Information pathways into prison mental health care

Police and court liaison and diversion services provide important specialist mental health input along critical stages of the criminal justice pathway. Effective sharing of information between the services and relevant justice agencies is essential. However, various problems exist with the flow of information between agencies and services across the criminal justice pathway. This service evaluation explored how clinically relevant information is transferred, by drawing on the perspectives of prison health care staff in a large urban UK male prison. A qualitative service evaluation was conducted using semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 11 prison staff. The main themes included: gaps in the transfer of essential information, (particularly concerning risk and offending information); information gathering to fill these gaps; the importance of professional relationships, information sharing between agencies; and information solutions. Improving information transfer across the criminal justice pathway could prevent treatment delays and ensure more timely mental health care in prison.     

Race and Gender Recidivism Differences Among Juvenile Mental Health Court Graduates

Grounded in the theory of therapeutic jurisprudence, this research explores whether recidivism differs by race, ethnicity, or gender among juvenile mental health court graduates (N = 63). Mean number of pre‐program offenses were compared to the mean number of offenses committed by program completion. Results showed statistically significant reductions in recidivism by both males (p < .001) and females (p < .003). Racial and ethnic minorities demonstrated larger reductions when compared to Whites (p < .001 for Hispanics and p < .01 for combined ethnicities). These results contribute to the literature on effective intervention models for diverse juvenile offender populations.     

Mental health issues and the Canadian criminal justice system**

The critics assert that a significant proportion of incarcerated individuals suffers from mental health issues, i.e. ‘the criminalization hypothesis.’ The current paper reviews the scholarly literature to address five interrelated questions: (1) What are the risks of those classified as mentally ill for committing crimes and, in particular, violent crimes? (2) As the gatekeepers to the criminal justice system, what happens during ‘first encounters’ between the police with those who have mental illnesses? (3) What community-based services are available for effective diversions as an alternative to incarceration for those with mental illnesses? (4) What are the impacts of treatment options upon those experiencing mental illnesses while incarcerated, including the impact upon recidivism? (5) What types of pre-release planning and community responses have the most positive effects to help reduce recidivism and assist offenders in coping with mental health issues in the Canadian context? After summarizing key evidence pertaining to these questions, the paper presents case studies as exemplars of ‘best practices’ to illustrate promising directions conducive to integrated, holistic, and effective responses at the intersection of the criminal justice and mental health systems.     

浅析工会劳动保护监督管理机制的创新

工会组织是党联系职工群众的桥梁和纽带,是国家政权的重要社会支柱,是会员和职工利益的代表。工会组织要突出维护职能,切实维护广大职工安全健康的合法权益,在分析劳动保护监督管理的形势与任务、现状与问题的基础上,提出对策与措施,创新工会劳动保护监管机制。     

Mental Health Professionals’ Perspectives of Family-focused Practice across Child and Adult Mental Health Settings: A Qualitative Synthesis

Abstract

The shift towards a family-focused approach to practice has been highly endorsed across child and adult mental health services, with increasing policy development and a growing evidence base. The aim of this review was to synthesize the qualitative evidence of professionals’ perspectives and experiences of implementing family-focused practice across these settings. Electronic databases were searched up to March 2018, with nine articles included. The synthesis produced two overarching challenges relating to the organizational and system issues of family-focused practice and clinicians’ attitudes, knowledge, and practice towards addressing the complexity of families’ needs. The findings point to a limited evidence of professionals viewing the benefits of family-focused practice and a lack of coherence relating to professionals’ investment in family-focused practice. These are discussed within policy and implementation factors.     

De/valuing youth work: Revealing tensions in professional identity development while enhancing and applying mental health literacy

Thirteen preservice youth work students participated in learning experiences designed to enhance literacies in mental health. The aim of this grounded theory study was to explicate the process of mental health literacy enhancement and application to child and youth care practice. Sixty-two unique sources of data were used in analyses. Findings suggest that mental health literacies are intertwined with the process of developing a professional identity. In this article, the subcategory de/valuing youth work is explained and involves participants managing a confusing role, adopting a misfit stance, battling and building a seat at the interprofessional table, and valuing professional contributions. Implications for professional identity development, professionalization and mental health education are offered.     

European security and early warning systems: from risks to threats in the European Union’s health security sector

This article critically examines a poorly understood aspect of the European security landscape: early warning systems (EWSs). EWSs are socio-technical systems designed to detect, analyse, and disseminate knowledge on potential security issues in a wide variety of sectors. We first present an empirical overview of more than 80 EWS in the European Union. We then draw on debates in Critical Security Studies to help us make sense of the role of such systems, tapping into conceptual debates on the construction of security issues as either “threat” or “risk” related. Finally, we study one EWS – the Early Warning and Response System for infectious diseases – to understand how it works and how it reconciles risk – versus threat-based security logics. Contrary to assumptions of a clear distinction between risk- and threat-based logics of security, we show that EWSs may serve as a “transmission belt” for the movement of issues from risk into threats.     

Rethinking the future-seeking narrative of child migration: the case of Ethiopian adolescent domestic workers in the Middle East

ABSTRACT

Recent research on child migration has largely departed from the early trafficking narrative and has tended to highlight young people’s agency and the ways in which children’s migration can play a key role in their ‘future-seeking’. While we acknowledge that Ethiopian girls migrating to the Middle East in order to undertake domestic work primarily move voluntarily for economic reasons, our research – which used a multi-layered, qualitative research approach with girls and their families in the West Gojjam and North Wollo Zones of the Amhara National Regional State – found that the financial, physical, and psychological costs of such migration can far outweigh the benefits. Indeed, we conclude that the earlier trafficking narrative may, in this case, represent the most appropriate lens through which to view girls’ choices and experiences.     

Community responses to vulnerable children in rural Zimbabwe: lessons from a partnership case study

This article explores a CBO–INGO partnership addressing vulnerable children’s needs in rural Zimbabwe. It engages with the global policy consensus that communities are crucial to addressing vulnerable children’s needs, alongside questions regarding community existence and definition among the poor. Inhabitants identified a community which was ascertained by a local and community framework. Partnership emerged as possible in the presence of interdependence and when power inequalities are acknowledged as chronically problematic. The INGO’s risk-taking, flexibility, and long-term perspective enabled it to go some way in implementing aspects of the partnership, and its emphasis on partner capacity building emerged as desirable.     

Faith-based HIV response in post-Soviet Eastern Europe: the case of Channels of Hope in Russia,Romania, and Armenia

ABSTRACT

Most of the data available on faith-based HIV response focus on Africa, which is the heart of the pandemic. This article investigates faith-based community-level HIV responses within Eastern Europe, by studying the implementation of World Vision International’s “Channels of Hope” faith-based HIV intervention. The intervention approach was developed in a high HIV-prevalence setting (South Africa) and then implemented across sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere – including three low HIV-prevalence Eastern European settings (Armenia, Romania, and Russia). Drawing from implementation and evaluation research, this article explores the nature, challenges, and potential of faith-based HIV response within low-prevalence, post-Soviet contexts.