A Business Model for Managing System Change Through Strategic Financing and Performance Indicators: A Case Study

This article describes how a system of care operated by a county government agency used a fiscal crisis as the opportunity to reform its children's system. A cross-system response to the crisis is outlined that includes a system of care framework coupled with a business model, inter-departmental collaboration and leadership, the use of strategic reinvestment strategies, and a quality improvement system that focuses on key indicators. Implementation of the system change is described with a specific focus on cross-system entry points, financing strategies that re-allocate funds from deep-end programs to community-based services, and management oversight through the use of performance indicators to monitor and support effectiveness. This article examines the results of the system change, including the diversion of youth from system penetration, the reduction in residential treatment bed days, the re-allocation of these savings to community-based services, and the outcomes of children who were diverted from residential care and served in the community. The article offers a number of recommendations for other communities contemplating system change.     

Person and environmental factors associated with well-being in medical students

Medical students are exposed to demanding academic workloads and are often under considerable psychological strain. This study examined important person and environmental variables that might predict their psychological well-being. Participants were 755 students in years 2-6 from 11 Australian medical schools. A web-based survey assessed well-being, personality, professional expectations, lifestyle expectations, barriers, academic stress, and debt. A hierarchical regression analysis demonstrated that extraversion, conscientiousness, professional expectations, and lifestyle expectations were positively associated with well-being, while academic stress, which was the strongest predictor, neuroticism, and concern about debt were negatively associated. Medical students who displayed a disposition that was outgoing, conscientious, and stable, who were less stressed about their academic workload and their level of debt, and who held higher expectations for their future professional career, and expectations of a balanced lifestyle, had better well-being. Medical educators should be aware of these factors and provide support and strategies that promote well-being to students during medical training.     

Control networks and neuromodulators of early development

In adults, most cognitive and emotional self-regulation is carried out by a network of brain regions, including the anterior cingulate, insula, and areas of the basal ganglia, related to executive attention. We propose that during infancy, control systems depend primarily upon a brain network involved in orienting to sensory events that includes areas of the parietal lobe and frontal eye fields. Studies of human adults and alert monkeys have shown that the brain network involved in orienting to sensory events is moderated primarily by the nicotinic cholinergic system arising in the nucleus basalis. The executive attention network is primarily moderated by dopaminergic input from the ventral tegmental area. A change from cholinergic to dopaminergic modulation would be a consequence of this switch of control networks and may be important in understanding early development. We trace the attentional, emotional, and behavioral changes in early development related to this developmental change in regulative networks and their modulators.     

Examining process constructs of narrative career counselling: an exploratory case study

The present article examines how the five process constructs of reflection, connectedness, meaning making, learning and agency are operationalised in a constructivist approach to career counselling, specifically a storytelling approach. This article reports on an exploratory case study of a Black South African female university student. The case study provides examples of how a career counsellor enacts these constructs and facilitates their development in a client, as well as examples of how they are evident in client dialogue and action. Insight into the process of a storytelling approach to narrative career counselling is demonstrated, from which tentative suggestions are made about how to facilitate the process constructs of reflection, connectedness, meaning making, learning and agency.     

Sport stacking activities in school children's motor skill development

This study examined the impact of a 12-wk. sport stacking intervention on reaction time (RT), manual dexterity, and hand-eye coordination in elementary school-aged children. 80 Grade 2 students participated in a 15-min. sport stacking practice session every school day for 12 wk., and were tested on psychomotor performance improvement. Tests for choice RT, manual dexterity, and photoelectric rotary pursuit tracking were conducted pre- and post-intervention for both experimental group (n = 36) and the controls (n = 44) who did no sport stacking. Students who had the intervention showed a greater improvement in two-choice RT. No other group difference was found. Such sport stacking activities may facilitate children's central processing and perceptual-motor integration.     

Mark Graves <Emphasis Type="Italic">Mind,Brain and the Elusive Soul: Human Systems of Cognitive Science and Religion</Emphasis>

This article explores the use of Graves’ theory of the soul as an interdisciplinary tool to facilitate a holistic approach to healing. Graves’ discussion is applied to the use of therapeutic interventions to facilitate the emergent processes of healing and spiritual growth in traumatized persons.     

Spiritual Autobiography and Older Adults

Spiritual autobiography groups constitute a form of ministry that can potentially enrich the lives of older adults, their families, and their congregations. Such groups, when competently led, provide participants with an environment in which they can make meaning out of their lives, grieve their losses, and give and receive support. The actions and interactions involved in composing, telling, and hearing life stories are salutary exercises that can increase participants’ experiences of clarity, coherence, and connection to God and to each other. The spiritual wisdom that emerges from such life stories, when shared within congregations, can enhance intergenerational relationships and lead to spiritual growth for members of diverse ages.     

Viewing time through the lens of the self: The fit effect of self‐construal and temporal distance on task perception

This paper describes how different self‐construals influence people's perception of temporal distance and in turn their task evaluation. We hypothesize that people with a more accessible interdependent (vs. independent) self‐construal perceive future events as temporally more proximal, and that people's reaction toward a task is intensified when the temporal distance to the task matches (vs. mismatches) their self‐construal. Across four studies, we showed that individuals with a more accessible interdependent self‐construal (Study 1) and East Asians (Study 2) perceived future events as more proximal than those with a more accessible independent self‐construal and European Americans. Further, when considering a task at a temporal distance that fits their self‐construal, individuals perceived a pleasant task as more motivating (Study 3) and an unpleasant task as less motivating (Study 4).

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