Social entrepreneurship as an employment pathway for people with disabilities: exploring political–economic and socio-cultural factors

The current economic climate demands more innovative approaches to increasing labor market participation for people with disabilities. Social entrepreneurship (SE) offers one alternative employment pathway. However, little is known about the broader factors influencing SE for people with disabilities. Using empirical data from focus groups comprised of social entrepreneurs with disabilities and interviews with key stakeholders working in the fields of policy, disability, and business, this research frames its analysis in the intersection of disability studies and entrepreneurship to explore which factors influence the potential for SE to provide equal participation opportunities for people with disabilities in the labor market. Findings suggest that further consideration of political–economic and socio-cultural factors is needed if we are to better understand the potential of SE for people with disabilities.     

An argument for love in intercultural education for teacher education

This paper proposes rethinking intercultural education in teacher education, arguing that any discussion of student teachers’ intercultural education should be connected more explicitly to a theoretical conceptualisation of love. The first part of the paper focuses on identifying discursive boundaries in engaging with intercultural education in teacher education. It is argued that if we are to develop intercultural education, we need to consciously move away from some discourses in teacher education, namely instrumentalism, performance orientation, emotionlessness and seeing the relationship between teacher and learner as static. The second half of the paper develops a theoretical alternative by engaging with the concept of love as a basis for intercultural education in pursuing an alternative to the instrumentalist, performance-based, non-emotional fixed-relationship ethos of intercultural education in teacher education.     

Families,Not Parents,Differ: Development of Communication in Finnish Infants

This longitudinal study on Finnish families was conducted to identify developmental differences in family‐level communication among mothers, fathers, and their infants during the second half of the infant's first year, and associations with infants' later language and communicative skills. We examined coregulated communication of parent‐infant dyads during 5‐min laboratory play sessions at 7 and 11 months. Few differences in mutually regulated communicative exchanges emerged between maternal and paternal dyads, and few developmental changes were found across the whole sample. Families with different communication profiles were identified, and changes rather than stability characterized communicative development at the family level. The family‐level differences at 7 months predicted variation in children's language and communicative skills at 14 months.     

The deteriorating work-related well-being among statutory social workers in a rigorous economic context

This article examines the connection between economic pressures and impaired well-being at work experienced by Finnish statutory social workers. The survey data were collected during the years 2011–2012. The respondents (N = 817) were social workers in statutory social services. The overall response rate was 46.5 and nearly 60% of all Finnish municipalities participated in the study. This study affirms the worrying state of the well-being at work of statutory social workers. Up to 43% of the respondents reported worsening of their work-related well-being during the past two years. On average, they had experienced impaired work-related well-being at least once a month. Nearly 18% reported experiencing this at least a few times a week or even daily. According to the respondents, economic pressures had increased while the opportunities to practice ethically responsible social work had decreased. Increasing demands for efficiency predicted not only impaired work-related well-being directly, but also through decreasing opportunities to do ethically responsible social work. The role of the budget constraints in predicting impaired well-being became meaningful when these constraints were connected to decreasing opportunities to do ethically responsible social work.     

Correlates of Sexual Abuse in a Sample of Adolescent Girls Admitted to Psychiatric Inpatient Care

We examined correlations of child sexual abuse among 300 adolescent girls in psychiatric inpatient treatment. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.)-based psychiatric diagnoses were obtained from the Schedule for Affective Disorder and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children—Present and Lifetime and from data on family and behavioral characteristics from the European Addiction Severity Index (EuropASI). A total of 79 girls (26.3%) had experienced child sexual abuse during their lifetime. Child sexual abuse was associated with an adolescent’s home environment, sibling status, smoking, posttraumatic stress disorder diagnosis, self-mutilating behavior, and suicidal behavior. At least 62% of the perpetrators were acquaintances of the victims. Correlates of child sexual abuse can be used to identify child sexual abuse victims and persons at heightened risk for child sexual abuse.     

Moral distress among social workers: The role of insufficient resources

The present study examined moral distress among Finnish social workers and the role of perceived resource insufficiencies in explaining it. The aim was to shed light on this understudied phenomenon in the field of social welfare. The study focused on work‐related moral distress, defined as impaired wellbeing that is connected to the continual inability to implement actions that one considers morally appropriate. The survey data were collected with an electronic questionnaire between the years 2011 and 2012. The respondents (n = 817) were social workers in the public social welfare services and the overall response rate was 46.5 per cent. Nearly 11 per cent of the respondents reported experiencing moral distress and perceived resource insufficiencies strongly explained this experience. Moreover, social workers with moral distress reported that they were less willing to continue in their post, were more frequently on sick leave and had positive work‐related experiences less often than their colleagues who did not experience moral distress. Key Practitioner Message: ● The concept of moral distress is useful in describing the experiences of social welfare workers when they are unable to practise their profession according to their moral code and the emotional burden related to this inability; ● Perceived resource insufficiencies are strongly associated with experiences of moral distress among frontline social workers; ● Social workers experiencing moral distress are less willing to continue in their work, take sick leave more often and less frequently have positive experiences related to their work.     

Accountability as a Warrant for Trust: An Experiment on Sanctions and Justifications in a Trust Game

Accountability is present in many types of social relations; for example, the accountability of elected representatives to voters is the key characteristic of representative democracy. We distinguish between two institutional mechanisms of accountability, i.e., opportunity to punish and requirement of a justification, and examine the separate and combined effects of these mechanisms on individual behavior. For this purpose, we designed a decision-making experiment where subjects engage in a three-player trust game with two senders and one responder. We ask whether holding the responder accountable increases senders’ and responders’ contributions in a trust game. When restricting the analysis to the first round, the requirement of justification seems to have a positive impact on senders’ contributions. When the game is played repeatedly, the experience of previous rounds dominates the results and significant treatment effects are no longer seen. We also find that responders tend to justify their choices in terms of reciprocity, which is in line with observed behavior. Moreover, the treatment combining punishment and justification hinders justifications that appeal to pure self-interest.

     

Co-research interview—collaborative way to learn from experience

Co-research interview developed by Tom Andersen and colleagues is a collaborative way of evaluating therapeutic processes that value the experiences of both clients and professionals. This article describes our experiences and thoughts on this interview method. We present the interview structure and give suggestions on how to conduct the interview. We also present applications of the interview method and engage in a dialogue among ourselves about our experiences with these interviews.