Putting a Toe in the Water

SUMMARY

This article describes the author's experience entering a second career in community psychology in mid-life. The issues relating the author's first career and community psychology are discussed, as are his current activities, interests and reflections.     

Doctoral Education in Clinical-Community Psychology

SUMMARY

This paper provides an overview of doctoral clinical-community psychology programs and highlights some possible future directions in training. Clinical-community doctoral programs were categorized as: (1) formally labeled clinical-community programs, (2) clinical programs with a formal community track, or (3) clinical programs with an informal community emphasis. Many graduates from these programs obtain a basic understanding and appreciation of community psychology through required or elective courses, and through contact with students and faculty involved in community research and action. Those students who focus their research and electives around community psychology obtain a thorough and in-depth training experience in community research and action. Changes precipitated by managed care will challenge current ways that psychological services are provided allowing for more community based, innovative, and preventive approaches for which community psychology training would be particularly useful. Greater flexibility in APA accreditation guidelines provide opportunities for greater flexibility within clinical-community programs. Doctoral programs in clinical-community psychology are positioned to lead the development of a public health and human service approach to doctoral training through the integration of community and clinical psychology.     

Advocacy for prevention: The role of the mental health association in Michigan

SUMMARY

This paper describes the application of such community psychology principles of empowerment and systemic interventions in a variety of applied settings, including school systems, a university campus, and a community hospital. The consistent application of such principles illustrates one way in which a viable career as community psychologist can be maintained in settings that do not have community psychology positions per se.     

The Pinjarra Massacre Site Project

SUMMARY

The work described in this article came about as a result of the author's doctoral studies. What began as a program of action research developed into concrete social action dealing with issues of social justice and reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups in a town in Australia's Southwest. The strong collaborative partnerships that developed during the research process led to employment on a project concerned with promoting the recognition of a massacre of local Indigenous people in the early days of European invasion. While a community psychologist was not necessarily the obvious person for the job, the article demonstrates how key principles of community psychology guided the project, and were in fact vital for its success.     

Rapid Assessment Procedures

SUMMARY

Given the racialization of subjective, material and historical realities in South Africa, psychological training and practice in community raise crucial and often thorny ethical, epistemological and methodological questions. This article appraises the strengths and limitations of using Rapid Assessment Procedures (RAP) (Afonja, 1992) in the field training of postgraduate students in community-counseling psychology. Rooted in an activist participatory action research framework (Lykes, 1997), RAP provide a framework for the collective exploration of locally constructed representations of a community's needs and resources; joining the ‘community’ (negotiating a dialogical form of communication and a respect for the insider-outsider dialectic); working through one's ‘situated otherness’; and deracializing psychological training and practice.     

The Role of Community in Facilitating Service Utilization

SUMMARY

Guided by an integrated theory of parent participation, this study examines the role community characteristics play in influencing a parent's decision to use voluntary child abuse prevention programs. Multiple regression techniques were used to determine if different community characteristics, such as neighborhood distress and the community's ratio of caregivers to those in need of care, predict service utilization levels in a widely available home visiting program. Our findings suggest that certain community characteristics are significant predictors of the extent to which families utilize voluntary family supports over and above the proportion of variance explained by personal characteristics and program experiences. Contrary to our initial assumptions, however, new parents living in the most disorganized communities received more home visits than program participants living in more organized communities. The article concludes with recommendations on how community capacity building might be used to improve participant retention.     

Breaking Fresh Ground

ABSTRACT

In the present paper, the author introduces her roles and duties at her current job. The author then describes how she got into community psychology and primary prevention and how her graduate school and previous work experiences have influenced her current work. Focusing on primary prevention, the author delineates how the two community psychology concepts -primary prevention and action research -can be applied to the promotion of adolescent mental health in the Korean society. The author then adds advice for foreign students who are considering studying community psychology in the U.S.     

On Becoming a Community Psychologist

Abstract

Recounts the author's professional life history in the context of his personal life story. Reflects on the ways in which history and autobiography combine to create life pathways that are experienced as individually chosen, yet historically determined. Recounts the author's family life, neighborhood experiences, early education in the Philadelphia public schools, and the impact of post-World War II government programs including the GI Bill and the establishment of United States Public Health Service fellowships. Considers the influence of African American writers and the civil rights movement, as well as women returning to school, the culture of medical schools and the influence of mentors in the formation of a professional identity. Recounts the discovery of the community mental health movement and the search for a social justice agenda that led to Community Psychology. Ultimately, the author views himself as an “insider/outsider,” whose personal and professional identity crosses traditional boundaries and welcomes paradoxical, narrative and qualitative approaches to research and practice.     

