社会支持网络:流浪儿童边缘化救助的新视野

采用实地研究的方法,以社会支持理论为支撑,从社会工作的视角,对流浪儿童边缘化处境的形成和边缘化状况两方面进行了分析和探讨,认为要达到救助流浪儿童的终极目标,关键在于帮助他们建立、扩大和完善个人的社会支持网络。一是要建立和巩固正式支持网络、二是非正式支持网络,只有这样,才能达到救助流浪儿童的终极目的。     

Barriers Associated with the Implementation of an Advance Care Planning Program in a Prison Setting

Advance care planning is considered a best practice within health care. However, the extent to which planning occurs within prison settings is unknown. Through the course of implementing an advance care planning (ACP) program for aging and dying offenders at a medical classification center, multiple barriers were identified that need to be addressed systemically to ensure the medical wishes of offenders were known and honored. This article will outline the barriers and the steps that were taken to create systems change to promote and sustain advance care planning.     

Social Support for Mothers of Children With Disabilities in China

ABSTRACT.

This article analyzes the gendered parenting experiences of mothers of children with disabilities in China. These mothers struggle to meet their children's needs, including daily care, financial security, and child development. In the context of China's social welfare development, are social services responding to their needs, so that mothers can share responsibility for the needs of their children with disabilities? The research analyzed qualitative data about 6 case-study children in rural and urban China. The data were derived from observation and interviews with their parents and other family and community members. The analysis revealed that the capacity of the mother, community, and local social services had an impact on the rights of the children and mothers. They experienced social discrimination, insufficient social support, and local failure to implement central policy social services and income support. These findings are consistent with international research about disability rights. They reinforce the importance of economic redistribution to enable local implementation of the national disability rights policies, rather than merely relying on ephemeral concepts of cultural change. Further research about the comparative impact of economic and social change in China on mothers and children with disabilities would extend these findings.     

The threat of monument designation as a technique for successful wilderness legislation: Using the Antiquities Act as a carrot or a stick

Congress provides the highest level of federal lands protection when it creates wilderness using the Wilderness Act. There are times, however, when Congress refuses or seems unwilling or unable to take such environmental policy action. In a handful of instances, presidents have strategically used the threat of or actual unilateral monument designation under the Antiquities Act to get Congress to create new wilderness under the Wilderness Act. Under the Antiquities Act presidents may, without stakeholder or congressional input or approval, unilaterally create national monuments covering public lands that fall within the parameters of its provisions, including lands that would be considered wilderness. This strategy may be used by future presidents that wish to encourage Congress to enact environmental policy protecting remaining pristine federal lands with a wilderness designation. This article analyzes three instances where this strategy was successfully used and identifies specific steps taken in each situation that ultimately led to congressional action creating new wilderness.     

Facilitating Future Planning for Ageing Adults with Intellectual Disabilities Using a Planning Tool that Incorporates Quality of Life Domains

Abstract

When ageing families of an adult with a lifelong disability embark on a process of planning for the future, they generally think in terms of making hard and fast decisions about: (1) where the person with the disability is going to live when “the time comes”; and (2) who will take on their direct care. However, there is common trepidation among many families when it comes to launching their son or daughter with a lifelong disability. Generally, many families ignore, neglect, or simply do not engage in making any formal plans at all. When ageing families do make plans, they often focus only a place to live. This can mean that other significant aspects of a person's life (i.e., quality of life factors) are negated or neglected. Reviewing population demographics for both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, it was ascertained that a sizable number of parents will be aging in the near future and that some formalized assistance for future planning was needed. To this end, a planning instrument, What the Future Holds, was developed in order to help families and other carers with planning for the future and involving a variety of quality of life domains, including health, financial, vocational, social, civil, and residential well-being.     

Enhancing Social Support for Migrant Families: A Case Study of Community Services in a Shanghai Urban Village and Implications for Intervention

Recent years have witnessed the growing emphasis of the Chinese central government to develop community services as a method of building communities and strengthening social solidarity. With the increased involvement of multi‐generation households in China's internal rural‐to‐urban migration, however, little is known about what community services are available for migrant families. Nor do we know much about how such services can enhance social support for migrants, which is crucial for their psychological well‐being in managing the ongoing challenges that arise from migration and further integration into cities. This article presents a case study conducted in Shanghai where social services are emerging in a few urban villages. We begin with a brief background on China's rural‐to‐urban migration and the emergence of urban villages, followed by a discussion of community services and social support for Chinese migrant families. We then document existing services in an urban village to explore how they can influence migrant families' social support. Drawing on the perspective of service providers, we highlight the effects social work interventions can have on improving social support for migrant families. Finally, we propose an intervention framework based on multi‐dimensions of social support, emphasizing an integration of formal and informal social support through community services for migrant populations.     

The Case for a New 'Case' Management in Services for People with Learning Disabilities

Micro-organization is currently fragmented in services for peoplewith learning disabilities. Care management, person-centredplanning (PCP) and direct payments have developed through separatepolicy strands, with tasks and agency responsibilities blurred.A wide diversity of care management arrangements currently operate,with the relationship between care management, PCP and directpayments imprecisely defined. PCP and direct payments have alsobeen variably implemented. This paper argues for a new ‘person-centredcase management’, with these different devices betterintegrated and decision-making and action more person-centred.Drawing on practice experience from the original British casemanagement experiments, the new ‘case’ managementwould be centred on the needs and wants of individuals, be conductedindependently from assessment, operate outside the public sectorand be able to access personal budgets. It would consequentlyhave the capacity to further de-institutionalize services andsupport and transfer more control to people with learning disabilities.     

Rights to special services for people with developmental disabilities in Sweden: The risks and benefits of a legislative approach

Several major pieces of legislation in Sweden have been developed and enacted during the twentieth century to enable people with disabilities to live as normal a life as possible. The legal instrument is not supposed to depend on political economic trends. Important changes in the new Act on Special Services for Developmentally Disabled Persons from 1986 include qualitative demands and the right to self-determination for these individuals. The special services covered by the law are called social rights. The implementation of these rights is under the jurisdiction of politically appointed councils in counties or municipalities. The decisions made by these authorities can be appealed in administrative courts. Judicial review is supposed to be an instrument for the protection of citizens from the authorities responsible for services. In theory, at least, when one disabled person wins a case in court, the precedent should trickle down to all individuals in similar predicaments. But this does not always occur. One problem is that the law has no sanctions to force local authorities to follow the precedents or to execute court decisions. This article focuses on the Act and on the interplay between court cases and precedents and the decisions made by local authorities.     

Activation programmes for women with a partner in Germany: Challenge or replication of traditional gender roles

In 2005, Germany implemented major welfare benefit reforms that encourage an adult worker model of the family. In this study, we hypothesised that, despite these reforms, women's assignments to activation programmes would in practice still tend to replicate the degree of labour market attachment to which they had become accustomed relative to their partner in the past. We compared programme entries between women in former male breadwinner, dual earner, no-earner and female breadwinner households and applied event-history analysis to large-scale administrative data. Our findings showed that in western Germany – but not in eastern Germany – women's assignments to activation programmes indeed replicated their prior labour market attachment relative to their partner. Key Practitioner Message: • Among women receiving Unemployment Benefit II in Germany, women with partners participate in activation programmes less often; • This tendency applies especially to western German women with less employment experience and lower former earnings than their partners; • A framework should be devised to inquire about previously non-employed women's interests in ALMP participation and offer them such opportunities.