Decision‐making under uncertainty in child protection: Creating a just and learning culture

The argument is made for having a positive error culture in child protection to improve decision‐making and risk management. This requires organizations to accept that mistakes are likely and to treat them as opportunities for learning and improving. In contrast, in many organizations, a punitive reaction to errors leads to workers hiding them and developing a defensive approach to their practice with children and families. The safety management literature has shown how human error is generally not simply due to a “bad apple” but made more or less likely by the work context that helps or hinders good performance. Improving safety requires learning about the weaknesses in the organization that contribute to poor performance. To create a learning culture, people need to feel that when they talk about mistakes or weak practice, there will be a constructive response from their organization. One aspect of reducing the blame culture is to develop a shared understanding of how practice will be judged and how those appraising practice will avoid the hindsight bias. To facilitate a positive error culture, a set of risk principles are presented that offer a set of criteria by which practice should be appraised.     

Middle School Children's Perceptions on Welfare and Poverty: An Exploratory, Qualitative Study

This study was undertaken to determine how middle school children assess the effects of welfare reform on their daily lives. The study consisted of thirty interviews with children and their mothers recruited from a middle school in a large, metropolitan area. From the children's perspective, multiple jobs and evening/night hours interfered with the child-parent relationship. Other consequences included grades going down and not getting to school on time. All the children stated that mothers should work, but most children felt mothers should only work when their children are in school. Welfare and poverty were issues about which children were teased at school.     

Data collection: are social workers reliable?

Social workers are required to collect a considerable amount of personal information about clients and their families which may be unrelated to direct clinical work. Administrators often use this for the purpose of payment, service documentation, agency planning, and accountability. The worker's concern about the appropriateness of collecting this data may result in poor compliance or even falsification of information. In a survey of Minnesota social workers, noncompliance with data collection requirements was substantial. The authors also found a significant degree of conflict about privacy and confidentiality issues. These findings suggest a basis of concern for those who must rely on accurate data for administrative planning.     

Using the contradiction paradigm to assess ageism

Ageism is an important topic in our society, considering the burgeoning older adult population. Ageism is often measured using explicit questionnaires; however, given the impact of social desirability, implicit measures of ageism have been developed. In this study, the contradiction paradigm, an implicit measure of stereotypes (Lassonde, under review) was used to measure age-related stereotypes in passages describing older adults. Participants read passages with target sentences more slowly when these sentences described behaviors that were inconsistent rather than consistent with age-related stereotypes. Participants also completed a series of self-report questionnaires measuring ageism. Results demonstrated that reading times using the contradiction paradigm were not related to outcomes on the self-report questionnaires. A comparison of the contradiction paradigm to a social desirability scale revealed that it was not vulnerable to social desirability. This confirms the contradiction paradigm's use as an implicit measure of age-related stereotypes. Although there is no clear relation between the contradiction paradigm and popular explicit measures, a next important step would be to determine the point in which implicit knowledge and intentional behavioral responses interact.     

Connecting the gendered door: women, violence and doorwork

This paper explores the emerging role of women who work as 'bouncers', or doorstaff, in the night-time economy and examines how the cultural capital of the female bouncer is connected to the methods utilized to control licensed premises. It is drawn from a study that combined ethnographic observations and interviews in five major UK cities which explored a diverse range of issues such as gendered bodies, femininities and violence; the changing needs of the night-time economy in the UK and the experiences of women engaged in 'non-traditional' occupations. In this paper, we draw on interview data with one particular category of female door staff; women who share similar histories of exposure to violence and violent cultures, and we examine how their experiential knowledge of violence equips them with the resources to 'work the doors'. Our attention focuses on this group of women, who we refer to as 'The Connected', and examine how they are 'doing gender' when they negotiate violence 'on the door'     

College students’ attitudes toward abortion and commitment to the issue

Male and female participants were surveyed on abortion attitudes, commitment, and abortion experience. Results revealed a normal distribution of abortion attitudes rejecting the notion that the vast majority of the sample would have significantly pro-choice views. No significant difference was found in overall abortion attitudes of males vs. females, however, individuals with direct abortion experience were found to have significantly stronger pro-choice attitudes than individuals without direct abortion experience. Overall, college students reported a moderate degree of commitment to the issue of abortion. Females were significantly more committed than males, individuals with direct abortion experience were significantly more committed than individuals without direct abortion experience, and individuals with more extreme abortion attitudes were significantly more committed than those with weaker, more ambivalent, attitudes. No significant difference was found in level of commitment between pro-choice and pro-life individuals.     

