“But Many of These Problems are About Funds…”: The Challenges Immigrant Settlement Agencies (ISAs) Encounter in a Suburban Setting in Ontario,Canada

A large number of studies have focused on the neoliberal political and economic restructuring of non-profit immigrant settlement agencies (ISAs) through a policy analysis framework. While policy analysis is key to determining how resources are distributed among non-profit organizations, the challenges that ISAs encounter in planning and delivering services extend beyond limited financial resources in the sector. This research focuses on the system-level challenges ISAs encounter in planning and delivering services to newcomers in the suburban municipality of the Peel Region, Ontario, Canada. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with frontline staff and executive directors in settlement organizations in Peel Region, Ontario, Canada, to understand the complex challenges they face within a highly federalized and neoliberal policy environment. The results indicate that although funding dollars are a large concern for ISAs, the conditions attached to funding, such as the types of programs settlement providers are able to offer, mandatory quotas, and restrictive eligibility criteria, hinder ISAs from being able to plan and implement programs that better respond to the needs of immigrants in Peel Region. The results also demonstrate that restrictive funding criteria contribute to competition with other ISAs for limited resources and challenge the structure and continuity of programs. Many of these challenges are exacerbated by the transportation system unique to suburban settings.     

The illness reframing process in an ethnic-majority population of older people with incurable cancer: variations of cultural- and existential meaning-making adjustments

Increasing numbers of older people in Western countries are living with incurable cancer as a chronic disease, receiving palliative care from specialised healthcare contexts. The study's aim was to understand variations of cultural- and existential meaning-making adjustments in a Norwegian majority population of older people with incurable cancer. Semi-structured interviews from 21 participants, aged 70–88, were analysed according to three identified types of belief frames: atheistic/humanistic, religious, and spiritual. Kleinman's medical anthropology cultural framework was adapted and applied deductively together with a reframing metaphor concept in a four-part analytic process. Independent of the differences among the types of belief frames and heterogeneous illness reframing processes, changes in the existential cultural dimension seemed to facilitate psychosocial adjustments in relation to illness, daily living, relationships, and surroundings. The results point to the need for collecting and assessing the function of this type of patient information for better understanding the patient's framework of interpretation, and for identifying treatment-planning resources.     

Modern Settlements in Special Needs Education: Segregated Versus Inclusive Education

In the history of special needs education, the distinction between human nature and its social environment has been a controversial matter. The controversy regards whether special needs are primarily caused by the child's psycho-medical body or by cultural concepts of normality and deviance. Settlements of this controversy govern whether the pupil or the educational institution becomes the main point of intervention. In Denmark, the particularities of settlements can be identified by juxtaposing the introduction of intelligence testing in the 1930s with the contemporary policy agenda of inclusion. With intelligence testing, special needs education was to service children whose needs were seen as part of their human nature. Inclusion, in turn, assumes special needs to be stigmatizing cultural labels that need to be abandoned by changing school cultures. Drawing on actor-network theory we can approach such settlements as a product of a modern division between human nature and social environment. Although both these settlements depend on a distinction between human nature and social environment, this distinction generates practical tensions for each settlement.     

Therapeutic group approaches in an inpatient facility for children and adolescents: A 15-year perspective

Inner city, psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents are accessible to group therapy intervention. We developed a unique approach combining Slavson's theories with principles of family treatment and psychoanalytic theory. The group was conceptualized as a corrective family experience with the therapists functioning as model parents. Our model relies on a four-phase process, which is discussed.     

Assessing the impact of group treatment for aggressive inpatients

The purpose of this research was to determine if psychodynamic group psychotherapy decreases the occurrence of physical assault by male group members. The design of the study was a randomized clinical trial. Patients assigned to the control group received the customary clinical care. Patients assigned to the Group Therapy attended a psychodynamic psychotherapy group to help them cope with their aggressive impulses. Both quantitative and qualitative measures were used. Group members showed decreased expression of anger at followup, increased effort to control anger at followup, and decline in aggressive behavior. Control subjects demonstrated no change in level of angry feelings, increased expression of anger at follow-up, decrease in effort to control anger at follow-up, and no change in aggressive behavior. A model for conducting a psychodynamic psychotherapy group for assaultive men was developed which describes process and content aspects as well as leader interventions by group phase.     

Measuring global bystander intervention and exploring its antecedents for helping refugees

Although the bystander intervention model provides a useful account of how people help others, no previous study has applied it to a global emergency. This research aims to develop a scale for measuring global bystander intervention and investigate its potential antecedents in the Syrian refugee emergency. In Study 1 (N = 80) and Study 2 (N = 205), a 12-item scale was established through a substantive-validity assessment and a confirmatory factor analysis, respectively. Study 3 (N = 601) explored the potential antecedents of the global bystander intervention, employing British and German samples. Results show that the global bystander intervention model worked for both samples, but there were significant between-group differences in terms of the extent to which they notice the emergency, know how to help, show political support, and donate money. Overall, the visibility of the global emergency aftermaths within the context has been deduced as a meaningful driver for between-group differences. This research provides the first empirical evidence on global bystander intervention and it offers timely suggestions to promote support for refugees or other victims of global disasters, especially among those who are distant to the disaster zone.     

Developmental coordination disorder: exploration of a cerebellar hypothesis

This study explored the hypothesis of a specific cerebellar dysfunction in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD): motor adaptation. The performance of a group of children with DCD (3 girls and 6 boys) was compared to that of a control group (5 girls and 6 boys) on a measure of motor adaptation, the prism adaptation test (PAT). Children were between 6 years 11 months and 11 years 10 months of age. Between-group differences were only found for PAT variables related to throwing accuracy, the DCD group being more variable and less accurate than the control group. While no between-group differences were found for the adaptation variables, individual data analysis revealed that only three children in the DCD group obtained normal adaptation variables. While these findings do not confirm the hypothesis of a cerebellar dysfunction, they also do not refute it. It is possible that the poor throwing accuracy of the DCD group masked the findings for some of the PAT variables. Further exploration of the function of the cerebellum among children with DCD is needed.     

Proposed Revisions of the By-Laws of the American Group Psychotherapy Association,Inc.

Abstract

The social constructs of the group, the group self of an individual member, and the moral order of the group as a whole are described as basic, interrelated concepts essential to our understanding of scapegoating. Two patterns of scapegoating are then introduced: one concerns antagonistic, the other, agonistic relations of scapegoat to scapegoaters. A series of case examples are presented, one involves an advocacy group of socio-cultural “outsiders;” the other three pertain to scapegoating in therapy group settings. The case materials illustrate the meaning and usefulness of an intersubjective/social constructivist perspective on the problem of scapegoating.     

An Analysis of the Results Obtained by Retesting Juvenile Delinquents

Sixty first-year college student in a state university were administered three problems to ascertain their level of logical thinking. Successful solution of the problems required the elaboration of hypotheses and methods of proof. Seventeen percent of the randomly selected Ss scored at the concrete level, 63% at the lower formal level, and 20% at the upper formal level. Logical thinking was found to have almost no relationship to college selection criteria (high school rank and SAT scores) for men and a low relationship for women in this sample whose range of scores on these criteria was restricted. Differences between the sexes were found to be substantial and significant, favoring the men.