Doing it from your heart: the role of older women as informal volunteers

This paper explores the contributions made by older women to the community as informal volunteers. It argues that ageing policy is not gender neutral and tends to ignore the contributions made by women outside paid work. As well as being ignored in policy, women's unpaid roles have been denigrated by some feminist commentators, who suggest that these roles subordinate the position of women. The aim of the present paper is to explore the lived experiences of older women in relation to their informal volunteer roles, using role identity theory as a framework. The study utilizes data from a qualitative study using focus group methodology. Findings demonstrate that informal volunteering contributes to the women's identity and gives their lives meaning. These findings suggest that a more positive policy framework around ageing is needed to ensure that the worth of these contributions is recognised.     

Group Therapy for Emotional Dysregulation: Treatment for Adolescents and Their Parents

A dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) group has been conducted for a number of years at a public outpatient clinic for adolescents suffering with emotional regulation difficulties and their families. A detailed account of the rationale, design, and content of both the adolescent and parent groups are provided. Data from these groups adds to the limited evidence regarding the efficacy of such groups. A retrospective analysis of changes in the adolescent participants’ emotional dysregulation, depression, anxiety and stress, following their participation in the group (N?=?12) was conducted. Several substantial improvements were noted across the measures of psychopathology, following the completion of the group. These findings support the teaching of DBT skills to adolescents and their families, with some modifications being appropriate for their application to this population. Future avenues for research stemming from the group program are also discussed.     

Missing siblings: seeking more adequate social responses

Little is known about the experience of family and friends when a young adult goes missing, less is known about how siblings make sense of the experience. Police assistance to locate the missing person may be sought but there is little recognition of going missing or missingness as a social issue, and there is little or no adequate social response to the needs of those left behind. This paper links knowledge of siblings, loss and grief to an understanding of this phenomenon. It presents the methodology and findings of an exploratory, qualitative study into the experiences of nine adult siblings of long-term missing people in Australia and presents the themes drawn from their accounts. The themes are briefly elaborated using direct quotations from participants in the study and represented in a diagram. The paper seeks to develop greater understanding of the inter-relationship between missingness and other social issues, to give voice to the views of participants and to encourage practitioners to engage more purposefully in work with family and friends affected by this issue. Some implications for social work practice are presented.     

TAXONOMY AND THE EFFECTS OF FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICY

This paper reviews the development of monetarist theory and the circumstances under which emphasis shifted to "fiscalism," discusses Bent Hansen's view that the controversy is largely a sham dispute, and suggests two types of research needed to assess, historically and theoretically, the relative practical importance of the two approaches to reduction or elimination of economic instability.     

An Analytical Investigation of the Bullwhip Effect

The Bullwhip Effect is problematic: order variability increases as orders propagate along the supply chain. The fundamental differential delay equations for a retailer's inventory reacting to a surge in demand are solved exactly. Much of the rich and complex inventory behavior is determined by the replenishment delay. The analytical solutions agree with numerical integrations and previous control theory results. Managerially useful ordering strategies are proposed. Exact expressions are derived for the retailer's orders to the manufacturer, and the Bullwhip Effect arises naturally. The approach is quite general and applicable to a wide variety of supply chain problems.     

Rhetoric to action: a study of stakeholder perceptions of aging well in two local communities

This qualitative study of local perceptions of policy goals and action in relation to aging reports 31 stakeholder interviews within 2 Australian communities exploring (a) the meaning of aging well; and (b) preferred policy actions to achieve positive aging outcomes. Findings suggest that community perceptions of aging well are broadly consistent with the goals of national and international policy frameworks in focusing on 3 dimensions--health, social engagement, and security. Further, participants believe that achievement of positive aging outcomes requires a mix of self-help, community action, and government intervention--particularly government support and encouragement for aging well initiatives.     

Domestic responsibilities and the employment of young Māori women

Abstract

While the employment rate of women has risen steadily in New Zealand over the last two decades, employment is still highly variable by ethnicity and age. One of the groups least engaged in paid employment is young Māori women (15–24 years). Their employment rates are much lower than their Pākehā counterparts (42 and 64%, respectively) and this is not offset by their greater involvement in education.

Although there is a general awareness of these differences, there has been no systematic enquiry into the possible reasons for the relatively low engagement of young Māori women in the formal economy. Using a full set of 178,776 unit records pertaining to all young Māori and Pākehā women from the 2001 Census of Population and Dwellings, we develop a number of novel measures of household composition as indicators of domestic responsibilities. These become arguments in a multivariate statistical model in which young women are modelled as choosing to participate in the formal paid workforce and/ or in education.

Our results show that young Māori women's choice of paid work is no more sensitive to her domestic responsibilities than those of young Pākehā women, but they do encounter these responsibilities far more often. The results have a number of important implications for Māori development.     

Compassion Fatigue in the Treatment of Combat-Related Trauma During Wartime

This article utilizes relevant data on the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a composite case of a clinician working with combat survivors, in order to illustrate the potential for compassion fatigue in clinicians treating this cohort. Review of the literature on the effects of compassion fatigue related to combat trauma and the impact of collective shared trauma is presented. This is done in order to emphasize the complexity of the provision of war trauma treatment post 9/11 in the context of the ongoing wars. There is an urgent need for the mental health field to continue to develop interventions and educational programs that will help mitigate the deleterious effects of compassion fatigue in clinicians working with this population.     

A visual narrative analysis of children’s baby loss remembrance drawings

Children experiencing the death of baby brother or sister have reported individual, familial, and communicative challenges. Siblings also have indicated that the loss of a baby in their family enriched their lives despite their pain. The present study extends this work by focusing not only on siblings but also other children enmeshed in the family system. Additionally, we heed the call for the use of arts-based methods in family communication by performing a visual narrative analysis of children’s baby loss remembrance drawings. This analysis of 131 drawings completed by children ages zero to 18 yielded three main themes, including narration of identity, narration of life and death, and narration of growing sense-making. Two continua capture these themes, including the subject of narrativization and the mode of narrativization. In presenting these findings, we provide a unique (means of) understanding children’s experience of baby loss in the family.