Substance Abuse Prevention Among High Risk Youth

The abuse of alcohol and other drugs (AOD) by youth is, once again, on the rise, emphasizing the need for prevention intervention. This article discusses the research on the prevention of substance abuse among youth who are identified as especially vulnerable to, or at high risk of, AOD abuse. The individual, interpersonal, and institutional risk factors associated with substance abuse among youth are described. Research on prevention programs for high risk youth is presented next, with a consideration of the methodological problems associated with this research. Despite the problems noted, the findings suggest there may be some effective methods of preventing substance abuse among high risk youth. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for prevention practice, as well as social policy.     

Political Elite Coalition and Local Administrative Reform in China—a case study of Shunde under Wang Yang

This article examines the importance of political elite coalitions at local levels to create institutional reform in contemporary China. By exploring Shunde’s administrative reforms under Wang Yang, Guangdong’s provincial Party secretary from 2008 to 2012, this article identifies a provincial–grassroots coalition as the essential impetus to local reforms. It argues that formation of political elite coalitions, built upon mutual trust through reciprocal interactions, is crucial for the success of reform. Within the coalition, the strong reformist provincial leader provides his leadership by becoming intensively involved in the reform process, while active grassroots cadres serve as designers and executors of reform plans. By means of a comparison between the scenarios of active grassroots cadres without Wang and Wang with less enthusiastic grassroots cadres, the article concludes that this political elite coalition is by nature fragile; if either side is not present, the coalition will collapse, resulting in either the failure of reform or a deviation of existing reforms to a less fruitful pattern.     

Adolescent Parents and Their Children: A Multifaceted Approach to Prevention of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)

Childhood experiences can have long-term effects. Research shows that children who undergo adverse childhood experiences (ACE) often have negative health and mental health outcomes later in life. Children of adolescent parents with high ACE Scores are at greater risk of ACE. As such, an intergenerational approach to preventing ACE is proposed in this article, addressing the needs of both the adolescent parent and their children. A review of the literature indicates that a public health perspective can guide the development of a prevention model aimed at reducing the effects of ACE. The current article proposes a universal, multifaceted, and interdisciplinary prevention science model that has two targets: adolescent parents and their children. Schools and early childhood programs can be mobilized to offer community prevention strategies across realms to include the individual, community, provider, coalitions/networks, organizational practices, and policy/legislation.     

My life as a community activist

The author recounts his life and how it led to a career as an activist community psychology practitioner with a focus on issues of social justice. He tells of his upbringing, family and education as the background to a series of positions in various systems. The story shows an evolution from working with individuals to working with whole communities; and from working on issues of remediation and treatment to working on prevention and finally empowerment, social change, and social justice. The story of his life parallels the social issues of the time. Throughout the accounting of his life the author raises the questions that he was struggling with. The sequence of those questions is as follows: Can I emerge as a community leader? What do I do with that leadership? Can my work in psychology have any relationship to the larger social issues? Can my politics, social action and beliefs in social justice, be integrated with my mental health job? Can I find a setting that will tolerate and permit me to do work to create social change and reduce oppression? Can we build competent helping systems with partners from many sectors? Can we mobilize whole communities around community crises? Can we use coalition building to make a difference in quality of life? And finally: How can our spirituality inform our work for social change and how can our social change work to inform our spirituality?     

Interdisciplinary Programs in Community and Applied Research

SUMMARY

This article describes the critical role of interdisciplinary programs in addressing the mission of the Society for Community Research and Action. In the past decade, interdisciplinary approaches to graduate education have increased in importance yet the makeup of the Society does not reflect this change. The mission, organization, and curriculum focus of five programs are described. They include human development and family studies, social welfare, law/psychology, and community-social psychology. Prevention research and program evaluation are highlighted as key areas for program development.     

Successful Program Development Using Implementation Evaluation

SUMMARY

Four methods used to enhance implementation of a resiliency-based early childhood substance abuse and violence prevention initiative are described. Project staff drew up formal agreements with participating programs to ensure administrative support for the intervention, provided high quality training for program implemcnt-ers, used a participatory evaluation approach, and monitored implementation both directly and through practitioners' self-report. The contribution of each of these methods to fidelity of implementation is discussed, and implementation challenges are identified. The growth and success of the project demonstrates the utility of implementation evaluation data for ongoing program development and improvement.     

