Cohabitation and commitment: partnership plans of young men and women

Popular commentators on marriage and the family often interpret the increase in heterosexual couples living together without marrying as reduced willingness to create and honour life‐long partnerships. Survey and in‐depth interviews with samples of 20–29 year olds living in an urban area of Scotland finds little support for the postulated link between growing cohabitation and a weakened sense of commitment to long‐term arrangements. Most of the cohabiting couples strongly stressed their ‘commitment’. Socially acceptable vocabularies of motive undoubtedly influenced answers but interviews helped to explore deeper meanings. Many respondents’ views were consistent with previous research predictions of a weakening sense of any added value of marriage. At the same time, some respondents continued to stress the social significance of the distinction between marriage and cohabitation, consistent with research interpreting cohabitation as a ‘try and see’ strategy part‐way to the perceived full commitment of marriage. The notion that ‘marriage is better for children’ continued to have support among respondents. While, on average, cohabiting couples had lower incomes and poorer employment situations than married couples, only very extreme adverse circumstances were presented as making marriage ‘too risky’. Pregnancy‐provoked cohabitation was not always in this category. Cohabitation was maintained because marriage would ‘make no difference’ or because they ‘had not yet got round to’ marriage. Most respondents were more wary of attempting to schedule or plan in their personal life than in other domains and cohabitees’ attitudes to partnership, including their generally ‘committed’ approach, do not explain the known greater vulnerability of this group to dissolution.     

Maintaining the connection: Parenting as a noncustodial father

The purpose of this study was to identify relevant factors associated with the noncustodial father's frequency of contact with his child following divorce. The findings of the research revealed that a combination of demographic, personal characteristics, and psychosocial factors are related to the father's frequency of contact with the child.     

The social worker as psychoanalyst

This paper examines the development of social workers as psychoanalysts to determine whether psychoanalysis is a legitimate function of social work. Historically, social work has found psychoanalytic theory helpful. However, it is generally understood that for the caseworker to competently practice psychoanalytic psychotherapy, advanced training is necessary. Although many social workers have availed themselves of this opportunity, the profession continues to believe that the practice of psychoanalysis is incompatible with social work. This is based upon an inaccurate conception of psychoanalysis. Since the social work psychoanalyst is concerned with the client's adaptation to the environment, his or her practice can easily be defined as clinical social work.     

Attracting Micro‐Enterprises To Learning

Micro‐enterprises, i.e. firms with less than 10 employees, are traditionally the hardest to engage in learning; they are also least likely to participate in such measures as business advice and guidance provision and initiatives to support information communication technology (ICT) adoption. Through a community‐based initiative initially targeting parents (unemployed or employed) to participate in ICT, 30 micro‐enterprises were attracted to learning for the first time. These companies had carefully avoided similar initiatives taking place locally, which emphasized business success and growth; they had only participated in this ICT skills training because of their children. The paper takes a case study approach to evaluate the reasons for participation, explores barriers and implications for those organizing similar activities, and calls for a more holistic view of owners and managers of small firms as fathers, mothers, etc. rather than just as ‘entrepreneurs’.     

Dilemmas in provision of urban mental health services for latency age children

Urban mental health facilities are increasingly overwhelmed by the sheer number of cases, at a time when federal, state and local funding cutbacks are greater than ever before. Additional to the numbers of cases needing care, is a growing number of cases presenting overwhelming social problems, i.e., emotional and medical pathology, economic deprivation, and substance abuse, with resultant family violence and child abuse. The case-loads in mental health agencies have become almost indistinguishable from those on the roles of child protection, juvenile justice, and child welfare agencies. Mental health service is near to impossible to provide, prior to major environmental manipulation, via educational planning, and frequent placement of children in day treatment programs, day care, or securing of in-home assistance, via home-maker services. These needed referrals take inordinate time, given the unresponsive, poorly coordinated bureaucracies providing such services. Many of the families seen are burdened by overwhelming social pathology, e.g., poverty, huge numbers of children per family, single-parenthood, drugs, and neighborhood violence. Treatment is increasingly difficult to provide, given the poor access to child serving systems, by parents and professionals, alike. Token services and worker burn-out in response to overwhelming difficult cases and excessive assignments, suggest a situation of crisis proportion. Clearly coalitions must be formed by over-burdened professionals, to better educate governing bodies, politicians, boards and administrators, and parents regarding this growing crisis. Professionals, battle-weary, are retreating from agency practice, simultaneous with agency cut-backs of staff and service. Agency administrators are cowed by local and state directives regarding budgetary cuts, and the situation worsens daily, as overburdened line staff struggle with an impossible challenge. Some sort of advocacy and social action must be taken by leaders in the field, to better inform and educate those responsible for budgetary allocations. Latency age children are among the most vulnerable, caught in deteriorating schools and neighborhoods, living with incredible daily violence, and pressures from drug dealers, pushers, adolescent gangs, and inadequate supports in their homes. This group of children is being pushed to become the violent adolescents of tomorrow. Major innovations and changes in delivery of services is necessary in health and mental health agencies serving this at-risk population. Proposed is a school based model of practice to provide access, coordination and collaboration of needed services.This paper was presented at the National Health Policy Forum, National Academies of Practice, April 1992.Ph.D. Specialization in the treatment of Children and Adolescents, Ph.D. Program.     

Do Volunteers Volunteer to do More at Work? The Relationship Between Volunteering,Engagement, and OCBs

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Many non-profit organizations rely on volunteers to further their mission, but volunteer rates linger at only 25% of the...     

Overcoming medication refusal using a patient-centered approach

The refusal of psychotropic medication is a challenge faced by many healthcare providers when treating patients with mental illness. Controversy surrounds medication refusal because some mental health professionals believe that psychiatric patients should be forced to take medications for the safety of the general public, while patients are often acutely aware of potential lifelong adverse side effects and are sometimes reluctant to comply. The proposed alternative to this problem begins with developing the patient-provider relationship through a patient-centered approach. This approach emphasizes the individual needs of patients and creates opportunities for input from patients about their care, which helps form relationships of mutual trust and respect between patients and providers. This article explores the literature to: (1) understand some of the challenges and controversies involved in patient medication refusal from a clinical and societal level; (2) identify some issues in a patient-centered approach; and (3) make some brief clinical and policy recommendations that might help to bring about an increase in the use of patient-centered care. Hopefully, as efforts are made toward a patient-centered approach, increased psychotropic medication adherence and decreased medication coercion will result as providers listen and act upon the needs of their patients.