Psychotropic Medications for Youth in Child Welfare: Developing and Pilot-Testing A Field Guide for Team Decision-Making

High rates of children involved with the child welfare system are prescribed psychotropics. In response, federal legislation has mandated state child welfare agencies to develop policies to improve the coordination and oversight around the use of psychotropics. This project aimed to support such policies by developing and pilot-testing a field guide for team discussions and decision-making related to the use of psychotropics among youth in child welfare. We used a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework to engage a team of local stakeholders, including former youth in foster care and parents, in the research. We developed a field guide to facilitate team discussions and decisions around the individual needs and preferences of youth and families, and we pilot-tested the field guide with child welfare staff, parents, and care team members in seven team meetings. Parents and care team members, in particular, highly valued the guide and found it useful to increase knowledge and improve practices such as side effect monitoring and information sharing. Child welfare responses were more mixed, and some reported feeling burdened by the additional tasks. More work is needed to integrate the guide into routine child welfare practice and reduce burden on staff.     

The impact of TUPE on compulsory competitive tendering: Evidence from employers

The transposing of the 1977 Acquired Rights Directive into UK law has resulted in prolonged uncertainty regarding whether its protection of terms and conditions of employment extends to workers transferred under compulsory competitive tendering (CCT). In this paper we examine briefly the origins and scope of the directive and the development of relevant case law. We then report the results of a survey of employers confirming the existence of widespread confusion over the legal position of transferred employees. We also provide evidence that terms and conditions of employment are commonly being revised following CCT transfers. Concentrating upon the responses of contractors we show that any experience of litigation tends to lead to a less favourable assessment of the overall success of CCT. We conclude by examining both the causes and consequences of the continuing legal confusion associated with CCT transfers and consider the policy implications of our findings.     

Progress Toward the Determination of Correct Classification Rates in Fire Debris Analysis,,

Principal components analysis (PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA) were used to develop a multistep classification procedure for determining the presence of ignitable liquid residue in fire debris and assigning any ignitable liquid residue present into the classes defined under the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) E 1618‐10 standard method. A multistep classification procedure was tested by cross‐validation based on model data sets comprised of the time‐averaged mass spectra (also referred to as total ion spectra) of commercial ignitable liquids and pyrolysis products from common building materials and household furnishings (referred to simply as substrates). Fire debris samples from laboratory‐scale and field test burns were also used to test the model. The optimal model's true‐positive rate was 81.3% for cross‐validation samples and 70.9% for fire debris samples. The false‐positive rate was 9.9% for cross‐validation samples and 8.9% for fire debris samples.     

Sex Trafficking and Moral Harm: Politicised Understandings and Depictions of the Trafficked Experience

This paper explores notions of harm in sex work discourse, highlighting the extent to which essentialist ideas of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ sex have pervaded trafficking policy. In a comparative examination of Australian Parliamentary Inquiries and United States congressional hearings leading to the establishment of anti-trafficking policy, we identify the stories that have influenced legislators, and established a narrative of trafficking heavily dependent upon assumptions of the inherent harm of sex work. This narrative constructs a hierarchy of victimisation, which denies alternative discourses of why women migrate for sex work. We argue that it is not sexual commerce that is harmful, but pathological, systemic inequalities and entrenched disadvantage that are harmful. A narrow narrative of trafficking fails to adequately depict this complexity of the trafficked experience.     

A New Measure of Red Tape: Introducing the Three-Item Red Tape (TIRT) Scale

ABSTRACT

Much empirical red tape research utilizes the General Red Tape (GRT) scale, which asks respondents to rate the level of red tape on a scale of 0 to 10 (Rainey, Pandey, and Bozeman 1995 Rainey, H. G., S. K. Pandey, and B. Bozeman. 1995. “Research Note: Public and Private Managers’ Perceptions of Red Tape.” Public Administration Review 55(6): 567–574.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Because “popular usage of the term ‘red tape’ requires no precision” (Bozeman and Feeney 2011 Bozeman, B. and M. K. Feeney. 2011. Rules and Red Tape: A Prism for Public Administration Research and Theory. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. [Google Scholar], 3) and the GRT scale “assumes that respondents understand the terms to which they are responding” (101), evaluating red tape in this way may be theoretically disadvantageous. This article proposes a new measure—the Three-Item Red Tape (TIRT) scale—consisting of three items drawn from previous rules research on rule characteristics to which respondents characterize organizational rules by how burdensome, unnecessary, and ineffective they are. This measure has several advantages over existing measures: it includes several indicators; it does not include the term “red tape”; and it is drawn directly from Bozeman's (1993 Bozeman, B. 1993. “A Theory of Government ‘Red Tape.'” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 3(3): 273–303. [Google Scholar]; 2000 Bozeman, B. 2000. Bureaucracy and Red Tape. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. [Google Scholar]) operational definition of red tape. Using structural equation modeling to model survey data from two local government organizations (n = 1,666), this article evaluates the theoretical and empirical validity of this TIRT scale, compares it with the GRT scale, tests its relationship with formalization, which is known as a distinct concept, and addresses implications of this scale on red tape theory.     

“I Realized that I couldn’t Act Normal”: a Qualitative Study of Sexual Assault Survivors’ Experiences of Workplace Disclosure

Journal of Family Violence - Sexual assault results in psychological, physical, and financial consequences for survivors. The distress caused by sexual assault can lead to work-related consequences...     

Risk factors and consequences of unwanted sex among university students: hooking up, alcohol, and stress response

This is the first study of unwanted sexual experiences in the collegiate "hooking-up" culture. In a representative sample of 178 students at a small liberal arts university. Twenty-three percent of women and 7% of men surveyed reported one or more experiences of unwanted sexual intercourse. Seventy-eight percent of unwanted vaginal, anal, and oral incidents took place while--"hooking up,"--whereas 78% of unwanted fondling incidents occurred at parties or bars. The most frequently endorsed reason for unwanted sexual intercourse was impaired judgment due to alcohol. The most frequently endorsed reason for unwanted fondling was that it happened before the perpetrator could be stopped. Of those affected by unwanted sexual intercourse or unwanted fondling, 46.7% and 19.2% reported unwanted memories, 50% and 32.7% reported avoidance and numbing responses, and 30% and 26.9% reported hyperarousal responses, respectively. A preliminary model of unwanted sex and collegiate social dynamics is proposed to provide a heuristic for further research.