Suchergebnisse

A review of Tara Forrest. The Politics of Imagination: Benjamin, Kracauer, Kluge (Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2007).

Abstract
In neoliberal and associated managerial times, social work in the UK is dominated by the speedy completion of bureaucracy to ration services and assess/manage risk. Concerning children and families, unless there are child protection issues little help or support is provided with parents/carers often told to change their behaviour/lifestyle or face the possibility of losing their children to adoption. To counteract this, we argue for critical and relationship-based practice, using work with troubled and troublesome teenagers as an example. Such practice involves a broad responsibility to seek equality and social justice as well as address individual problems and difficulties. Importantly, the article includes the perspective of someone who has the lived and care experience of being a troubled/troublesome teenager.

AbstractMale and female managers, who were matched according to job position, were asked with whom they spoke, in reference to two actual work situations that they had described as stressful. They then reported their reasons for involving the persons cited; how much informational, tangible, and emotional support each person had provided; and what each person had done that was helpful or unhelpful. With respect to sources of support, male and female managers were equally likely to speak with others at work when dealing with stressful work situations. Women, however, were more likely than men to rely on sources external to the work environment. Male and female managers differed in their reasons for involving others, in the functions that support played for them, and in the behaviours of others they found to be helpful and unhelpful in dealing with work‐related stressors, with women more often than men focusing on the emotional aspects of support. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the working relationships of men and women in management.RésuméOn a demandè á des cadres hommes et femmes, appareillès selon leur paste, á qui ils s'ètaient addressès, en rèfèrence á deux situations rèelles de travail qu'ils avaient trouvès stres‐santes. lis ont ensuite expliquè pourquoi ils avaient fait intervenir les personnes citèes; quel soutien èmotionnel, matèriel et informationnel ils avaient recu de chacune d'elles; quelle aide ils avaient reçue et sicellc‐ci avait ètè utile on inutile. Ence qui concerne les sources de soutien, hommes et femmes ètaient tout deux ègalement enclins á parler à leurs collègues quand ils se trouvaient dans une situation stressante. Les femmes toutefois avaient plus tendance que les homines á faire appel á des ressources extèrieures. Les cadres hommes et femmes diffèraient dans leurs motifs de faire intcrvenir des tiers, dans le rôle que le soutien jouait pour les uns et pour les autres et dans les comportements des tiers qu'ils jugeaient tantôt utiles tantôt inutiles dans le règlement des situations stressantes relièes an travail. Les femmes. plus souvent que les hommes. insistaient sur les aspects émotionncls du soutien. Les rèsultats sont exposès du point de vue de leurs implications pour les relations de travail entre hommes et femmes dans la gestion.

In 2011, a partnership between the Community Development and Facilities Branch of the Toowoomba Regional Council and Dr Andrew Hickey from the University of Southern Queensland commenced exploring the uses of social research in local government community development practice. The branch had identified a need for developing richer accounts of communities located within the Toowoomba region local government area, and although significant economic and demographic datasets were available via in-house and external providers, including the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census of Population and Housing (2011, 2006) and Council's own 'Community Profile' (2011) and 'Community Atlas' (2011) socio-demographic maps, the analyses of community drawn from these accounts could not provide Branch staff with a complete picture of the communities they were working with. Branch staff sought a sense of the qualitative aspects of living within community and set about attempting to identify the relational and affective nature of their communities. Through the gathering of accounts of the experience of community, Branch staff sought to refine and target program delivery in their community engagement initiatives. To this end, a partnership with Dr Andrew Hickey, a social researcher based at the University of Southern Queensland commenced, and set about identifying a skill set that community development practitioners in local government might draw on to effectively account for and record the relational and experiential aspects of community (Pretty 2002; Hickey 2012). An outcome of this early partnership included the development of a set of practitioner focused research training resources initially trialled with Community Development and Facilities Branch staff of Toowoomba Regional Council through 2012. Further funding to develop these resources was needed however, and following the securing of an ACELG Partnership Grant, the project extended to commence development of a web-based professional development training package, The Social Research Toolkit, underpinned by a research agenda that sought to understand how local government practitioners (especially those in community engagement and development) might go about using social research within their day-to-day practice. With a project team including Dr Andrew Hickey (University of Southern Queensland), Mr Paul Reynolds (Toowoomba Regional Council) and Dr Lisa McDonald (University of Southern Queensland), the development of The Social Research Toolkit commenced and a field-based research project exploring the uses of qualitative social research in local government settings undertaken in sites across Australia. This report details the key findings drawn from the Partnership Grant that supported this project and provides insight into the ways social research might come to be used in local government community engagement.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection's (NYC) Hillview Reservoir is an uncovered prefinished water storage reservoir postultraviolet (post‐UV) light disinfection. As an additional tool to the detection of total (viable and nonviable) oocysts using Methods 1623/1623.1, the performance of an improved cell culture immunofluorescent assay (CC‐IFA) for the specific detection of infectious oocysts in this NYC reservoir matrix was evaluated. Mean CC‐IFA matrix spike recovery of infectious Cryptosporidium parvum and Cryptosporidium hominis oocysts was comparable to the mean Method 1623 recovery of total oocysts, ranging from 29 to 46%. Experiments using ≤5 C. parvum or ≤10 C. hominis viable oocyst spikes prepared using flow cytometry indicated that the reservoir matrix did not adversely affect CC‐IFA detection. Therefore, the improved CC‐IFA appears useful for the detection of environmentally relevant, low numbers of infectious oocysts in the reservoir matrix and for the refined assessment of Cryptosporidium risk.