Suchergebnisse

Foster care services are struggling in a context of decreasing community interest in providing care and increases in the demand for placements, the proportion of children with special needs requiring care and placement breakdowns. As Sinclair's recent (2005) overview emphasises, improving carer selection could reduce pressure on services by selecting those applicants best suited to the demands of the task. Research and practice from personnel psychology has long been used by employers seeking to identify the most suitable employees for a particular job, but this approach appears not to have been applied to selecting foster carers. In recent years, in personnel psychology, there has been increased recognition of the impact of personal characteristics on work performance satisfaction and retention. Barbara Kennedy and Rosamund Thorpe explore the utility of one such test, the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), in predicting foster carer suitability and subsequent retention among Australian carers. Both group and case-study analysis suggests potential worthy of further investigation.

This book explores Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perceptions of their helping styles with their own people and the type of help they provide in the social welfare context. Through semi-structured depth interviews, the use of video as stimulus material and collaborative analysis with Aboriginal and Torres Islander participants, the book identifies the helping process within their own cultural communities and in particular the cultural aspects of their helping approach. In the course of this project active collaboration has occurred between indigenous and non-indigenous people in methodological and ethical processes that reflected as much as possible a political position of indigenous control of the project in relation to problem definition, choice of research methods, data analysis and use of findings. The intent of 'Murri Way' was to provide a 'springboard' for the development of Indigenous Best Practice Models. Readers attention is drawn to the recognition of the contribution of participant's wisdom and knowledge, page iv-vi; the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Terms of Reference, p.95; and details of the inception and aspiration of the project in Chapter 2.