Recruiting ethnic minority groups to evidence-based parent training. Who will come and how?

Recruiting ethnic minority groups into research is an international priority and could lead to increased knowledge of evidence-based interventions. Three different strategies for recruiting ethnic minority mothers to participate in research on the effects of parent training were compared. The strategies were recruitment via: 1) professionals from regular public services, 2) community information meetings, and 3) staff from the recruitment team. During the four-month recruitment period, 96 mothers with Somali or Pakistani origin signed up for the study. The results show that the information meetings were the most cost-effective strategy and that the highest proportion of the sample was recruited via these meetings. The three recruitment strategies were all suitable to recruit eligible families with regard to the levels of maternal parenting practices and child conduct problems required. While ethnic minority families are generally difficult to recruit for research, it seems that proactive strategies can pay off.     

From Work to Welfare: Institutional Arrangements Shaping Turkish Marriage Migrants’ Gendered Trajectories into a New Society

Using a mixed methods approach, this article examines gendered patterns of employment and of unemployment benefit uptake among Turkish marriage migrants in Denmark. The results show that men use co‐ethnic networks to access entry positions. Subsequent eligibility for unemployment benefits enable these men to search for better jobs. Women enter employment more slowly and tell of such entry being related to entering the unemployment insurance system, enabling them to periodically conform to gendered expectations as homemakers. Pakistani marriage migrants display similar patterns, indicating the centrality of this institutional arrangement in low‐skilled marriage migrants’ active adaptation to a new society.     

Leisure for youth in residential care: an important context for intervention

Compared with non-institutionalized youth, adolescents under the protection of a social welfare agency have somewhat differing patterns of free-time activity. However, little is known about the contexts in which meaningful free time activity occurs. Data on this topic were collected from a sample of adolescents (n = 20) under the care of the Child Welfare Organization (Oslo, Norway) and a comparison group of non-institutionalized adolescents (n = 27) from neighboring schools. The Experience Sampling Method was used to collect data on 1220 situations sampled during after-school hours, with particular attention given to the nature of the activity, social group, and location. The dependent variable was the respondent's desire to do that activity more or less often. Compared to the reference group, adolescents in the youth protection group were significantly more likely to say they wanted more self-involving activities and found this type of engagement within the privacy of their institution rather than in public arenas. These results are discussed in relation to the potential for intervention to enhance the leisure opportunities of institutionalized youth.     

‘What Troubled Children Need’ Constructions of Everyday Life in Residential Care

This article argues that key values of child protection work are not the appropriate point of departure for contemplating the welfare of children in professional care. Central values, such as ‘comfort’, ‘recognition’ or ‘appreciation’ say very little about the social practices of residential care. Using data from an ethnographic study in Denmark, the article demonstrates that ideas about the needs of troubled children are realised in dissimilar ways, creating highly different living environments for institutionalised children. The principles behind these construction processes are explored, and the profound ambiguity of values in childcare is discussed as an effect of residential care’s being an ‘institutional’ or ‘human service’ type of organisation.     

Commodification of rural places: A narrative of social fields,rural development,and football

One of the most significant recent elements of restructuring in rural areas is the transition from an economy based on agricultural production to an economy based on the countryside as a form of commodity. In this transition process, different narratives or images of an area are produced to promote villages and other places in the countryside as commodities. Much of the literature takes it for granted that outsiders control the processes of branding rural areas, but our case study demonstrates that the producers (as well as potential consumers) of the countryside as a commodity can be insiders within a community. In this paper, we demonstrate how a local football club can take a leading role in the process of commodification of rural places in the post-modern era. Football clubs are presented as commodities to attract investors, sponsors, and expertise from private businesses. In both commodification of rural places and football, the challenge is to construct narratives or images that correspond to the pre-existing expectations of consumers, whoever they might be. Our theory-informed empirical analyses illustrate the way in which the Norwegian football club Sogndal Football has been instrumental in the restructuring of the Sogndal community.     

Stability and change – a 7‐ to 8‐year follow‐up study of mental health problems in Norwegian children in long‐term out‐of‐home care

The aim of the study was to explore stability and change in mental health problems in Norwegian children aged 6–12 years old (n = 70) in long‐term out‐of‐home care. The children's mental health problems were assessed shortly after the placement and 7–8 years later by the caregivers and the teachers on the Revised Rutter Scales. Information on pre‐placement and placement factors were collected from the child welfare workers. At a group level the children's mental health problems had improved significantly over time according to the teachers' reports. According to the caregivers' reports, however, the children's problems were high and stable across time. Analyses aimed at detecting individual changes revealed a great variability in development according to both informants, indicating that treating the placed children as a homogenous group could be misleading. Several pre‐placement and placement variables were associated with the change in the children's mental health problems from the time of placement to the follow‐up time according to both informants' reports. However, all the predictors were accounted for by the strong effect of the children's problem scores when entering care.     

Melancholy Hope and Other Psychic Remainders Afterthoughts on Love the Sin

In this essay the coauthors of Love the Sin consider connections between moral and psychic ambivalence around sex and sexual pleasures; what tolerance “feels” like; and melancholia as both block to and resource for democratic social relations. In the final section of their essay, they suggest rethinking tolerance as a kind of melancholic reaction, or defense, that protects the agents of tolerance from knowing just how far short that they have fallen from their own professed commitments to being fair and doing good.     

Anti-social youth? Disruptions in care and the role of ‘behavioral problems’

This paper explores the mechanisms behind the disturbingly high occurrence of placement disruption among young people in out-of-home care. Discussions have usually been framed in a vocabulary of risk and protection, with the bulk of research designed for singling out factors that correlate with stability and discontinuity in care arrangements. From this research tradition, we have learned that ‘behavioral problems’ are by far the strongest predictor for disruptions in care. By exploring the quality of care as experienced by young people themselves, this study suggests an alternative strategy. Findings suggest that disruptions occur as a result of complex social relations, as when young people struggle to fit in among other troubled youth in demanding residential settings. The paper concludes that labels such as ‘behavioral problems’ may have a reifying effect that individualizes the problem of care disruption while not being particularly helpful in explaining the phenomenon.