Changing U.S. demographics and family composition are challenging social work education programs to reposition and reconsider how to prepare students for practice in the field of geriatrics. Implications for future social service and health care needs include ongoing training and education of students with competencies in serving geriatric…

This study examines whether gender and employment status affect burnout, motives for volunteering, and difficulties associated with volunteer activity in social and community services in Israel. The sample included 375 men and women aged 16 through 80. Participants were divided into four groups by employment status: high school students, employed…

Background: Deinstitutionalisation of services for people with intellectual disabilities has become a focus of disability policy in many countries. Research for the most part supports this strategy. However, outcomes are not uniformly better for everyone who moves to community living. This paper explores reasons for variability in service quality…

This review outlines key areas of research in relation to the following: the nature of father involvement; factors influencing involvement; the influence of fathers on children; and social policy developments. It reviews the practice oriented research which has emerged in the UK as engaging fathers has become part of the agenda for many child…

Faced with the problems of access, distance and low population density, the provision of quality services to rural areas is inherently difficult. Although the role of market towns in alleviating problems in the provision of rural services has been given little consideration within the academic literature, they are currently being targeted by UK…

The author addresses the fact that many families with a borderline structure receive treatment throughout the life cycle. Serial episodic brief treatment is recommended, utilizing projective identification as an organizing principle to promote incremental change during each treatment episode. The author selects a child abuse case to review, that…

This paper is based on keynote addresses by Jane Woodruff, CEO, UnitingCare Burnside to the National Association of Community Based Children's Services, University of Wollongong, April 2004; and to the Mobile Children's Service Association Conference, Dubbo, August 2003. It offers the perspective of one NSW child and family welfare agency on…

The number of children who are adopted from foreign orphanages is on the rise in the U.S. Children who are reared in orphanages face a host of challenges to their healthy development and to their ability to form close, satisfying attachments with their new parents. The authors describe a group intervention used by the Yale International …

Globalization is a product of urbanization and economic intensification which has escalated since the 1970s. Globalized markets have created many of the features of modern life including consumerism, increased cultural homogeneity, increased social polarization, erosion of the sovereignty of nation states, and delocalization of daily life. The…

In 1997, the Canadian federal government faced a difficult policy problem. It wanted to make greater use of voluntary sector organizations to deliver government programs and to shape social policy. A first question for government was whom in the voluntary sector to engage. Unlike the United Kingdom, Canada does not have a tradition of national…

Services for families caring for a child with a learning disability are changing to become more family-centred, focusing not only on the child's needs but on those of the whole family. An evaluation of a newly developed Families Project in one Health and Social Service Trust area in Northern Ireland aimed to identify the impact on parents and ways…

This chapter presents the findings from a network analysis of a demonstration program for the developmentally disabled to show the application of graphical network analysis in program evaluation. The developmentally disabled demonstration (DDD) program was a five-year pilot project to provide person-centered service environments to people with …

A longitudinal matched-groups design was used to examine the quality and costs of community-based residential supports to people with mental retardation and challenging behavior. Two forms of provision were investigated: noncongregate settings, where the minority of residents had challenging behavior, and congregate settings, where the majority…

Objective: This study uses administrative data to track the first rereports of maltreatment in a low-income, urban child welfare population (n = 4957) while controlling for other public service involvement. Service system involvement is explored across the following sectors: Child Welfare, Income Maintenance, Special Education, Juvenile Court, and…

"Stress proliferation" (the tendency of stressors to engender additional stressors in other life domains) is explored in a sample of 68 parents of children identified with ASD. Regression analyses showed that parent depression was predicted by both child symptom severity and by stress proliferation and that stress proliferation partially mediated…