IN SEARCH OF PERMANENCY

President Clinton signed the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) into law on November 19, 1997. ASFA is designed to prevent children in foster care from being returned to unsafe homes and to find safe homes for children who are not able to return to their families. Some critics say that ASFA is too extensive and intrusive; others feel it does not go far enough. The author focuses on the practical issues of what ASFA has done so far and how various communities can still use it to ameliorate some of their child welfare problems. She begins with the history of child welfare in the United States, followed by an extensive discussion of ASFA's provisions. The author then addresses criticisms of some of ASFA's key components. A discussion of the ways the states have implemented ASFA follows. The author concludes that ASFA could be a powerful and important tool in aiding the child welfare system.     

Memories of menarche: Age,preparation, and prior knowledge as determinants of initial menstrual experience

The relationships between age at menarche, preparation for menarche, and initial experience of menarche, were assessed in a retrospective questionnaire administered to 97 college-aged women. The more knowledgeable a girl was prior to menarche, the more adequate she perceived her preparation for menarche to have been; and the older she was at the time of menarche, the more likely she was to report a positive initial experience. These data support clinical anecdotes describing initial responses to menarche, and provide information about the factors which can moderate the extent to which menarche is experienced as a traumatic and disruptive event.Portions of this research were presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Hartford, Conn., April 1980.Received Ph.D. in psychology from Tufts University. Major interests are psychobiology and adolescent development.Received Ph.D. in psychology from Clark University. Major interests are clinical psychology and personality development.Received Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University. Major interest is cognitive development.     

Representation of the female body by early and late adolescent girls

A group of 153 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade girls and a group of 95 college women produced human figure drawings. Comparisons were made between early and late adolescents and, within the group of early adolescents, between pre- and postmenarcheal girls, of the frequency with which secondary sexual characteristics, namely, breasts, were explicitly depicted on the female figures. Early adolescents were found to represent breasts more explicitly than late adolescents. Parallel results were found for pre- and postmenarcheal girls in the seventh grade. The results suggest that early adolescents emphasize and are preoccupied with body parts whose changes signal the beginning of puberty, while later adolescents, being past the period of most rapid growth and change in body contour, have a more integrated body image.This research was supported in part by Wellesley College Faculty Development Awards to each of the two authors.Received Ph.D. in psychology from Clark University. Major interests are clinical psychology and personality development. Correspondence should be addressed to this author.Received Ph.D. in psychology from Tufts University. Major interests are psychobiology and adolescent development.     

Simultaneous separation of different types of amphetamine and piperazine designer drugs by capillary electrophoresis with a chiral selector

The recent emergence of a new class of piperazine-type compounds has brought about the need for laboratory screening methods for both seized drugs and toxicological samples. These piperazine compounds, which include 1-benzylpiperazine (BZP) and 1-(3-trifluoromethylphenyl)piperazine (TFMPP), exhibit comparable physiological effects and can be substituted for the classic amphetamine-type drugs. We have optimized a chiral capillary electrophoresis (CE) separation that detects a set of 6 piperazine and 4 chiral amphetamine compounds in under 23 min using a 200 mM phosphate buffer at a pH = 2.8 with 20 mM hydroxypropyl- beta-cyclodextrin (HPbeta3CD). In addition to the above compounds, a series of "clandestine" BZP diHCl samples were also analyzed using this method to assess the ruggedness of the procedure. The novel CE separation was tailored to simultaneously detect these piperzine compounds in addition to amphetamine-type drugs. Distinct migration time and UV-spectral data were obtained for all compounds of interest.     

Sexual predator civil commitment: a comparison of selected and released offenders

This study compared two groups of sex offenders who were considered for civil commitment under Florida's Jimmy Ryce Act: Two hundred twenty-nine sex offenders who were recommended by forensic evaluators to be civilly committed and 221 sex offenders who were recommended for release. It was hypothesized that selected offenders would be more likely to display risk factors for sex offense recidivism than those who did not meet criteria. Data analyses revealed that selected offenders, as a group, scored significantly higher on actuarial risk assessment instruments. There were also significant differences between the groups on other risk factors that have been empirically correlated with sexual recidivism. Selected offenders had higher frequencies of paraphilia diagnoses and antisocial personality. These findings supported the hypotheses and suggested that evaluators are correctly selecting for civil commitment those sex offenders who have a mental abnormality predisposing them to sexual violence and who are at higher risk for reoffense.