news, new scholarship & more from around the world
Now in a second edition, Practitioner’s Guide to Using Research for Evidence-Based Practice offers a clinician-oriented approach to appraising and using research as part of the EBP process. This accessible guide presents essential and practical guidance on how to integrate research appraisal into EBP endeavors to determine which interventions, policies, and assessment tools are supported by the best evidence.
Satisfaction Not Guaranteed is a book about the modern condition, and why the gains of living in modern urban, industrial, affluent societies have not proved more satisfying than they have. It examines why real results that paralleled earlier anticipations of progress have not generated the ease and contentment that the same forecasters assumed would apply to modern life. Employing his trademark inquiry of emotions in American history, Peter N. Stearns asks why, if modern life has been generally characterized by measurable themes of progress, abundance, and improvement, are people not happier or more content with their lot in life? Why is there an increased incidence of psychological depression, anxiety, and the sense that no one has ever reached a pinnacle of happiness or contentment? It’s not so much that modernity went wrong, but rather that it has not gone as swimmingly as was anticipated. Satisfaction Not Guaranteed uses concrete examples from both history and the present, such as happiness surveys, to discuss how as a society we might better juggle the demands of modern life with the pursuit of happiness.
Providing an overview of the major human behavioral theories used to guide social work practice with individuals, families, small groups, and organizations, Human Behavior in the Social Environment examines a different theoretical approach in each chapter—from its historical and conceptual origins to its relevance to social work and clinical applications. Each chapter draws on a theoretical approach to foster understanding of normative individual human development and the etiology of dysfunctional behavior, as well as to provide guidance in the application of social work intervention
Jewish Radicals explores the intertwined histories of Jews and the American Left through a rich variety of primary documents. Written in English and Yiddish, these documents reflect the entire spectrum of radical opinion, from anarchism to social democracy, Communism to socialist-Zionism. Rank-and-file activists, organizational leaders, intellectuals, and commentators, from within the Jewish community and beyond, all have their say. Their stories crisscross the Atlantic, spanning from the United States to Europe and British-ruled Palestine.
Almost Home tells the stories of six remarkable young people from across the United States and Canada as they confront life alone on the streets. Each eventually finds his or her way to Covenant House, the largest charity serving homeless and runaway youth in North America. From the son of a crack addict who fights his own descent into drug addiction to a teen mother reaching for a new life, their stories veer between devastating and inspiring as they each struggle to find a place called home.
Since the Gilded Age, social scientists, middle-class reformers, and writers have left the comforts of their offices to “pass” as steel workers, coal miners, assembly-line laborers, waitresses, hoboes, and other working and poor people in an attempt to gain a fuller and more authentic understanding of the lives of the working class and the poor. In this first, sweeping study of undercover investigations of work and poverty in America, award-winning historian Mark Pittenger examines how intellectuals were shaped by their experiences with the poor, and how despite their sympathy toward working-class people, they unintentionally helped to develop the contemporary concept of a degraded and “other” American underclass. While contributing to our understanding of the history of American social thought, Class Unknown offers a new perspective on contemporary debates over how we understand and represent our own society and its class divisions.
With contributions from the leading scholars in social work, this edited text provides a solid theory-to-practice foundation on the topics of mezzo (group) practice and macro (community and organizations) practice. Aligned with social work accreditation standards (EPAS), this book looks at assessments and interventions for groups, communities, organizations, and institutions. Its consistent chapter structure aids in reader engagement, accessibility and learning. In-depth and cutting-edge in its coverage, this book is suitable for both students and practitioners.
Scholarship in criminology over the last few decades has often left little room for research and theory on how female offenders are perceived and handled in the criminal justice system. In truth, one out of every four juveniles arrested is female, and the population of women in prison has tripled in the past decade. Co-authored by Meda Chesney-Lind, one of the pioneers in the development of the feminist theoretical perspective in criminology, The Female Offender: Girls, Women and Crime, Third Edition redresses these issues.
