Negotiating deficiency: Exploring ethnic minority parents' narratives about encountering child welfare services in Norway

Evaluating the participatory opportunities for service users within social welfare institutions is a pressing issue. In this article, we explore a group of ethnic minority parents' experiences with child welfare services (CWS) in Norway. A strong narrative theme was deficiency positioning—how lacking a Norwegian normative set of knowledge and skills challenged the parents' opportunities to participate. We analysed how deficiency positioning was perceived, negotiated, and contested in the parents' accounts, and 4 themes emerged: (a) learning to parent, (b) contesting expert knowledge, (c) learning to be a client, and (d) constructing CWS deficiency. Nancy Fraser's concept of “participatory parity” was applied to explore how current institutional structures may enable and limit parents' participation. The analysis provides insight into agencies and informants' sense‐making processes as well as the diverse resources and strategies that parents draw upon in the CWS encounter. Furthermore, we argue that an interplay between a strong focus on “parenting skills” and bureaucratic and economic structures positions ethnic minority parents as deficient, thus providing powerful mechanisms for marginalization. Implications for case work and institutional levels are discussed.     

BAYESIAN MODEL SEARCH AND MULTILEVEL INFERENCE FOR SNP ASSOCIATION STUDIES

Technological advances in genotyping have given rise to hypothesis-based association studies of increasing scope. As a result, the scientific hypotheses addressed by these studies have become more complex and more difficult to address using existing analytic methodologies. Obstacles to analysis include inference in the face of multiple comparisons, complications arising from correlations among the SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), choice of their genetic parametrization and missing data. In this paper we present an efficient Bayesian model search strategy that searches over the space of genetic markers and their genetic parametrization. The resulting method for Multilevel Inference of SNP Associations, MISA, allows computation of multilevel posterior probabilities and Bayes factors at the global, gene and SNP level, with the prior distribution on SNP inclusion in the model providing an intrinsic multiplicity correction. We use simulated data sets to characterize MISA's statistical power, and show that MISA has higher power to detect association than standard procedures. Using data from the North Carolina Ovarian Cancer Study (NCOCS), MISA identifies variants that were not identified by standard methods and have been externally "validated" in independent studies. We examine sensitivity of the NCOCS results to prior choice and method for imputing missing data. MISA is available in an R package on CRAN.     

Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans: What Might a Sociological Embeddedness Perspective Offer Disaster Research and Planning?

The Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans situation was commonly called a "natural disaster"—an anomalous "event" that disrupted lives, spaces, and organizations. Research and planning attention then focused on particular aspects of the event and on restoring order. In contrast, sociologists and similar-thinking scholars have increasingly viewed disaster situations from multiple locations and histories, often using systems theory. Here, reanalysis of empirical material from ethnographic research in New Orleans pre- and post-Katrina suggests that a sociological embeddedness perspective illustrates the dynamic seamlessness of past, present, and future economic contexts and social actions. The perspective's constitutive concepts of weak, strong, and differentiated ties highlight the role of local knowledge, intermediary-led workforce networks, and sustained participatory planning in creating a robust economic environment. Toward this end, disaster research, planning, and theory building could incorporate network tie assessments into social vulnerability protocols, compare embeddedness with other perspectives, and learn from related international experiences.     

“The troublesome other and I”: Parallel stories of separated parents in prolonged conflicts

This qualitative study aims to explore how noncohabiting parenting couples in prolonged conflict construct the other parent and themselves. Ten parents from five parent couples were interviewed. A dyadic analytical design was used, where parent's stories of conflict were analyzed in parallel with their co‐parent. Drawing on positioning theory, self‐identity as parents emerged as implicit counter positions in storylines, which construct the co‐parent as “the troublesome other.” Two typologies of conflicted storylines were prominent in the findings: storylines of violations of trust, positioning the co‐parents in relation to traumatic events in the past and, storylines of who is bad, positioning the co‐parent as either a disloyal co‐parent or a dysfunctional parent. The findings indicate that prolonged conflicts made it impossible to find available positions for cooperation. We argue that family therapists should aid each household toward promoting child and family resilience rather than continued efforts to solve chronic conflicts.     

