An empowering approach to crisis intervention and brief treatment with preschool children

This paper presents an approach to crisis intervention and brief treatment for young children based on the new psychology, intrapsychic humanism. After presenting central theoretical principles, these principles are applied and treatment guidelines demonstrated in the treatment process of a three-year-old child named Paul. The research design for the case study is naturalistic, uses qualitative methods of data analysis, and draws from the heuristic paradigm (a postpositivist metatheory of social and behavioral research)

The Development of Uniforms and Equipment in Trench Warfare From 1914-1918

The First World War was one of incessant destruction, but the birth of a new modernized era with an abundance of technological advancements. These advancements ranged from the introduction of the first ever tank, to the individual details that soldiers changed on their uniforms. The uniform is also a vehicle to express a soldier’s memories and experiences, preserving their story

I\u27m Glad you Asked : Homeless Clients with Severe Mental Illness Evaluate Their Residential Care

Homeless clients with severe mental illness can offer considerable insight about their residential care, but there are significant methodological challenges in eliciting their service evaluations: maximizing participation, facilitating self-expression, and preserving clients\u27 natural meanings. This study addresses those challenges and presents qualitative data residential care staff obtained from 210 clients. While clients prioritized meeting their subsistence needs, they emphasized attaining inner well-being and mutually respectful relationships, and that group services needed to reduce confrontational interactions in order to be helpful. For after-care services, clients sought sustained relationships with staff grounded in client initiative, combining respect for their autonomy with psychosocial support

The Promise of an Accumulation of Care: Disadvantaged African-American Youths’ Perspectives About What Makes an After School Program Meaningful

African-American youth growing up in dangerous, deprived homes and communities are at great risk of developing impaired relationship capabilities, which disadvantages them further in the workplace and in their personal lives. While after-school programs have well-documented positive effects, researchers have called for better understanding of improving youths\u27 engagement in services and their constructive relationship skills. Here, we report on a project using participatory action methods to engage poverty-level African-American youth in developing a leadership development program they would find most meaningful. Stand Up Help Out (SUHO) gave youth three layers of caregiving experience: receiving care from instructors, giving and receiving care from peers, and providing care through constructive community action initiatives and mentoring elementary school children. Findings were that: (1) participation and retention of youth in SUHO were considerably higher than national averages; (2) youth reported that SUHO made it possible for them to have better relationships as friends, romantic partners, and in academic settings, and they looked forward to being better parents, (3) youth developed positive peer relationships despite a context of mistrust and gang violence, (4) youth actively sought out relationships with caring adults and identified what was most meaningful in those relationships, and (5) youth deeply valued the opportunity to develop their ability to care for others

When Traumatic Stressors are Not Past, But Now: Psychosocial Treatment to Develop Resilience with Children and Youth Enduring Concurrent, Complex Trauma

The article discusses a project called the Empowering Counseling Program (ECP) conducted in community schools using participatory action and consumer evaluation designs. It addressed the elements of treatment theories used by mental health providers such as values, assumptions and concepts. It cites findings that clients suffering from complex trauma in under-resourced communities, unavoidably traumatized concurrently with treatment do not benefit from treatment guidelines

Doing Good Science Without Sacrificing Good Values: Why the Heuristic Paradigm is the Best Choice for Social Work

Social work today faces a crucial watershed: Will the field continue to promulgate unsound and detrimental beliefs about social work research and knowledge, or will the field fully embrace the heuristic paradigm and thereby realize its true potential as a first-rate science committed to humanistic ideals? Proponents of unsound and detrimental beliefs have obscured the choice for social workers by systematically and thoroughly misrepresenting the heuristic paradigm, making unwarranted and misleading claims for the paradigms to which it is opposed (logical empiricism and relativism), and confusing the issues at stake for the field. Accordingly, this article helps social workers recognize the tenets and implications of each of the three paradigms for research that social work has available to it—the heuristic paradigm, logical empiricism, and relativism—so that social workers can make a truly informed choice about the best approach to knowledge in their field