Over the last three decades, welfare policies have been informed by popular beliefs that welfare fraud is rampant. As a result, welfare policies have become more punitive and the boundaries between the welfare system and the criminal justice system have blurred—so much so that in some locales prosecution caseloads for welfare fraud exceed welfare caseloads. In reality, some recipients manipulate the welfare system for their own ends, others are gravely hurt by punitive policies, and still others fall somewhere in between.
The autobiography of an ex-offender and twice-times inmate of Barlinnie Prison, now a social work team-leader in his native Scotland.
As a local hard case, author Allan Weaver took no prisoners. Neither does he in this compelling work in which he tells of a life of violent episodes and his chaotic early life. Teachers, social workers and ‘authority figures’ never tried ‘to get to know him’ to unearth the clues and triggers and discover what his offending was all about. A natural rebel and a radical, it is hardly surprising that by ignoring the real Allan Weaver this led to an escalation of his violent activities, tensions between family and friends and dubious associates.
So You Think You Know Me? is packed with contradictions: the Allan Weaver involved in mayhem and aggression is not the one telling the story from inside his own head: an often vulnerable, sensitive, articulate, unquestionably loyal and even-handed individual; mistaken, misguided and foolish perhaps but largely trapped by an increasing need to live up to his ‘tough guy’ reputation.
This report has a unique design that reflects its purpose of providing targeted resources for all stakeholders involved in a disaster response.
New Perspectives on Racial Identity Development brings together leaders in the field to deepen, broaden, and reassess our understandings of racial identity development. Contributors include the authors of some of the earliest theories in the field, such as William Cross, Bailey W. Jackson, Jean Kim, Rita Hardiman, and Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe, who offer new analysis of the impact of emerging frameworks on how racial identity is viewed and understood. Other contributors present new paradigms and identify critical issues that must be considered as the field continues to evolve.
Americans have long recognized that investments in public education contribute to the common good, enhancing national prosperity and supporting stable families, neighborhoods, and communities. Education is even more critical today, in the face of economic, environmental, and social challenges. Today’s children can meet future challenges if their schooling and informal learning activities prepare them for adult roles as citizens, employees, managers, parents, volunteers, and entrepreneurs. To achieve their full potential as adults, young people need to develop a range of skills and knowledge that facilitate mastery and application of English, mathematics, and other school subjects. At the same time, business and political leaders are increasingly asking schools to develop skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and self-management – often referred to as “21st century skills.”
From youth violence, to the impact of high stakes educational testing, to editorial hand wringing over the moral failures of hip-hop culture, young people of color are often portrayed as gang affiliated, “troubled,” and ultimately, dangerous. The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back examines how youth activism has emerged to address the persistent inequalities that affect urban youth of color. Andreana Clay provides a detailed account of the strategies that youth activists use to frame their social justice agendas and organize in their local communities. Based on two years of fieldwork with youth affiliated with two non-profit organizations in Oakland, California, The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back shows how youth integrate the history of social movement activism of the 1960s, popular culture strategies like hip-hop and spoken word, as well as their experiences in the contemporary urban landscape, to mobilize their peers.
Synthesising attachment, trauma and mentalization theory into a useful practice model, Empathic Care for Children with Disorganized Attachments proposes ways of meeting the needs arising in children and young people with disorganized attachments. Focusing on the importance of interpersonal bonds to facilitate the child’s capacity to mentalize, it aims to equip the reader with the appropriate skills to provide effective, sustained and, most importantly, empathic care to the most vulnerable and troubled children. This structured psychotherapeutic approach to caregiving will enable the development of child–carer relationships and can be used to create informed, safe environments that support both the young person and the caregiver.
This book demonstrates how emerging methods of translational research can be applied to important topics of interest to social and behavioral scientists. Accessible models and real-world case studies are provided to help bridge the gaps among research, policy, and practice.
The ongoing economic crisis raises fundamental questions about the political and social goals of the European Union, particularly the feasibility of harmonising social and education policy across member states. The forward momentum of the European project is clearly faltering, raising the possibility that the high water mark of European integration has been achieved, with implications for many aspects of education and social policy, including lifelong learning.This timely book makes a major and original contribution to the development of knowledge and understanding of lifelong learning in an expanded Europe.
