater risks from the waste sites than did nonattendees; attendees also perceived the risk managers as less credible. After the third public meeting, the results showed that attendees' risk perceptions remained steady; however, perceptions of government agency credibility significantly decreased. After the fourth public meeting, the survey found that attendees' risk perceptions were again not significantly different, whereas perceptions of government agency credibility increased significantly. The industry's credibility also increased, though only among attendees who had attended the most recent public meeting, not among attendees who had attended both the third and fourth public meetings. For nonattendees, risk perceptions and credibility ratings did not change. The discussion examines how distinctive characteristics of communication at each public meeting may have resulted in different effects and proposes hypotheses for future research.     

Staying strong: gender ideologies among African-American adolescents and the implications for HIV/STI prevention

This paper explores adolescents' definitions of what it means to be a man and a woman, the psycho-social context surrounding the formation of gender ideologies and their relationship to HIV/STI prevention. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with fifty African-American adolescents living in Baltimore, Maryland. Female gender ideologies included economic independence, emotional strength and caretaking. Male gender ideologies emphasized financial responsibility, toughness and sexual prowess. Findings suggest that stronger adherence to male gender ideologies related to toughness and sexual prowess is influenced by male participants' perceived inability to fulfill their primary gender role as economic providers and the importance of gaining approval from male peers in the absence of adult male role models. Stronger adherence to female gender ideologies related to emotional strength and caretaking may be linked to a heightened desire for male intimacy and tolerance of male sexual risk behavior. Implications of the gender ideologies documented and their commonalities are discussed in terms of HIV/STI prevention.     

Adolescent self-mutilation: diagnosis & treatment

Self-mutilation is complicated and difficult to diagnose. Its incidence among adolescents has increased during the past 10 years. Most mental health professionals discover that the behavior has been part of patients' lives long before their initial visit and that patients have become very good at hiding their behavior. The literature on self-mutilation is increasing, but newer statistics, specifically about cutting and picking behaviors, need to be assessed. The disorder often co-exists with another disorder that requires psychotropic medications, the administration of which should be managed by psychiatric clinicians who specialize in children and adolescents. A multidisciplinary team is necessary to achieve the best outcomes.     

The effect of a novel ADL-based training program on performance of activities of daily living and physical fitness

The purpose of this study was to determine the degree to which a novel training program based on activities of daily living (ADL) would affect performance of ADLs, as well as the fitness of older adults. Fourteen individuals (mean age 82 years) took part in a 10-week control period followed by a 10-week ADL-based training program. Pre- and posttests included the Physical Performance Test (PPT), the Physical Functional Performance-10 (PFP-10), and the Senior Fitness Test (SFT). After the training period, improvements ranging from 7% to 33% (p<.05) were seen on the PPT and PFP-10 and on three items of the SFT. After conversion to standard scores, the magnitude of change in the PPT and the PFP10 was significantly greater (p<.05) than the magnitude of change in the SFT. These data support the idea that this novel ADL-based training program was able to facilitate improved performance of ADLs, as well as select measures of fitness among older adults.