MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPISTS AND THE CLERGY: A NEED FOR CLINICAL COLLABORATION, TRAINING, AND RESEARCH

This article calls for greater collaboration between clergy and marriage and family therapists. It spells out the reasons for potenial collaboration and suggests some specific ways it can occur. Marriage and family therapists acknowledge the highest rates of religious involvement of any metntal health profession, placing them in a unique position to be involved in the continuing education of clergy. There is a clear need for research to understand how marriage and family therapists and clergy can more effectively work together. The dearth of research, training, and collaboration between the two vocations is all the more unfortunate given the clear evidence of the importance of religion in the personal lives of the clients we serve.     

Co‐production,governance and practice: The dynamics and effects of User Voice Prison Councils

Drawing on Bevir's (2013) decentered theory of governance, and Donati's (2016) theory of the relational subject, this article explores how User Voice Prison Councils in England have contributed to shifts in aspects of prison governance and practice. It discusses the cultural and policy context in which the Councils emerged and operate before exploring their perceived purposes, dynamics, and effects. User Voice Prison Councils represent an important example of different actors co‐producing alternative patterns of governance through innovations in democratic participation. Interviews with Prison Council participants, User Voice and prison staff revealed that the development of such “bottom–up” participatory governance practices require and restore interpersonal trust, the mechanisms of which are interactions underpinned by a distinct manner of relating and the establishment of a network of relations oriented to the common good. The effects include enhanced institutional legitimacy; improvements in prison officer‐prisoner relations; and greater quality of life for prisoners. Revealing the “how” of co‐production, from the “inside”, the argument advanced here is that while the effects of co‐production may be more ameliorative than transformative, such collaborative and dialogic approaches can enable differently situated people to forge new norms of interactions and forms of democratic participation to achieve collective goals.     

Indirect effects of the Family Check‐Up on youth extracurricular involvement at school‐age through improvements in maternal positive behavior support in early childhood

Extracurricular involvement in the school‐age years has widespread potential benefits for children's subsequent socioemotional development, especially for low‐income youth. However, there is a dearth of research on interventions aimed at increasing school‐age extracurricular involvement in low‐income youth. Thus, the present study aimed to test the collateral effect of a brief, family‐focused intervention for low‐income families, the Family Check‐Up, on children's school‐age extracurricular involvement via improvements in maternal positive behavior support (PBS) in early childhood. The sample (n = 630, 50% female, 50% White, 28% Black/African American) represented a subsample of families from the Early Steps Multisite Study. At the age of two, families were randomly assigned to the Family Check‐Up or Women, Infants, and Children Nutritional Supplement Services as usual. Mother‐child dyads participated in observed interaction tasks at child ages 2 and 3 that were subsequently coded to assess PBS. Primary caregivers reported on children's school‐age extracurricular involvement at ages 7.5, 8.5, and 9.5. Results indicated that although there was not a direct path between intervention status and children's school‐age extracurricular involvement, a significant indirect path emerged from intervention group to changes in PBS between ages 2 to 3 to children's school‐age extracurricular involvement. The results are discussed in terms of implications for designing preventive interventions in early childhood that promote extracurricular involvement at school‐age, particularly for children at risk for maladaptive outcomes.     

Educating Social Workers for Practice in Integrated Health Care: A Model Implemented in a Graduate Social Work Program

ABSTRACT

This article introduces a curricular innovation, the Integrated Health Scholars Program (IHSP), developed to prepare master's-level social work students for practice in integrated health care settings, and presents preliminary findings related to students’ self-reported program competencies and perceptions. IHSP, implemented in a research-intensive school of social work in a large midwestern public university, includes specialized course work, interprofessional education across health science disciplines, and field practicum in integrated health care settings. Curricular components support stepwise learning and follows the British Columbia model of interprofessional education learning tiers: exposure, immersion, and skill mastery. Despite IHSPs successful development in a well-resourced, supportive environment, challenges facing our profession's ability to develop and sustain training of MSW students in integrated health care are discussed.     

Discursive manoeuvres and hegemonic recuperations in New Zealand documentary representations of domestic violence

This article examines the production and promotion of A&;E's Rollergirls (2006), a US docu-soap featuring the Texas Roller Derby Lonestar Rollergirls (TXRD), the league that revived roller derby as a sport for female amateurs. Focusing on the representation of TXRD skaters in Rollergirls, as well as A&;E's promotional campaign for the series, this analysis is contextualized in relation to the role of female athleticism in contemporary US commercial culture. Relying on practices long used to trivialize women sports figures, Rollergirls' portrayals of TXRD skaters suggest ambivalence towards female athleticism as well as a desire to contain the gender-bent and sexually agential performances at the heart of women's roller derby. In addition to revealing the challenges television producers face in the representation of female athletes and other nonconformist women, the research offered here hopes to expand feminist television criticism beyond its conventional focus on fictional texts while also broadening feminist studies of sports media, which have centered primarily on news coverage.     

Have Authoritarian Parenting Practices and Roles Changed in the Last 50 Years?

This study examined changes in authoritarian parenting practices and family roles in Sweden over the last 50 years. Data came from 3 cohorts (1958, 1981, and 2011) of young to middle‐age adults living in a suburb of Stockholm who answered questions about how they were raised (N₁₉₅₈ = 385, N₁₉₈₁ = 207, N₂₀₁₁ = 457). The results showed a dramatic decrease in parents' directive control. Also, over time, parents increasingly allowed children to express anger toward them. Parents' roles changed from stereotyped versions of fathers as decision makers and mothers as caregivers to both parents sharing decisions and garnering respect from children. Overall, the results suggest that authoritarian parenting practices have declined dramatically and moved toward more egalitarian family environments. Virtually all these changes in parental practices and parental roles happened between the last 2 cohorts.