From Foster Care to Adoption and Guardianship: A Twenty-First Century Challenge

For nearly four decades, child welfare policy and practice have focused on the achievement of legal permanence for children in foster care. Although federal child welfare policy has resulted in the movement of children from state custody to legally permanent adoptive or guardianship families, little is known about the quality and enduring nature of these placements. A significant challenge of the twenty-first century child welfare system is how to ensure the well-being of children currently living with adoptive parents or guardians. This paper discusses child welfare policy and trends related to post-permanency well-being, including the decrease in Title IV-E foster care caseloads nationwide and the simultaneous increase in Title IV-E adoptive and guardianship caseloads. We highlight the needs of a twenty-first century child welfare system, including increased federal efforts to ensure child permanence and well-being after legal adoption or guardianship has been achieved, as well as more rigorous longitudinal and interdisciplinary research focused on the post-permanency adjustment of children and their families.     

Teaching clinic lowers radiology utilization. A look at how to achieve more cost-effective imaging

Discover how an Oregon medical clinic made great strides decreasing radiology utilization after implementing a continuous quality improvement project that was embraced by physicians.     

Myths and Misconceptions About University Student Volunteering: Development and Perpetuation

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This paper examines myths and misconceptions about university student volunteering. Our study explored the experiences of...     

Keeping up with the digital age: How the American Red Cross uses social media to build relationships

Forty individuals from the American Red Cross were interviewed to explore the use of social media in communicating with key publics. Results show that practicing public relations through social media is effective and necessary in the emerging digital age, as shown through the Red Cross’ development of a two-way dialogue with younger constituents, the media, and the community. This two-way dialogue has been accomplished primarily through Twitter and Facebook, with barriers such as lack of staff and time, and opportunities to improve National Headquarters and local chapter relations. The insights shared by the American Red Cross are useful for both public relations scholars and professionals to help them understand and apply social media practices to build strong, lasting relationships.     

“No strings attached”: A qualitative exploration of gay and bisexual men’s motivations for and attitudes toward engaging in casual sex while on vacation

Prior quantitative research with gay and bisexual men (GBM) has documented high rates of sexual risk behavior during recreational travel. Although some associations are known (e.g., substance use at the tourist destination is associated with sexual risk), less is known about GBM’s motivations for travel and the cognitive and attitudinal factors that influence their sexual behavior while vacationing. In the present study, we conducted qualitative interviews with 46 GBM recruited from three popular gay tourist destinations. Using the Health Belief Model (HBM) as a guiding theoretical framework, the findings of the study revealed that the gay-friendly, tropical, relaxing environments resulted in men letting their guard down and engaging in more risk than when they are at home. Various barriers such as peer pressure and substance use affect GBM’s ability to engage in healthier behaviors while traveling, with condom negotiation and HIV status disclosure as additional issues that impact the sex practices of this population. Results highlight the applicability of HBM constructs to provide insight for intervention development for this population.     

Attribution of Human VTEC O157 Infection from Meat Products: A Quantitative Risk Assessment Approach

To address the risk posed to human health by the consumption of VTEC O157 within contaminated pork, lamb, and beef products within Great Britain, a quantitative risk assessment model has been developed. This model aims to simulate the prevalence and amount of VTEC O157 in different meat products at consumption within a single model framework by adapting previously developed models. The model is stochastic in nature, enabling both variability (natural variation between animals, carcasses, products) and uncertainty (lack of knowledge) about the input parameters to be modeled. Based on the model assumptions and data, it is concluded that the prevalence of VTEC O157 in meat products (joints and mince) at consumption is low (i.e., <0.04%). Beef products, particularly beef burgers, present the highest estimated risk with an estimated eight out of 100,000 servings on average resulting in human infection with VTEC O157.     

Happily Ever After? The Journey From Foster Care to Adoption

Providing the foster child with a forever family through adoption is often seen as a happy ending to the long and painful journey through foster care. This qualitative study explores this complex journey from foster care to adoption from the perspective of 30 young adults aged 18 to 25 who were adopted from the foster care system after the age of 8. The results indicate that the foster and adoption experience for these youth cannot be compartmentalized when trying to understand the impact adoption has had on their overall sense of self. Implications for future research to explore the emerging concept of foster/adoptive identity for older youth adopted through the foster care system are provided.     

Becoming: Identity and spirituality

An individual’s identity answers the questions of who, what, where, and why the individual is. An overall identity is made up of multiple constituent identities. These identities may not be fixed over the life course, but may change as a result of conscious choices as well as serendipity or calamity—life transforming events which cannot be anticipated, which remove what had been the certainties and norms of life, and which can leave the individual disconnected from what had been her past and from her hoped for future. In this paper we develop a two-period behavioral model of an individual whose personal identity is an amalgam of N identities, one or more of which may be spiritual in nature. Some identities are actualized at a point in time and some remain latent. We model how individuals allocate resources among current and hoped for future identities, and how these resource allocation decisions and identity actualizations are affected by the interaction of choices and unanticipated external events. We argue why a spiritual identity may be actualized, how it interacts with other identities, and why, in giving context to an individual’s life, it enables her to define and to strive toward her overall identity—to become.     

Managing Turbulence in the Blogosphere: Evaluating the Blog-Mediated Crisis Communication Model with the American Red Cross

Through interviews with 40 American Red Cross communication professionals, this study examines how an organization that frequently responds to crises proactively manages on- and offline communication before, during, and after crises. The results provide the first empirical evaluation of an emerging model: the blog-mediated crisis communication model (BMCC). The lessons shared by the American Red Cross are insightful for researchers to understand the process of blog-mediated crisis communication in the nonprofit sector, which are also relevant for other public relations professionals. The findings support components of the original BMCC model, but also clearly indicate important revisions, including renaming the model the social-mediated crisis communication model (SMCC).     

Developmental stability and leadership effectiveness

Developmental stability is the degree to which we can withstand environmental or genetic stressors during development. Fluctuating asymmetry (FA), concerns the extent to which the right and left side of the body is asymmetrical and is one way to measure developmental stability. Two studies were carried out that examined both the predictive value of leader FA with leadership behaviors and its role in facilitating group performance. The first study examined the hypothesis that a leader's FA is correlated with scores on the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). The results revealed individuals with a more asymmetrical morphology scored higher on the transformational, but not transactional, dimensions of leadership behavior. A second study examined the hypothesis that asymmetrical morphology and leadership effectiveness would share a positive relationship. In this study participants who led a business game exercise, revealed a positive relationship between FA and self-reported well-being and task satisfaction. Importantly, there was also a positive correlation between the leader's FA score and group performance. The role that developmental stability may play in leadership effectiveness is discussed in the wider context of evolutionary psychology.