As researchers have developed increasingly more effective interventions aimed at relieving trauma symptoms, trauma therapists have come to understand that the success of these approaches is highly contingent on personal factors. Whether affected by disaster or interpersonal violence, each survivor of psychological trauma has undergone a uniquely personal experience. Recovery from that trauma is also highly variable and deeply dependent upon an individual’s distinctive history and cultural context.
This volume examines several current clinical approaches to trauma-focused treatment. Rather than describe theoretical approaches in isolation, the editors have integrated these interventions into a broader clinical context, emphasizing the importance of understanding evidence-based interventions in relation to each client’s unique presentation.
West Virginia University Press
New Deal Photographs of West Virginia, 1934−1943 presents images from the New Deal photography campaigns of West Virginia, including its northern and southern coalfields, the subsistence homestead communities of Arthurdale, Tygart Valley, and Eleanor, and the towns of Summersville, Richwood, and Point Pleasant. With over one hundred images by FSA photographers such as Walker Evans, Marion Post Wolcott, Arthur Rothstein, and Ben Shahn, this book reveals the experience of West Virginians – and all Americans – during the Great Depression.
Social work is the profession that claims to intervene to enhance people’s well-being. However, social workers have played a low-key role in environmental issues that increasingly impact on people’s well-being, both locally and globally. This compelling new contribution confronts this topic head-on, examining environmental issues from a social work perspective.
Does economic inequality in one generation lead to inequality of opportunity in the next? In From Parents to Children, an esteemed international group of scholars investigates this question using data from ten countries with differing levels of inequality. The book compares whether and how parents’ resources transmit advantage to their children at different stages of development and sheds light on the structural differences among countries that may influence intergenerational mobility.
Keywords:
Cash assistance
Child care
Child care subsidies
Child care tax credit
Child support
Earnings
Employer provided benefits
Employment
Enforcement
Families
Health
Health care
Income
Low income
Noncustodial parent
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
Work participation rates
Target Population(s):
Families
Low-income
Social security
Welfare recipients
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Social policy shapes the daily lives of every Canadian citizen and should reflect the beliefs of a majority of Canadians on just approaches to the promotion of health, safety, and well-being. Too often, those on the front lines—social workers, nurses, and teachers—observe that policies do not work well for the most vulnerable groups in society. In the first part of this new edition of Canadian Social Policy, Westhues and Wharf argue that service deliverers have discretion in how policies are implemented, and the exercise of this discretion is how citizens experience policy—whether or not it is fair and reasonable. They show the reader how social policy is made and they encourage active citizenship to produce policies that are more socially just. New material includes an examination of the reproduction of systemic racism through the implementation of human rights policy and a comparative analysis of the policy-making process in Quebec and English Canada.
Explores how issues of measure and value are emerging as central in current debates concerning the capacity of social science and cognate disciplines to engage contemporary social and cultural life
Women’s rights have progressed significantly in the last two decades, but major challenges remain in order to end global gender discrimination. The unfinished revolution: Voices from the global fight for women’s rights outlines the recent history of the battle to secure basic rights for women and girls, including in the Middle East where the hopes raised by the Arab Spring are yet to be fulfilled.
Each chapter focuses on one of the major presenting problems — anxiety, insomnia, depression, memory function, and behavioral disturbances — with researchers identifying successful evidence-based treatments (EBTs), and clinicians discussing how their specific expertise and flexibility maximized EBT fidelity while tailoring the EBT to the special needs and conditions of their older clients.
University of Wisconsin Press
To the outside world, Walter de Milly’s father was a prominent businessman, a dignified Presbyterian, and a faithful husband; to Walter, he was an overwhelming, handsome monster.
Updated to reflect the emerging field of online and other non–face-to-face interventions, Clinical Interviewing, Fourth Edition 2012–2013 Update blends a personal and easy-to-read style with a unique emphasis on both the scientific basis and interpersonal aspects of interviewing. John and Rita Sommers-Flanagan thoroughly explore clinical interviewing—from the very basics of listening to the latest skills needed as a practitioner.
