Hard-to-Employ Parents: A Review of Their Characteristics and the Programs Designed to Serve Their Needs

Many low-income parents with personal challenges that make work difficult (sometimes called the "hard to employ") seek help from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, but many do not. The most effective TANF programs offer cash assistance along with services that alleviate barriers and help clients find jobs. Other federal-state programs offer help by providing either generic employment services or specialized services that address particular challenges. Hard-to-employ parents probably fare best when they enroll in TANF and receive a holistic set of supports. A redesigned system should marshal all program resources to provide an integrated system that addresses barriers and supports work simultaneously

Understanding stakeholder values using cluster analysis

The K-Means and Ward’s Clustering procedures were used to categorize value similarities among respondents of a public land management survey. The clustering procedures resulted in two respondent groupings: an anthropocentrically focused group and an ecocentrically focused group. While previous studies have suggested that anthropocentric and ecocentric groups are very different, this study revealed many similarities. Similarities between groups included a strong feeling towards public land and national forest existence as well as the importance of considering both current and future generations when making management decisions for public land. It is recommended that land managers take these similarities into account when making management decisions. It is important to note that using the Ward’s procedure for clustering produced more consistent groupings than the K-Means procedure and is therefore recommended when clustering survey data. K-Means only showed consistency with datasets of over 500 observations

Environmental Justice in Alaska

This article also appeared on p. 3 of the Summer 2018 print edition.Pamela Cravez, editor of the Alaska Justice Forum, gives an overview of articles in the Summer 2018 edition, which addresses environmental contaminants in Alaska, some of the programs in place to deal with them, and the lasting impact that they are having on Alaska Native communities

Sexual Assault Kit Initiative: Alaska Making Progress

This article also appeared on p. 5–6 of the Spring 2018 print edition.Victim-centered policies being developed by the Alaska Department of Public Safety for processing unsubmitted and untested sexual assault kits collected by Alaska State Troopers are one part of the state’s efforts to tackle more than 3,000 untested kits under grants from the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice.Alaska SAKI / Why kits weren’t tested / What’s happening now? / Reference

An Ethiopian-Headed Serpent in theCantigas de Santa María: Sin, Sex, and Color in Late Medieval Castile

An unconventional portrayal of the serpent of the Temptation in the Florence codex of the Cantigas de Santa María (Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, MS B.R. 20) manifests significant developments in the visual and epistemic norms of late medieval Castile. The satanic serpent’s black face and stereotyped African features link to cultural traditions well beyond Iberia, most notably the topos of the “Ethiopian,” which blended the actual and fantastical in deeply symbolic ways. Most crucial to the reading of the motif in the cantiga were the Ethiopian’s long-standing associations with sin and diabolism, rooted in early monastic Christianity but preserved in later medieval monastic and romance literature as well as in visual images found in Iberian contexts. Yet the otherwise conventional femininity of the serpent’s head must have connected still more specifically to medieval stereotypes of black women as hypersexual, distasteful, and dangerous. Iberian awareness of these stereotypes, attested by the caricatured black women of medieval Castilian exempla, poetry, and historical texts, surely facilitated recognition of the complementary binaries central to this cantiga, in that Satan’s blackness and sensuality invert Eve’s whiteness and erstwhile purity, foreshadowing her capitulation to the darkness of sin and sex as an antitype of the faultless Virgin. The innovative image thus reveals both its artist’s sensitivity to broad European cultural trends and the resonance of skin color in a region where both color and race would soon become inescapably concrete concerns

Learning about America's Best: Resources on Educating, Training, and Hiring Returning Veterans and Service Members

This document provides a quick list of some of the many books, articles, and web sites that offer information for educators, trainers, employers, service members, veterans, and family members. It is part of a series of materials written to address the growing need for information and ideas that can help our nation's schools, training organizations, and workplaces make a welcoming, productive, and satisfying place for returning veterans and transitioning service members

An exploration of attitudes towards psychological interventions for pain management amongst Maltese pain chronic sufferers

Chronic pain is a living reality for many individuals. Research reveals that individuals are often reluctant to seek psychological help. Chronic pain research and attitudes towards psychological treatment among a Maltese chronic pain population is solely lacking. This study sought to explore attitudes towards psychological interventions for the management of chronic pain amongst persons with chronic pain. A grounded theory methodology was adopted. Interviews were conducted with 21 participants. Five superordinate categories comprising 12 sub-categories were generated. An attitude model reflecting inter-relationships between categories was developed. The theory entitled ‘Readiness to Try What Ever it Takes’ reveals that a number of facilitating factors contribute to the formation of positive attitudes to psychological help-seeking. Although the study did not reveal polarized views in relation to gender, impeding factors comprising negative affect, lacking resources and stigma hinder help-seeking behaviour. Most participants were unfamiliar with psychological services for pain management. Findings also indicate that individuals who perceive a link between psychological factors and pain are not necessarily more inclined to access psychological help, mostly because help-seeking behaviour is influenced by an array of psychosocial factors which are difficult to quantify. Service uptake can be enhanced by adopting a bio-psychosocial framework incorporating cultural factors and a multi-disciplinary approach to treatment involving not just health care professionals, but also significant others who influence the chronic pain sufferers’ decision-making, including family members and the clergy.peer-reviewe