The Role of Household Social Organization in the Structure of Rural Economies: Comparing Forest Resource Dependent and Agriculturally Dependent Regions in Russia

Sociologists have examined how structural economic change affects household social organization and generation of household income from different sources. The introduction of elements of a market economy into rural Russia in the early 1990s provides a unique opportunity to examine these relationships. Much of the work on this topic, however, has been conducted in black earth zone, agriculturally dependent regions. Less attention has been given to non‐black‐earth zone, forest resource dependent regions. This article addresses this limitation by comparing the relationships between household income generation strategies and household social organization in a 2009 survey of villages in three forest resource dependent regions in northwest Russia with findings from a 2006 survey of households in nine agricultural regions of Russia. Income generated from enterprises based on household social organization—household labor and social helping networks—is substantially greater in agriculturally dependent than in forest resource dependent regions. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding intranational regional differences in the relationship between economic systems, household social organization, and rural household economies as well as the obstacles facing policymakers and environmentalists who attempt to shift household income generation strategies away from an environmentally harmful lumber industry to income generation activities that are less harmful to the environment.     

Mindful of the Intersession Break in Family Therapy: The Time to Think Experiment

The Time to Think Experiment researches the experience of clinicians, consumers, and families of an intersession break, which has been used historically in various models of family therapy training. This qualitative pilot study explores the experiences of 21 clinicians, 19 consumers, and six family members using this break for reflection, across the domains of family and couple therapy, individual therapy, group work, and supervision in a mental health service covering the whole age range. Using a phenomenological design, the analysis included narrative, thematic, content, and comparative techniques. The paper considers the impact of privileging reflection in the therapy process, in a climate where models, work cultures, and general lifestyles may not encourage it. Using the intersession break to create space to ‘be’ in the therapy process is one way to integrate mindful and family therapy practice. The emerging themes of an intersession break to promote a richer and deeper therapy experience, and the apparent shift of responsibility for change from clinicians to consumers is discussed.     

The Good Grandparent: Perspectives of Young Adults

As life expectancy increases, the role of grandparent has increased in duration and is continually adapting as families change in structure, function and form. Across the past several decades, researchers have examined grandparenting styles, finding some consistency as well as the emergence of newer styles, and evidence that grandparenting styles are related to the age and gender of both the grandparents and the grandchildren. In this study, we investigated young adults’ perceptions of grandparenting quality. University Students (N?=?470) from a Midwestern university responded to an online survey that asked them to evaluate the quality of their grandparents grandparenting now and at two retrospective points in time, childhood and adolescence. We hypothesized that the grandparents' performance of multiple styles of their role would be related to grandparenting quality. In addition, we expected that preferred grandparental roles would vary in relation to grandchildren's gender. The results of regression analysis indicated that, although grandparenting quality tended to decline across the respondents' developmental stages, higher ratings at an earlier stage were related to higher ratings at the latter two stages. Further, grandsons preferred grandparents who performed as supporters and advisors, whereas granddaughters preferred grandparents who functioned as supporter and friend. Overall, grandmothers were likely to be the more significant grandparent. Continual research on both grandchildren and grandparents will be needed to chronicle the development of the grandparental role in changing times.     

Potential strategies to avoid progestogen-induced premenstrual disorders

Non-hormonal approaches to premenstrual syndrome (PMS) treatment such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are by no means effective for all women and frequently we must resort to endocrine therapy. During many of the hormonal approaches, PMS-like symptoms can be introduced or re-introduced during the necessary cyclical or continuous progestogen component of the therapy. This is seen with combined oral contraception, progestogen only contraception, progestogen therapy for heavy menstrual bleeding and endometriosis, sequential hormone replacement therapy and any therapeutic strategy for premenstrual syndrome where it is necessary to provide endometrial protection, including estrogen suppression of ovulation or add-back during gonadotrophin releasing hormone suppression. The link to progestogen is very often missed by health professionals. When the pattern of symptoms mimics the cyclicity of PMS, it is termed progestogen-induced premenstrual disorder. The need to use progestogen to protect the endometrium from the proliferative actions of estrogen can pose insurmountable difficulties in managing premenstrual disorders. In the absence of any really useful evidence, nearly all practice in this area depends on clinician experience. We cannot afford to wait for adequate research evidence to be produced - it never will - and so we must rely on empirical findings, clinical experience, theoretical strategies and common sense.