University of Wisconsin Press
Chicago Whispers illuminates a colorful and vibrant record of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people who lived and loved in Chicago from the city’s beginnings in the 1670s as a fur-trading post to the end of the 1960s. Journalist St. Sukie de la Croix, drawing on years of archival research and personal interviews, reclaims Chicago’s LGBT past that had been forgotten, suppressed, or overlooked.
University of Washington Press
Working People in Alberta traces the history of labour in Alberta from the period of First Nations occupation to the present. Drawing on over two hundred interviews with labour leaders, activists, and ordinary working people, as well as on archival records, the volume gives voice to the people who have toiled in Alberta over the centuries. In so doing, it seeks to counter the view of Alberta as a one-class, one-party, one-ideology province, in which distinctions between those who work and those who own are irrelevant.
West Virginia University Press
Virtually unknown outside of her adopted hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, Jane Edna Hunter was one of the most influential African American social activists of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. In her autobiography A Nickel and a Prayer, Hunter presents an enlightening two-part narrative that recollects her formative years in the post-Civil War South and her activist years in Cleveland.
APA
Discussions of ethics in psychology often focus primarily on misconduct, punishment, and legal sanctions, and too often ignore aspirations, values, principles, and virtues. The net effect of this unbalanced approach creates an atmosphere in which psychologists have viewed ethics as unpleasant and frightening, instead of inspiring and uplifting. Psychologists naturally must be concerned about laws, codes, and regulations, but these documents do not constitute the beginning and end of the conversation on ethics. The editors of this 2-volume reference propose that ethics is best viewed as a striving toward the highest ethical ideals, not just as an injunction against rule violation—a perspective they refer to as “positive ethics” or “active ethics”—and they encourage psychologists to elevate their ethical observance above the minimal standards found in law and enforceable ethics codes.
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Qualitative methods are increasingly useful as psychiatry shifts from a focus on symptom reduction to enabling people to live satisfying and meaningful lives. It becomes important to achieve a deeper understanding of the ways in which mental illness interferes with everyday life and the ways in which people can learn to manage and minimize illness in order to pursue their lives as fully as possible. Although qualitative methods in psychiatry have seen a dramatic upsurge, relatively few published studies use such methods specifically to explore the lives, socio-culturally and experientially, of those with first-episode psychosis.
University of Washington Press
Over many decades, “contagion” has been a metaphor of choice for everything from global terrorism, suicide bombings, poverty, immigration, global financial crises, human rights, fast food, obesity, divorce, and homosexuality. Essays examine the language of epidemiology used in the war on terror, the repressive effects of global disease surveillance, and films and novels that enact the perplexities of contagion in a global context. Fear of microbial disaster becomes a framework for larger questions about the nature and location of sovereignty and the related questions of contact and hygienic isolation, fear and invisibility, the hazards of sociability, the security of surveillance, and what a healthy security might mean. Utilizing the cross-disciplinary approach of global studies, contagion emerges as a vexed trope for globalization itself.
APA
The APA Educational Psychology Handbook reflects the broad nature of the field today, with state-of-the-science reviews of the diverse critical theories driving research and practice; in-depth investigation of the range of individual differences and cultural/contextual factors that affect student achievement, motivation, and beliefs; and close examination of the research driving current assessment, decision making, teaching skills and content, teacher preparation, and the promotion of learning across the life span and with special populations.
The text covers classic concepts and popular topics, such as contingency tables, logistic models, and Poisson regression models, along with modern areas that include models for zero-modified count outcomes, parametric and semiparametric longitudinal data analysis, reliability analysis, and methods for dealing with missing values. R, SAS, SPSS, and Stata programming codes are provided for all the examples, enabling readers to immediately experiment with the data in the examples and even adapt or extend the codes to fit data from their own studies.
Over 2% of U.S.children under the age of 18—more than 1,700,000 children—have a parent in prison. These children experience very real disadvantages when compared to their peers: they tend to experience lower levels of educational success, social exclusion, and even a higher likelihood of their own future incarceration. Meanwhile, their new caregivers have to adjust to their new responsibilities as their lives change overnight, and the incarcerated parents are cut off from their children’s development.