How much do we count? interpretation and error-making in the decennial census

Following a critique of the 1990 decennial census procedures, we conducted a field study among low-income, inner-city residents in 1991 to examine how they conceptualized and managed the civic task of census response. Interpretations about the purpose and meaning of the census, about commitment to the task, and about connection to government, singly and together with literacy skills (e.g., reading and general literacy competence), were associated with errors that are not detectable by evaluative methodologies used regularly by the Census Bureau. The validity and reliability of census data, and possibly other self-administered survey research, will be increased by greater use of knowledge about both interpretation and literacy skills in formulating data collection procedures.     

“We felt completely left to ourselves.” Foster parents' views on placement disruption

The purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons for unintended placement disruptions in foster care. Based on a semistructured survey, the paper presents the views of 132 Norwegian foster parents who have experienced placement disruption between 2013 and 2015. Foster parents rated several relevant causes of placement disruption: the child's behaviour, the need for care, concern for the well‐being of their biological children, and lack of support from the Child Welfare Service (CWS). Although the child's behaviour was the cause most frequently reported in the quantitative data, CWS‐related factors such as poor collaboration, not being valued and listened to, insufficient support and follow‐up, and a mismatch between the child's needs and the foster carers' capacity were reported most frequently in the qualitative data. Placement disruption appears to be caused by the sum and interaction of several coexisting causes. It may not be the child's behaviour per se but rather the combination of challenging behaviour, concern for one's biological children, and insufficient support from CWS that lead to disruption. Good collaboration with the CWS in the form of respect, recognition, support, and follow‐up appears to be of the utmost importance in reducing the risk of placement disruption.     

Child welfare workers use of knowledge in their daily work

The debate continues on what constitutes core knowledge in professional work in child welfare and child protection. The aims of this article are to examine what different sources of knowledge social workers report to use in their daily work and to determine the importance of different knowledge sources in relation to their work experience, educational background and type of employment (caseworker/manager). Data were obtained from a survey completed by 390 social workers in municipal child welfare services in Western Norway. Social workers answered questions regarding their use of different knowledge sources in their daily work. The information they obtained in a particular case and their personal experiences were the most frequently used sources. Factor analysis revealed four subgroups of knowledge sources: The most frequently used were: (a) Colleagues and Supervision and (b) Personal Experience, followed by (c) Social Work Education, Courses and Municipal and State Documents, with (d) Journal Articles, Textbooks and External Sources being the least frequently used. The most important source for social workers with less work experience was Colleagues and Supervision, whereas the factor Journal Articles, Textbooks and External Sources was more often important for social workers with a master’s degree than for those without this level of education. Overall, social workers seem to rely mostly on personal experience and their colleagues as sources of knowledge in their work.     

A BRANCHING PROCESS MODEL FOR FLOW CYTOMETRY AND BUDDING INDEX MEASUREMENTS IN CELL SYNCHRONY EXPERIMENTS

We present a flexible branching process model for cell population dynamics in synchrony/time-series experiments used to study important cellular processes. Its formulation is constructive, based on an accounting of the unique cohorts in the population as they arise and evolve over time, allowing it to be written in closed form. The model can attribute effects to subsets of the population, providing flexibility not available using the models historically applied to these populations. It provides a tool for in silico synchronization of the population and can be used to deconvolve population-level experimental measurements, such as temporal expression profiles. It also allows for the direct comparison of assay measurements made from multiple experiments. The model can be fit either to budding index or DNA content measurements, or both, and is easily adaptable to new forms of data. The ability to use DNA content data makes the model applicable to almost any organism. We describe the model and illustrate its utility and flexibility in a study of cell cycle progression in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.     

Psychological Weil-Being Among Unemployed and Employed People After a Company Closedown: A Longitudinal Study

In a three-year longitudinal study, we examined the effects of unemployment and the fear of becoming unemployed on the psychological well-being of 1153 employees at a shipyard that was closed down, and a control group of 441 employees from another, operative shipyard. On all three questionnaires, unemployed people were significantly lower in psychological well-being than employed people. Change to or from employment was significantly associated with changes in psychological well-being, whereas remaining employed or unemployed did not lead to any systematic changes in psychological well-being. Among employed people, the fear of unemployment was strongly associated with reduced psychological well-being. Thus, the health-related consequences of unemployment affect not only the unemployed but also employed people who have little job security. Consequently, we stress the need to create new workplaces and to implement reforms that can reduce job insecurity in the labor market.