Predictors of Early Engagement in Home Visitation

Predictors of engagement in mothers receiving home visitation in the first year of service was examined. Early engagement was studied in three ways: (1) length of time active in the program during the first year of service (duration), (2) number of visits received (quantity), and (3) gaps in service between visits (consistency). Examined visits received in 515 first-time mothers in a Healthy Families America (HFA) program. Parameters of engagement were investigated, and predictors of engagement were identified using demographics and the Kempe Family Stress Inventory. Inclusive of the Assessment Visit, 31.8% of mothers disengaged prior to the first month of service. Remaining active in the program was associated with being Caucasian, and increased parenting risk (mental health/substance abuse history, low social support, increased stress). Most mothers had fewer home visits than prescribed. Gaps in prescribed service were common, with 89.4% of mothers experiencing gaps between visits of 1 month, and dropping to 16.4% having gaps of 2 months. In contrast to findings from clinic-based interventions, early engagement in home visitation is associated with lower levels of functioning and acute needs. These findings add to a growing body of literature suggesting that increased adversity promotes engagement in prevention programs in general, and home visitation programs in particular. To the extent that mothers who are actively engaged in home visitation are likely to have increased psychosocial needs, curricula may require modification and augmentation to address these needs and optimize program effectiveness.     

FRAGMENTED COURTS AND CHILD PROTECTION CASES

This article discusses the proposed implementation of a model court project that can serve as an alternative approach to adjudicating child abuse and neglect cases. The model project allows criminal child abuse cases to be processed with related civil proceeding in one court before one judge. This integrated approach can ensure more efficient case processing, more informed judicial decision making, and more effective delivery of services to children and families.     

Strong life sciences in innovative weak contexts: a “developmental” approach to a tantalizing mismatch

Life sciences are the best developed area of academic research throughout Latin America. Biomedical research has been particularly successful. However, generally speaking, excellence in research has not been accompanied by commercially successful innovations, a pattern that differs from what has happened in many highly industrialized countries, even small ones. The paper explores some causes of such disappointing outcome, stressing in particular the historical lack of political and social legitimacy exhibited by innovation policies in underdevelopment. From a developmental point of view it is of great importance the building of such legitimacy. One way of doing so is to link more tightly innovation policies to social concerns; bio-innovation is suggested as a productive path towards that aim.

STRATEGIES AND NEED FOR SYSTEMS CHANGE

Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye of New York delivered the following address to the Millennium Conference of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges in Washington, D.C., on November 15, 1999. In it, she describes the development of the philosophy of the family court in the past century. Judge Kaye describes the family court's transition from reliance on social science to the incorporation of procedural due process guarantees in the Gault decision. She suggests that a further transformation is required to meet the needs of children and families in the 21st century. Judge Kaye proposes that in the next millennium the family court abandon the "remote adjudicator" judge who evolved after Gault to a "problem-solving model of judging… a judge who looks at the issues that are driving the caseload, who looks at the results that are being achieved, and who uses a hands-on style to figure out how we might do better both in individual cases and on a systemic level."
The New York Times described Chief Justice Kaye as, "A dedicated and effective reformer of the state's sprawling court system. Each of her hard won changes has had a positive impact." Chief Judge Kaye recently received the National Center for State Courts' William H. Rhenquist Award for Judicial Excellence in November 1999. On the occasion of the award, Roger K. Warren, president of the National Center, observed about her,"There are many who are working hard to better process the many cases that come before the state courts, but there are few working an harder or more successfully to better serve the people who use the state courts."     

"The word makes the man": A Catalan Anarchist Autodidact in the Australian Bush

This paper examines the interplay between the life and ideas of a Catalan anarchist and autodidact, Salvador Torrents, who migrated to Australia in 1915. Until his death in 1951, Torrents, from his isolated farm in North Queensland, contributed regular commentaries and articles in libertarian newspapers in Spain, France and the United States. With the exception of the years of the Spanish civil war, Torrents remained outside mainstream Australian labour politics. Like many non-English speaking immigrants, a lack of the language was an obstacle to participation. As well, as an anarchist, Torrents considered political parties and electoral politics a waste of time in achieving social and political change. Instead he propounded, and practised, the transformative powers of self-education and the revolutionary role of the autodidact in fomenting radical change. His ideas had been forged in the turbulent politics of Catalonia in the first decades of the century. In Australia he continued to apply the same analysis in what he perceived as the similar context which Southern European immigrants confronted in North Queensland. Although invisible on the Australian Left, Torrents functioned as a left wing intellectual, contributing to a particular public discourse, which took place in a space that was separated from the mainstream Australian Left by language and different radical traditions.