略论社区防控青少年犯罪

预防青少年犯罪已经成为世界共同关注的问题。社区防控能够整合社会资源,弥补监禁刑的弊端,是预防青少年犯罪的有效途径。通过社区环境建设、社区设施建设、社区文化建设、社区服务建设、社区工作队伍建设构建社区防控青少年犯罪的体系,是当前建设社会主义和谐社会的必然选择。     

社会转型期的妇女社会工作

本文分析了“妇女社会工作”与“妇女工作”、“妇联工作”的关系,对我国传统妇女工作进行了全方位的回审,阐明了我国传统妇女工作进行现代转型的必要性及其要跨越的主要现实障碍,指出强化妇女社会工作是传统妇女工作模式转化的关键。文章重点论述了转型期我国妇女社会工作整体推进的思路,即妇联组织的工作模式需进行现代转型,高等院校需强化对妇女社会工作的教研投入,社会力量特别是民间妇女组织需深度介入妇女社会工作,妇女社会工作的社会政策法规运行环境需进一步优化等,应努力构建“专业化、职业化、社会化”的三位一体模式,并朝着本土化的方向不断发展。     

Translating the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study into Public Policy: Progress and Possibility in Washington State

On June 15, 2011, Washington became the first state in the United States to enact legislation aimed at preventing adverse childhood experiences (ACE), reducing their prevalence, and mitigating their effects. House Bill 1965 (HB 1965) was established on the understanding among legislators and Washington communities of the need for policies aimed at preventing child abuse, promoting healthy development of children, and building community capacity to improve public health. Empirical examples of integrating ACE-related research with public policy and programmatic design are chronicled. The legislators who developed HB 1965 lay out questions that, if answered, would further improve policymakers' ability to craft public policy and programs that prevent ACE, reduce their effects, and promote a healthier, safer future.     

高校介入社区矫正的理性思考

社区矫正是与监禁矫正相对的行刑方式,是行刑社会化理念的体现。社区矫正的有效开展离不开社会力量的积极参与,"社会参与性"是社区矫正的本质特征之一。而我国目前社区矫正实践反映出来的突出问题在于社会力量参与度太低,社会资源未得到充分利用,在一定程度上影响了社区矫正的效果。高校作为我国社会力量的重要组成部分,集合了优质的社会资源,其在理念生成、技术研发和人才培养等方面具有独特的优势,是一种重要的社会资本。而我国社区矫正向纵深推进,需要在理念、技术和人才三个维度实现创新。因此,我国高校的优势契合了社区矫正的现实需要,高校力量加盟社区矫正具有现实可行性。     

PSYCHOSOCIAL CHANGE IN RISK GROUPS:

A consideration of psychosocial change in groups of infants and children at risk for schizophrenia, developmental retardation, delinquency, learning disability, substance abuse, child abuse, and hyperactivity leads to the conclusion that individuals are likely to move in and out of risk status as far as any given developmental phase is concerned. The frequency of review needed for disorders involving a long time span and major phases of development makes periodic developmental assessment by service providers more feasible than screening by an external screening team.     

谈社区警务的运作模式——兼论打防控一体化的理论与实践

社区警务不仅是一种警务模式、警务方法,更是一种警务理念、警务哲学。打防控一体化是把社区警务理论与地区实际相结合的具体运用,是扩大化的社区警务,是社区警务运作模式的一种实践,可概括为建立三个机制,构架两个网络,即治安管控机制、社区服务机制、快速反映机制和人防网络、技防网络。     

Attitudes of a community members as a function of participatory research with Oxford Houses

Citizen participation in research may include involvement in generating original ideas, planning appropriate designs, collecting data, and helping to implement interventions. Unfortunately, little is known about the attitudes of the community members who participate in such research processes. In the present exploratory study, a team of community members (4 men, 3 women; age > 30 years old) who were employed as investigator research associates to evaluate an innovative substance abuse recovery home were asked for their perspectives about their involvement in the research effort. Findings indicated that these community members felt their participation was a positive experience. Moreover, while their understanding and sense of participation in the research process increased, their identification and affiliation with their support organization was not reduced. Results imply that there is a need to better understand how citizen members of community organizations are affected by their involvement in the research process.     

