An Innovative Collective Parent Engagement Model for Families and Neighborhoods in Arrival Cities

Arrival Cities are special urban places. Amid the largest migration in human history, they provide homes for large numbers of mobile, low-income, immigrant families. These families need new human service and child welfare service models. Collective parent engagement (CPE) is one such model. CPE is designed to build on the strengths and meet the needs of immigrant families living in Arrival City neighborhoods. In contrast to interventions focused on individual parents, this CPE model mobilizes groups of parents; and with a dual agenda. CPE develops much-needed “anchoring supports” for mobile, vulnerable families, at the same time that it positions local organizations to become welcoming, supportive, and resource-providing social settings for families on the move. Enhanced professional preparation and training programs, together with enhanced organizational and policy development, are needed to realize this important agenda

Conceptualizing a Trauma Informed Child Welfare System for Indian Country

The creation of trauma-informed systems that use evidence-based, culturally competent interventions for affected children and families is a priority in Indian Country because mounting evidence from adverse childhood experiences research with American Indians documents the incidence and prevalence of trauma. What is more, an emergent line of research documents secondary traumatic stress (STS) in the adult workforce, which reduces their ability to help affected children and families and contributes to workforce turnover. The development of a trauma-informed system entails evidence-based detection, treatment, and prevention mechanisms for children, families, and STS-affected social services professionals. With tribal child welfare systems as a starting point and also as a centerpiece for the development of companion, trauma-informed behavioral and mental health systems, we propose a conceptual framework for such work to guide innovative system designs. Although some aspects of such a system currently are in place in several Native American communities, to our knowledge the comprehensive design we describe is not fully developed and implemented anywhere. Adaptive leadership and evaluation-driven, organizational learning systems are practical necessities

Planning for Emotional Labor and Secondary Traumatic Stress in Child Welfare Organizations

This analysis provides an emergent framework that emphasizes a neglected component of both direct practice with families and organizational development. Human emotions, both beneficial (positive emotional labor) and harmful (negative emotional labor), have received short shrift in leadership development, supervision, direct practice preparation and supports, and workforce stabilization, and professionalization. Significantly, a key indicator of negative emotional labor—secondary traumatic stress (STS)—often has been ignored and neglected, despite the fact that it may be endemic in the workforce. STS typically results from traumatic events in practice, but it also stems from workplace violence. Often undetected and untreated, STS is at least a hidden correlate and perhaps a probable cause of myriad problems such as questionable practice with families, life-work conflicts, undesirable workforce turnover, and a sub-optimal organizational climate. Special interventions are needed. At the same time, new organizational designs are needed to promote and reinforce positive emotional labor. Arguably, positive emotional labor and the positive organizational climates it facilitates are requisites for harmonious relations between jobs and personal lives, desirable workforce retention, and better outcomes for children and families. What’s more, specialized interventions for positive emotional labor constitute a key component in the prevention system for STS. A dual design for positive emotional labor and STS (and other negative emotional labor) prevention/intervention is provided herewith. Early detection and rapid response systems for STS, with social work leadership, receive special attention. Guidelines for new organizational designs for emotional labor in child welfare are offered in conclusion

Integrating Services, Collaborating, and Developing Connections with Schools

When a new cottage industry develops around a bewildering array of buzzwords, something important is happening. When competent people from all walks of life struggle to make sense of these buzzwords, they are identifying important policy needs and problems with practice. When schools are in trouble, and when results for vulnerable children, youth, and families do not improve, the seeds are being sown for self-doubt, cynicism, skepticism, and maltreatment dynamics. When practicing professionals protect themselves from blame by pointing their fingers at others, when they manifest some of the same needs as the most vulnerable families, and when a growing number of them bum out and drop out, systemic problems are being implicated. When children kill other children, their teachers, and their parents, and when America's schools become their killing fields, something is clearly wrong, and that something needs to be fixed. When no one knows all that's wrong, and when there are competing definitions of what is wrong that needs fixing and what is good and right that needs strengthening, individuals, groups, entire professions, and organizations often work at cross-purposes. As they work at cross-purposes, they are effectively manufacturing diversity and simultaneously adding to the list of buzzwords. Finally, when the American "quick-fix mentality " reigns, even the most promising innovations often ar

Drivers for Change: A Study of Distributed Leadership and Performance Adaptation During Policy Innovation Implementation

Scaling up innovation in the instructional core remains a vexing proposition. Such disruptive innovations require teachers to engage in performance adaptation. Schools vary in their capacity to support changes in teachers’ day-today work. By comparing distributed instructional leadership practices of “odds-beating” schools with those at “typically performing schools,” this study identified four qualities of distributed instructional leadership that drive teacher performance adaptation: collective goal setting, instructional feedback, collective guided learning, and trusting relationships. These findings reiterate the need for policy to go beyond standards and accountability mandates to focus on the right drivers of change: capacity building, and opportunities for collaboration in tandem with pedagogical improvement

The Role of District and School Leaders\u27 Trust and Communications in the Simultaneous Implementation of Innovative Policies

This mixed-method multiple case study investigated nine elementary schools. Six “odds-beating schools, which serve relatively high numbers of economically disadvantaged children, achieved higher than predicted performance on state assessments when compared with three typically performing schools. The overarching research question guiding this study was: What forces, factors, and actors account for odds-beating schools\u27 better outcomes? The trust-communication connection provided one answer. Relational trust in odds-beating schools is an intraorganizational phenomenon, and it is accompanied by interorganizational trust (reciprocal trust). These two kinds of trust are accompanied by intraschool and district office-school communication mechanisms. Trust and communications are mutually constitutive as innovations are implemented. This connection is also an implementation outcome. When today\u27s innovation implementation initiatives reinforce this trust–communication connection, it becomes an organizational resource for future innovation implementation

Engaging Low-Income Parents in Childhood Obesity Prevention from Start to Finish: A Case Study

Prevention of childhood obesity is a national priority. Parents influence young children’s healthy lifestyles, so it is paradoxical that obesity interventions focus primarily on children. Evidence and theory suggest that including parents in interventions offers promise for effective childhood obesity prevention. This case study engaged parents’ as co-researchers in the design, implementation and evaluation of an intervention for low-income families with a child enrolled in Head Start. Parent engagement mechanisms include: (1) targeted partnership development (2) operationalizing a Community Advisory Board (CAB) that was the key decision making body; (3) a majority of CAB members were parents who were positioned as experts, and (4) addressing structural barriers to parent participation. Lessons learned are provided for future research, and practice

Biomarker-indicated extent of oxidation of plant-derived organic carbon (OC) in relation to geomorphology in an arsenic contaminated Holocene aquifer, Cambodia

The poisoning of rural populations in South and Southeast Asia due to high groundwater arsenic concentrations is one of the world’s largest ongoing natural disasters. It is important to consider environmental processes related to the release of geogenic arsenic, including geomorphological and organic geochemical processes. Arsenic is released from sediments when iron-oxide minerals, onto which arsenic is adsorbed or incorporated, react with organic carbon (OC) and the OC is oxidised. In this study we build a new geomorphological framework for Kandal Province, a highly studied arsenic affected region of Cambodia, and tie this into wider regional environmental change throughout the Holocene. Analyses shows that the concentration of OC in the sediments is strongly inversely correlated to grainsize. Furthermore, the type of OC is also related to grain size with the clay containing mostly (immature) plant derived OC and sand containing mostly thermally mature derived OC. Finally, analyses indicate that within the plant derived OC relative oxidation is strongly grouped by stratigraphy with the older bound OC more oxidised than younger OC