Providing Foster Care for Adolescents: Barriers and Opportunities

This study used quantitative and qualitative data from a larger research project regarding foster parent experiences to examine the characteristics that predict a parent’s willingness to foster an adolescent. Data collected from closed- and open-ended items related to reasons for not fostering a teen were also analyzed. Findings suggest parents who are older and were a foster child themselves, increased the likelihood they would foster a teen. When discussing reasons for not fostering an adolescent, parents identified fears of problem behaviors and concerns about negative impact on other children; findings that were corroborated in responses to the open-ended comments.     

Gender and Modernity in Post‐War British Cinema; a case study of Young Wives’ Tale (1951)

This article explores the interrelationship between gender and modernity within the context of post‐war Britain, focusing upon the representation of women in the popular film genre of the ‘marriage comedy’. It uses a case study of the 1951 film Young Wives’ Tale to explore post‐war ideas about the ‘companionate marriage’ and the emergence of a ‘modern’ British society. Critical examination of female performance style and the gendered negotiation of domestic space within the film suggests the ways in which anxieties about the ‘new’ and the ‘modern’ are displaced onto the female protagonists. The article explores the ways in which ‘tradition’ is usurped in the film and concludes that it was a box office failure because it was out of step with the cultural consciousness of post‐war cinema audiences. The film’s lack of success demonstrates the extent and manner to which gender relations could be challenged in the early 1950s.     

Putting Dad in the Picture: fatherhood in the popular women's magazines of 1950s Australia

This article explores the shifting meaning of fatherhood within the popular women's magazines of 1950s Australia. Breadwinning fatherhood reigned throughout the decade, and magazines such as Women's Weekly and Woman's Day keenly emphasised the care of children as a mother's domain. Even in these manuals of idealised motherhood, though, this division was not inviolate. As the 1950s went on, letters, articles and advertisements make it clear that fathers—just as the breadwinner was legitimated by economic boom—were increasingly expected to do more than simply earn the bread, although these expectations fell some way short of a gender revolution.     

What Interventions Work Best for Families Who Experience Homelessness? Impact Estimates from the Family Options Study

What housing and service interventions work best to reduce homelessness for families in the United States? The Family Options Study randomly assigned 2,282 families recruited in homeless shelters across 12 sites to priority access to one of three active interventions or to usual care in their communities. The interventions were long‐term rent subsidies, short‐term rent subsidies, and transitional housing in supervised programs with intensive psychosocial services. In two waves of follow‐up data collected 20 and 37 months later, priority access to long‐term rent subsidies reduced homelessness and food insecurity and improved other aspects of adult and child well‐being relative to usual care, at a cost 9 percent higher. The other interventions had little effect. The study provides support for the view that homelessness for most families is an economic problem that long‐term rent subsidies resolve and does not support the view that families must address psychosocial problems to succeed in housing. It has implications for focusing government resources on this important social problem.     

Voter‐weighted environmental preferences

This article examines the political economy of preferences with respect to the environment using a new stated preference survey that presents the first benefit values for national water quality levels. The mean valuation greatly exceeds the median value, as the distribution of valuations is highly skewed. The study couples the survey valuations with unique and extensive information on respondent voting patterns. Preferences of registered voters are similar to the preferences of the population at large, but median voters value water quality more than nonvoters. The strongest contrast related to voter‐weighted preferences is among voters for different candidates, as those who voted for Gore in the 2000 presidential election have the highest environmental values. © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

A Reconnaissance of Alternative Measures of Effective Property Tax Rates

Informed policy discussions on local property tax reform initiatives require accurate and reliable information about the tax's current use. This paper reviews two popular measures of property tax burden and their limitations. The paper then reports the results of a reconnaissance of measures of effective property tax rates and how they vary across the 50 states. The paper also reports the findings of a 50-state survey that indicates how states calculated and reported effective property tax rates. These comparisons lead to a suggested framework for certain methodologies for calculating effective property tax rates.     

Not in isolation: the necessity of systemic heuristic devices in all development practice

This brief essay is a response to the article by Cooke (Cooke, 1997) in which he sets out the case for a clinical model of development practice. Developing the theme that any methodology taken in isolation will become self-fulfilling in its activity and taking up Cooke's ‘challenges for Development Studies’ whilst building off the criticism set out by Blunt (Blunt, 1997) and upon an earlier work, I set out the imperative for inclusive and systemic tools to aid our understanding of development contexts. Paradigms of scientific thought (the prisons of Blunt) and tyrannies of methodology are unwholesome and ultimately self-destructive devices. It is argued that only by adopting a holistic systems approach, including the wealth of potential tools for problems solving and developing our creative thinking in partnership, can development studies achieve real understanding of what must otherwise always be seen as remaining an unknowable and mysterious context. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.