对农村信用社改革成为社区银行的思考

社区银行是西方发达国家一种成功的银行经营模式,它经营机制灵活,在解决中小企业融资困难、满足居民金融需求、提高银行业竞争力等方面发挥了显著作用。该文对社区银行的概念界定、特点及国外社区银行的成功经验进行简要介绍,针对中国农村信用社发展社区银行存在的障碍和问题,提出建议。     

Cultivating and maintaining effective action research partnerships: the DePaul and Oxford House collaborative

In this paper, we review the result of research conducted in the context of a 13-year collaborative partnership between DePaul University and a community-based, self-run, residential substance abuse recovery program called Oxford House. This collaborative effort highlights several examples of the research and action activities fostering a positive alliance that benefited both the research team and the Oxford House community. It also proposed practical guidelines for developing effective action research collaboratives that may be helpful to others who desire to cultivate and maintain similar mutually beneficial partnerships; including such processes as the development of trust, respecting the personal experiences of the community members and group, commitment to serving the community, validating findings with organization members, and accountability.     

The mental health association and prevention

Summary

The history of the Mental Health Association's involvement in prevention is described. From its inception in 1909 the Association has played a key role in advocating for prevention. It contributed to the Child Guidance Center movement, the community mental health center movement, and helped focus the 1978 President's Commission on Mental Health on prevention. In recent years, it has served as the catalyst for the formation of a coalition of national organizations with an interest in prevention.     

Individual differences in safe behavior: A safety practitioner's viewpoint

SUMMARY

This paper focuses on the school as a setting for community-based prevention of factors that place learners at risk such as poverty, violence, substance abuse, learning difficulties and HIV/AIDS. It examines the development of school-based structures aimed at addressing these issues. The health promoting and inclusive schools approaches are explored as strategies to address these and other barriers to learning.

Reference is made to innovative practice at a school in a disadvantaged community outside of Cape Town. The case study reveals how school-based teams could be utilized to mobilize school communities in generating solutions to the difficulties that they encounter.     

和谐社会视野中的青少年犯罪社区预防

青少年犯罪的预防离不开和谐社会的创建。在和谐社会视野下,和谐社区是和谐社会的基础,营造社区良好的人文环境,树立专门机关与社区资源相结合的情境预防防线以及引入社区矫正等少年司法制度都是可行的社区犯罪预防措施,构建起对青少年犯罪的社区预防系统。社区能充分发挥犯罪预防的作用,需要对社区预防自身的地位提高认识,协调好两大主体的功能,并由政府作为社区预防的坚强保障。     

Prevalence and Predictors of Service Utilization Among Racially and Ethnically Diverse Adolescents in Foster Care Diagnosed With Mental Health and Substance Abuse Disorders

This study examined the prevalence of mental health and substance abuse disorders and service utilization among a racially and ethnically diverse group of foster youth. Self-report data on symptoms and service receipt were used to identify whether groups of adolescents defined by their race and ethnicity were equally likely to receive services given the presence of a mental health or substance use disorder. Study findings showed that Caucasians are more likely to receive mental health services than African Americans. Race was not a significant predictor of accessing substance abuse services. Hispanic ethnicity was not a predictor of receipt of mental health or substance abuse treatment services. Implications for future research, practice, and policy are discussed.     

Chapter 1

Abstract

In this paper, we review the result of research conducted in the context of a 13-year collaborative partnership between DePaul University and a community-based, self-run, residential substance abuse recovery program called Oxford House. This collaborative effort highlights several examples of the research and action activities fostering a positive alliance that benefited both the research team and the Oxford House community. It also proposed practical guidelines for developing effective action research collaboratives that may be helpful to others who desire to cultivate and maintain similar mutually beneficial partnerships; including such processes as the development of trust, respecting the personal experiences of the community members and group, commitment to serving the community, validating findings with organization members, and accountability.