Child protective intervention in the context of welfare reform: The effects of work and welfare on maltreatment reports

Recent changes in welfare policy have produced changes in parental work and welfare receipt. These factors are assessed in relation to investigated reports of child abuse and neglect using survey data on 1998 welfare recipients in nine Illinois counties, in conjunction with longitudinal administrative data on cash welfare benefits, employment, and child abuse and neglect reports. Trend analyses show that rates of child maltreatment reports among welfare recipients have risen since the passage of PRWORA in 1996. Findings from multivariate analyses indicate that parental employment has a protective effect on reports to child protection systems (CPS), that this effect is greatest when combined with welfare receipt, and that this effect becomes stronger over time. Those who receive welfare in the absence of employment face a significantly greater risk of CPS involvement, even compared with those who neither work nor receive welfare. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Developmental Trajectories of Aggressive and Non-Aggressive Conduct Problems

Modeling the heterogeneous trajectories along which antisocial behaviordevelops in childhood and adolescence may contribute in important waysto understanding antecedents of offending in adult life. This paperexamines the development of aggressive and non-aggressive conduct problemsin the Great Smoky Mountains Study of Youth, a longitudinal study in thesoutheastern United States. Aggressive and non-aggressive conduct problemsof clinical severity, police contact and arrest, and family andenvironmental correlates were assessed in four annual interviews for789 boys and 630 girls aged 9–13 at first interview. The bestfitting latent class model identified three developmental trajectories:stable low problem levels, stable high problem levels, and declining levelsof conduct problems, for both aggressive and non-aggressive behaviors. Boyswere over-represented in the stable high trajectory class on the aggressivetrajectory, but sex differences in non-aggressive trajectories were lessmarked. The overlap between aggressive and non-aggressive trajectory classeswas quite limited. Both classifications showed strong associations withrisks of police contact and arrest in early adolescence, and with measuresof family adversity. The results are discussed in relation to developmentalmodels of conduct disorder and delinquency.     

Paradoxes of Public Sector Customer Service

The use of customer service ideas in government continues to be widespread, although the concept and its implications for public sector service production and delivery remain poorly developed. This paper presents a series of paradoxes related to customer service and its use in government. The central and most troubling paradox is that customer service techniques and tools applied to government may lead to increased political inequality even as some aspects of service are improved. The argument is structured by examination of the following: the predominant structural features of service management in theprivate sector, the assumption that customer satisfaction is a central objective of service firms, the understanding of customer service that informs current federal reform efforts, and the operational and political challenges of customer service as a public management objective.     

Youth-Guided Youth Engagement: Participatory Action Research (PAR) With High-Risk,Marginalized Youth

Engaging youth who live with high-risk, marginalized conditions presents a significant challenge in our society, considering the prevalence of disconnect and distrust they often experience within their social environments/systems. Yet, meaningful youth engagement is a key concept not only for youth development, but also for a systems change to more effectively support high-risk youth and families. This article presents a framework of youth engagement developed over 9 months, using participatory action research (PAR) with 16 youth leaders in a community-based research team. Although this framework has incorporated the youth leaders’ lived experiences, talents, and voices, positive youth development (PYD) and social justice youth development (SJYD) have theoretically contextualized our research. Youth leaders guided the framework's development, including the identification of key themes/dimensions, definitions, and practical examples. The framework's three components—“Basis” (philosophy and principles), “What” (goals/outcomes), and “How” (actions/processes/pathways to change)—are supported by nine themes described in this article.     

Mary Bridges Adams and education reform, 1890-1920: an ethics of care?

This article uses biographical inquiry to piece together the political career of Mary Bridges Adams, who made a name for herself through her work as an educator-activist, a hundred years ago. The objective is to rethink and re-see the place of the personal in academic study and research in the field of education. After briefly reviewing recent developments in theoretical and research uses of auto/biography, the discussion revolves around three main issues: (1) the values and practices of a woman who moved from earning and learning as a pupil-teacher to elementary teaching to political action; (2) her entry into labour politics; and (3) her educational activism. It is argued that the organised activism of the socialist profiled here can be analysed in terms of the idea of the caring subject. Her story not only contributes to an understanding of what it meant to be a socialist woman in this period but shifts our understanding of the left and educational politics itself.     

Mainstreaming gender in refugee protection

The issues of gender-related persecution and violence against women have been put onto the international agenda, largely thanks to lobbying by feminist NGOs and transnational networks. There is a question, however, of how successfully this agenda-setting has translated into effective policy-making and policies that will increase the protection of women who are victims of gender-related persecution. One of the problems with policies to support women refugees and asylum seekers lies in a failure of transmission of the goals of gender sensitivity through all the various bureaux and representatives of a large bureaucratic organization such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). For nearly twenty years, since the early 1990s, the UNHCR has identified ‘refugee women’ as a policy priority, and yet, despite this prioritization of concerns about women refugees and gender issues in the asylum and refugee process, it could be argued that little progress has been made in implementation of policies on refugee women. This article will examine the way in which the concept of gender has been adopted within the UNHCR and the processes that have been put in place to mainstream gender within refugee protection activities. How far has mainstreaming managed to move policies to protect women beyond a mere focus on ‘vulnerable’ groups, and to integrate a gendered understanding of the global processes that produce refugees, and of the protection needs of these refugees?     

Cultural variations in management practice: an exploration of the management trainer's dilemma

This article is a contribution to the debate on cross-cultural transfer of management practice. It describes the difficulties experienced in introducing ‘western’ management theory in a Pakistan government training centre; considers the social and cultural context and the local management style; analyses the differences in six key areas of management and discusses their implications for management trainers; and proposes a ‘middle way’ to ensure that management material is culturally acceptable and practically appropriate. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.