Strengthening Public-Private Partnerships in State Child Welfare Systems: Results of a Multi-State Strategic Planning Process

Dramatic growth in health and human service contracting over the past two decades has increased the need for managerial competency in the development and sustainment of effective cross-sector partnerships. Although the quality of relations between partnering agencies can affect client outcomes, few macro-level interventions for strengthening cross-sector partnerships have been described or tested in the literature. This article describes a facilitated, strategic planning process implemented in five different states and presents pre-post test results of its effect on different factors known to affect partnership success. Implications for child welfare administrative practice and research are discussed.     

Implementing Developmental Screening Programs for Infants and Toddlers in the Child Welfare System

In 2003, revisions to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act required states to develop plans to refer children younger than 3 years of age with a substantiated case of abuse and neglect for developmental screening. A decade after legislation was passed, its implementation varies considerably across states. This article explains how research informs the need for careful developmental monitoring of young children, especially those experiencing trauma or living under stressful conditions. Finally, this article presents how one community used colocation to increase developmental screenings for young abused and neglected children.     

Actively Cultivating Policy Similarity. A Regional Strategy in Education Policy in France and Germany

Regionalization processes across Western Europe have triggered analyses of regional policy divergence. Yet, in a number of cases, regional governments appear to have deliberately strived to achieve policy conformity. Previous research tends to emphasize exogenous explanations of regional policy convergence. In contrast, this paper addresses the issue of regional policy convergence by focusing on endogenous explanatory factors. Its objective is to carry out an investigation of when, how, and with what effect a ‘desire for conformity’ arises, and contends that regional governments may actively cultivate policy similarity as a strategy to develop or secure their policy capacity. Specifically, the paper argues that the adoption of this strategy is contingent upon two requirements that may or may not be met, and that its outcome is the convergence on targeted dimensions of regional policies. The two requirements are: (i) a countrywide public preference for policy uniformity in the policy area of concern, and (ii) the presence of a threat posed to regional policy capacity by various political entrepreneurs, including the central state, who blame regions for providing divergent policies on particular dimensions. This paper is based on the comparison of two case studies where regional governments deliberately pursued policy conformity on targeted dimensions of their education policy: school-building policy in France and curricula policy in Germany. The two case studies also present dissimilar features that make it possible to investigate the effects of institutional setting and policy distribution on the adoption and operation of the active-cultivation-of-policy-similarity strategy.     

Migrant workers and migrant entrepreneurs: changing established/outsider relations across society and space?

Drawing on Elias and Scotson's theory of established/outsider relations, in this paper we argue that migrants can be outsiders in one spatial context and established in another simultaneously. Our empirical focus is the situations and experiences of migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe in four towns across Wales. While their position as outsiders is reinforced in the occupational spaces of meat-processing factories, outside the workplace a small but growing number of migrants are engaging in entrepreneurial activities that create new spaces of cultural diversity. We argue that this is having a wider affective impact on established/outsider relations.     

(Im)possible citizens: Canada's ‘citizenship bonanza’ and its boundaries

This article discusses a recent amendment to the Canadian Citizenship Act, which retroactively restores or gives Canadian citizenship to ‘hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting foreigners, most of them Americans’ (P. Dvorak, 2009. Canada issues a wake-up call: you may be a citizen. The Wall Street Journal, 17 April. Available from: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123993183347727843.html) while also restricting the inheritance of Canadian citizenship to the first-generation born abroad. Aiming to redress past discriminations based on gender, marital status and dual citizenship while simultaneously curtailing modern citizenship's dubious ius sanguinis provision, the new law might be interpreted as perpetuating Canada's reputation as a world leader in interethnic relations and human rights. A contextual analysis of the new law, by contrast, shows that the opposite is the case: the boundaries that are being drawn by Canada's new citizenship regime follow the now common trend of re-ethnicization and securitization. Specifically, they conflate kinship and Whiteness, thereby leading, on the one hand, to the construction of possible citizens whose authenticity and loyalty to the nation are unquestioned. On the other hand, within the logic of the new laws and their surrounding discourses, non-White, non-Christian ‘impossible citizens’ emerge, whose lack of loyalty and instrumental use of their Canadian passport are said to be eroding the value of citizenship from within.     