This important textbook makes a timely contribution to international agendas in social work with lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people. It examines how practitioners and student social workers can provide appropriate care across the lifespan (including work with children and families and older people) and considers key challenges in social work practice, for example asylum, mental health, and substance misuse.
At least 5.6 million to 8 million – nearly one in five – older adults in America have one or more mental health and substance use conditions, which present unique challenges for their care. With the number of adults age 65 and older projected to soar from 40.3 million in 2010 to 72.1 million by 2030, the aging of America holds profound consequences for the nation.
The land-grant universities of the United States are this year celebrating the sesquicentennial of the Morrill Act, which not only led to the creation of many of the universities, but arguably was instrumental in the development of public higher education broadly.
Lauded for their contributions to statistics, psychology, and psychometrics, the authors make statistical methods relevant to readers’ day-to-day lives by including real historical situations that demonstrate the role of statistics in reasoning and decision making. The historical vignettes encompass the English case of Sally Clark, breast cancer screening, risk and gambling, the Federal Rules of Evidence, “high-stakes” testing, regulatory issues in medicine, difficulties with observational studies, ethics in human experiments, health statistics, and much more. In addition to these topics, seven U.S. Supreme Court decisions reflect the influence of statistical and psychometric reasoning and interpretation/misinterpretation.
This report examines trends in university finance, prospects for improving university operations, opportunities for deploying technology, and improvement in the regulation of higher education institutions. It also explores ways to improve pathways to graduate education, take advantage of opportunities to increase student diversity, and realign doctoral education for the careers new doctorates will follow. Research Universities and the Future of America is an important resource for policy makers on the federal and state levels, university administrators, philanthropic organizations, faculty, technology transfer specialists, libraries, and researchers.
Helping clients cope with problems of self is an important goal of modern psychotherapy. However, without ways of understanding or measuring the self and self-relevant behavior, it’s difficult for psychologists and researchers to determine if intervention has been effective. From a modern contextual behavioral point of view, the self develops in tandem with the ability to take perspective on one’s own and other people’s behavior.
This book introduces a series of guidelines, conventional and unconventional, that human service practitioners can use to explore the complexities of family dynamics regarding assessment and intervention. The authors provide readers with opportunities to apply these guidelines within the context of diverse family constellations, including the nuclear family, the single-parent family, the multigenerational family, foster or institutional families, lesbian and gay families, and blended families.
Evaluation research findings should be a key element of the policy-making process, yet in reality they are often disregarded. This valuable book examines the development of evaluation and its impact on public policy by analysing evaluation frameworks and criteria which are available when evaluating public policies and services. It further examines the nature of evidence and its use and non-use by decision-makers and assesses the work of influential academics in the USA and UK in the context of evaluation and policy making. The book emphasises the ‘real world’ of decision-makers in the public sector and recognises how political demands and economic pressures can affect the decisions of those who commission evaluation research while providing recommendations for policymakers on adopting a different approach to evaluation. This is essential reading for under-graduate and post-graduate students of policy analysis and public sector management, and those who are involved in the planning and evaluation of public policies and services.
Negotiating the dissolution of transnational personal relationships is extremely complicated. Women whose partners are abusive often turn to family members for assistance. When this means leaving one nation for another with one’s children, Hague Convention (1980) international treaties come into play. All too often, the mother is charged with child abduction and forced to return the children to an abusive father. Drawing on a series of true-life stories, the authors reveal important dimensions of domestic law, interpretations of children’s best interests, and the legal rationales required to ensure safety for battered women and their children across international boundaries.
APA
Editor-in-chief Howard J. Shaffer asked contributors to consider their areas of interest with respect to the addiction syndrome model. In addition, to advance the conceptual framework that guides addiction research and treatment, contributors were asked to provide evidence to support or refute the addiction syndrome model. Dr. Shaffer hopes this approach will stimulate an enthusiastic dialogue that can advance the field by revising and improving the etiological models that provide the guiding wisdom about addiction and its causes and consequences.