Isien odotukset lastensuojelun perhetyöltä

Opinnäytetyön tarkoituksena oli selvittää lastensuojelun perhetyön piirissä olevien isien odotuksia perhetyöltä. Tutkimuksessa haastateltiin viittä Perheasema Purjeessa asiakkaana olevaa isää. Haastattelujen avulla selvitettiin isien ennakkokäsityksiä perhetyöstä, perhetyöhön liittyviä odotuksia sekä ajattelutavan muutoksia. Opinnäytetyön teoriaosuudessa käsiteltiin perhetyön sisältöä. Perhetyön eri toimintamuodot ja määräävät lait kuvattiin. Teoreettisesti käsiteltiin perhetyössä työskentely ja perheiden kanssa työskentelemisen prosessi. Isyyttä ja isän roolia perheessä selvitettiin. Lisäksi paneuduttiin jaettuun vanhemmuuteen. Tutkimuksessa saatiin selville, että ennakkokäsityksiä perhetyöstä oli määrällisesti vähän. Odotukset perhetyöltä kohdistuivat voimakkaasti lapsen etuun. Lapsen etu sivuutti isien odotukset henkilökohtaisesta huomiosta ja tukemisesta. Miehuus ja isyys tunnistettiin, muttei niiden vaatimia erityistoimenpiteitä osattu eritellä. Tutkimus nosti esiin asenteen merkityksen perhetyössä. Tutkimus osoitti, että eri osapuolten suhtautuessa positiivisesti toisiinsa, ja myös mieheen ja naiseen tasapuolisesti, saavutetaan kaikkia tyydyttävä lopputulos.The aim of this study was to examine what fathers engaged in family work within child welfare expected of the work. Five fathers who were clients in Perheasema Purje were interviewed. By means of the interviews, the fathers´ preconceived ideas of family work, expectations there as well as changes in their mode of thinking were discussed. The teoretical part of the study delt with the contents of family work. The forms of family work and the law coverning them were described. Being engaged in family work and the process of working with families were looked at theoretically. In addition, fatherhood and the role of the father in the family as well as shared parenthood were examined. The findings of the study shoved that there were few preconceived ideas of family work. Any expectations of family work focused strongly on the child´s interests. The fathers´ expectations of getting personal attention and support were less important than and were displaced by the child´s interests. Manhood and fatherhood were recognized: however, the special measures demanded by them could not be analyzed. The study introduced the meaning of attitude in family work. It could be concluded that when different parties had a positive approach to each other and whwn man and woman were considered equal, an outcome satisfying everyone could be reached

Medical and surgical treatment of inflammatory bowel disease

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), with its two main entities Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), is a chronic and relapsing inflammatory condition affecting the entire gastrointestinal tract. IBD is associated with reduced health-related quality of life, substantial loss of work productivity and increased morbidity. In Sweden alone, around 70 000 persons are estimated to be affected by IBD. Treatment includes both medical and surgical therapy. In case of failure or intolerance to conventional medical therapies, remaining treatment options are surgery or newer medical therapies such as biological agents. However, a sizeable number of patients do not respond or lose response to a certain biological agent, hence there is still a need to expand the knowledge about therapeutic options in IBD. This thesis therefore aimed to explored real-world clinical outcomes of a recent biological therapy. Using registered-based data, the thesis also investigated epidemiological aspects of IBD including the validity of IBD-related surgical procedure codes and the incidence of IBD in Sweden. In Study I, we validated IBD-related surgical procedure codes in the Swedish National Patient Register (NPR). We conducted the validation through patient chart review in a nationwide random sample of 262 patients with registered IBD diagnoses in the NPR between 1966 and 2014. We found high validity and high sensitivity for IBD-related surgical procedure codes in the NPR with a positive predictive value of 96.8% and a sensitivity of 94.5%. Our study indicated that the NPR is a reliable data source for researchers wanting to identify patients with a history of IBD-related surgery. In Studies II and III, we conducted a nationwide prospective observational real-world study of clinical, biochemical and health-related quality of life outcomes in CD patients treated with ustekinumab according to clinical practice. We included a total of 114 patients initiated on ustekinumab treatment during 2017 and 2018 at 20 different hospitals. We found significant improvements of almost all outcome measures and both short-term (Study II) and long-term (Study III) response and remission to treatment. Our study contributes to the knowledge about the real-world effectiveness and safety of ustekinumab for treatment of moderate to severe CD. In Study IV, we estimated the nationwide incidence of IBD and subtypes (CD, UC and IBDunclassified) and investigated differences between age-groups and sexes in Sweden 1990- 2014. We used a combination of diagnostic codes for IBD in the NPR and biopsy data from the ESPRESSO histopathology cohort to identify incident cases (N=65 908) during the study period. We found evidence of increasing incidence rates (IRs) in all subtypes 1990-2001, but signs of stabilising or decreasing IRs 2002-2014. We also showed differences in IRs between males and females related to age and calendar period. Our results contribute to the knowledge about temporal trends of IBD incidence in Sweden of importance for future research, and possibly also for healthcare resource planners. In conclusion, this thesis gave evidence of the NPR as a reliable and valid data source for researchers wanting to identify patients with previous IBD-related surgery. It also enhanced knowledge about the real-world effectiveness of ustkinumab, beneficial for patients suffering from CD. Finally, it shed light on previous contradicting estimates of the temporal trends of the incidence of IBD in Sweden

Exploring the impact of economic downturn and method to increase hotel sales department revenues

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how hotel sales are affected by the weak economy and determine a business plan for hotel sales departments to survive through the current economic downturn. The goal is to suggest ways that the sales department can increase revenues and survive through the downturn to come out ahead of the competition. Suggestions will be provided to, in particular, the sales departments of hotels to continue to increase revenues despite travel being down in the United States and internationally. In doing so, it will be important to discuss how down economies have an impact on the group and transient business. It is imperative to realize that working through these situations is necessary to ensure that your organization can survive

Feature enrichment through multi-gram models

We introduce a feature enrichment approach, by developing multi-gram cosine similarity classification models. Our approach combines cosine similarity features of different N-gram word models, and unsupervised sentiment features, into models with a richer feature set than any of the approaches alone can provide. We test the classification models using different machine learning algorithms on categories of hateful and violent web content, and show that our multi-gram models give across-the-board performance improvements, for all categories tested, compared to combinations of baseline unigram, N-gram, and sentiment classification models. Our multi-gram models perform significantly better on highly imbalanced sets than the comparison methods, while this enrichment approach leaves room for further improvements, by adding instead of exhausting optimization options

Improving operational performance within social housing

fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Rhythm Boys of Omaha Central: High School Basketball at the \u2768 Racial Divide\u3c/i\u3e by Steve Marantz

During the school year of 1967-68, African American basketball sensations John Biddle, Willie Frazier, Dwaine Dillard, Roy Hunter, and Phil Griffin electrified the predominantly white student body, coaches, and administrators of Omaha Central High School. These five Rhythm Boys and the racially tense times they lived through inspired Steve Marantz, a 1966 Omaha Central graduate, to write an examination of the first-string basketball players and the surrounding discrimination and racism they faced on and off the court. It was a year in which their high-school principal, J. Arthur Nelson, privately referred to black students as Smoky Swedes and employed only one black teacher, Wilda Stephenson, who taught typing and business classes as part of the school\u27s college-prep curriculum. Marantz\u27s study effectively uses the ratio of the sole black instructor to the rest of the white teachers as an example of imbalance of opportunity and the rampant inequality in Omaha, a typical segregated city in 1960s America