度冷丁滥用者尿中原体及其代谢产物的分析研究

本研究利用ＧＣ／ＭＳ（ＥＩ．ＰＣＩ）技术，在度冷丁滥用者尿中确认了６种代谢产物。并建立了ＧＣ／ＦＩＤ分析度冷丁及其代谢产物的方法。方法线性范围为０．１～２０μｇ／ｍｌ，变异系数小于１０％，最小检出量为５０ｎｇ／ｍｌ，适用于度冷丁成瘾者尿中含量的测定。     

体内海洛因代谢产物的分析研究

本文介绍了从海洛因成瘾者尿中提取净化和定性定量分析海洛因主要代谢产物单乙酰吗啡和吗啡的方法．阳性尿以乙基吗啡为内标．水解后液－液提取或液－固提取，经衍生化后采用ＧＣ／ＭＳ，ＧＣ／ＦＩＤ，ＧＣ／ＮＰＤ法分析，方法简便、准确、灵敏、重现性好．应用本法对八十余例吸毒成瘾者尿样进行测定，取得了令人满意的结果．     

GC/MS衍生化法检测血中4-溴-2,5-二甲氧基苯乙胺

目的建立人体全血中4-溴-2,5-二甲氧基苯乙胺的衍生化GC/MS分析方法。方法血液样品经去离子水稀释4倍,8000r/min高速离心20min后,加入Na H2PO4缓冲溶液(p H值为6.0)2m L,混匀。将上述混合液加入用甲醇、Na H2PO4缓冲溶液(p H值为6.0)活化的Bond Elut Centify?固相萃取柱后,依次采用1.0M乙酸溶液、去离子水、甲醇、二氯甲烷/异丙醇/氨水(78/20/2,V/V/V)混合洗脱液进行提取、分离、净化处理,40℃空气流下挥干,三氟乙酸酐衍生化,GC/MS检测4-溴-2,5-二甲氧基苯乙胺和4-苯基丁胺衍生物。采用标准品衍生化产物的标准质谱图定性分析,选择m/z 242(4-溴-2,5-二甲氧基苯乙胺)、m/z 91(4-苯基丁胺)作为定量离子进行定量分析。结果血液中4-溴-2,5-二甲氧基苯乙胺的最低检出限为6ng/m L,在0.02~10μg/m L浓度范围内,线性关系良好(=0.9993),日内精密度和日间精密度均小于10%,平均提取回收率约为69%。结论该方法操作简便、灵敏度高,适用于全血中4-溴-2,5-二甲氧基苯乙胺检测。     

Sino-Ghana bilateral relations and Chinese migrants’ illegal gold mining in Ghana

ABSTRACT

This article examines the participation of some Chinese migrants in illegal gold mining (known as galamsey) in Ghana, and how the Government’s policy to address the issue created diplomatic tension between China and Ghana. Drawing on primary data from in-depth, face-to-face interviews with 250 respondents and supplementary information from archival sources and personal observation, the study found that small-scale gold mining is an area legally reserved for Ghanaian indigenes, who faced stern competition from some Chinese migrants’ miners. Their ability to mobilize resources and machinery to execute galamsey virtually displaced the indigenes from their source of livelihood and caused environmental catastrophes. The Ghana Government’s policy response to the Chinese migrants’ galamsey, which led to arrests, sentencing and deportations of some Chinese miners, angered Beijing and fractured Ghana–China diplomatic ties. But the dispute could not collapse the entrenched bilateral relations between the two nations because the calculated mutual benefit derived from the relations was thought to be higher than the Chinese galamsey issue. Policy reforms which legally integrate Chinese migrants’ miners into the small-scale mining sector would stop galamsey and strengthen Sino-Ghana relations.     

Asia-Pacific news

This column provides a country by country analysis of the latest legal developments, cases and issues relevant to the IT, media and telecommunications' industries in key jurisdictions across the Asia Pacific region. The articles appearing in this column are intended to serve as ‘alerts’ and are not submitted as detailed analyses of cases or developments.