Social and Environmental Predictors of Adjustment in Homeless Children

SUMMARY

Both the field of community psychology and the disability rights movement, including the field of disability studies, have been growing over the last 30 years. While common values, principles, and strategies have emerged within these two fields, they have often emerged independently and in ignorance of each other. Recognition of the value of community psychology perspectives on disabilities and community action is the motivation both for this special volume and for the disability interest group of the Society for Community Research and Action. In this article, we examine the action steps different authors have identified as important in responding effectively to community needs. We identify a general model and three settings which require an adaptation of this general model. These settings differ in the extent to which the recipients (consumers, people with disabilities) are already established as a community, and the extent to which providers (agencies, government) have established relationships with that community. We offer concluding comments regarding collaboration and knowledge sharing between the field of disability studies and community psychology.     

A Research Revolution in Women's Health

SUMMARY

Women's health research initiatives are emerging with evidence that there are unique diagnosis and intervention factors that provide a window into the specific health needs of women. The evidence of the need for this gender-specific research is being spurred by the establishment of The Office of Research on Women's Health by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A review of some of the more current and salient research findings that apply to women's health and the health needs of women in different lifestyles, at different stages of the life cycle is discussed. Also considered are women's roles in the health service delivery system and where they fit into the provision of services within the context of women's styles of accessing and using health care. Self-help and other support programs will be described as they apply specifically to women and a case will be made for providing comprehensive, multi-systemic women's health services in one facility at the community level through an overview of some of the more current and successful models.     

School Violence Prevention

Abstract

School violence has many faces and many casualties. In varying degrees it touches students, parents, educators and communities of every school world wide. At the local level, communities are seen as playing a significant role in violence prevention. Generally, community-based violence prevention approaches involve the assessment of local problems, identification of target issues, selection of a range of interventions, and the encouragement of collaboration among civic groups, the juvenile justice system, local leaders, and young people themselves. These programs are generally judged as successful if they are able to address risk factors effectively for individual youths, strengthen those factors that provide protection and enhance resiliency, provide sufficient support and effective supervision, and increase pro-social attitudes by providing youth with a sense of having an increased stake in their local communities. Although too few educators are aware of its impact, the women's community has been involved in this work for decades. In this paper I discuss the results of interviews with members of the women's community in Atlantic Canada who have developed proactive violence prevention initiatives. I will concentrate on their efforts to bring those programs into the schools and their experiences of the successes and challenges they encounter.     

Education and Employment in Rural Alaska

SUMMARY

The history of my work experience in rural Alaska suggests the value of combining academic and field experience in community psychology with employment in graduate school. Twelve years of employment in rural Alaska leading to my present position with a rural Alaska Native Health organization is briefly reviewed. It is concluded that graduate students should examine, carefully and openly, their choices in preparing a path for applied community psychology employment.     

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.     

Design and Implementation of Parent Programs for a Community-Wide Adolescent Alcohol Use Prevention Program

SUMMARY

Project Northland is a comprehensive community trial designed to evaluate programs for the primary prevention of alcohol-related problems during adolescence. It uses a community-wide model, that includes both demand and supply reduction techniques. The first phase of Project Northland (grades 6-8) was completed with the effective implementation of multiple, complementary programs including a multi-year social behavioral curriculum, intensive parental involvement components, peer leadership opportunities, and community-level changes through the formation of local task forces. This article describes the process used for developing and implementing the comprehensive parent interventions used during the first phase of the research, highlighting the elements that led to the successful implementation of the programs with very high participation rates by parents, their young adolescents, teachers, and community members.     

Implementing a Violence Intervention for Inner-City Adolescents

SUMMARY

Violence is a growing public health problem that disproportionately affects African American adolescents. There is a pressing need for more attention to be directed to the development of theoretically-based, research-validated, culturally sensitive preventive interventions and programs. This article focuses on the steps involved in the development, implementation, and evaluation of a culturally-specific program designed to reduce the prevalence of violent behaviors and related injuries and deaths among urban, African American teens. The project's success was heavily dependent upon the commitment and cooperation of the community organizations that participated in the field research. Although numerous unexpected challenges were encountered, the preliminary findings indicate that it is possible to effectively implement preventive interventions in urban communities with modest funding.     

Parents as teachers project

SUMMARY

Individuals with interests in children and families, as well as in critically examining interventions and service systems may consider opportunities for evaluation research in Child Welfare. As the field increasingly adopts multi-level preventative interventions, positions may offer opportunities for motivated individuals with skills in articulating and examining phenomena at individual, family, community and organizational levels. The paper follows one pathway from graduate school to a position within an organizational context manifesting many of the major themes in contemporary community psychology, including capacity building and empowerment, community development and multi-level prevention interventions, consumer involvement and the stimulating role of program evaluation. The purposeful collection of practical experience is suggested as an important balance to rigorous academic preparation and creative exploration of different professional roles.     

Parenting education: Primary prevention in a rural community

SUMMARY

The present paper describes the educational background and current role of a community psychologist conducting tobacco control studies at a research institute affiliated with a university medical school. This includes how the author originally became interested in community psychology as an undergraduate, chose a graduate training program and postdoctoral fellowship, and how this training was instrumental in obtaining the current position.