Toward an Understanding of the Connections in Creating Lasting Family Connections

Abstract

The Creating Lasting Family Connections^® (CLFC) program is designed to help improve relationship skills and reduce antisocial behaviors. Strader and colleagues propose that prosocial connectedness is responsible for program outcomes. We propose that the intersection of high agreeableness and low impulsivity represent an operational definition. We examined this definition in the context of a RCT with 246 men in prison reentry. CLFCFP increased the number of connected individuals. Being connected and the program independently impacted relationship skills, but no evidence was found to support the hypothesis that the program impacts would be more pronounced among those who were connected.     

Keys to the development of the role of grandparents in current Spanish society / Claves para el desarrollo del rol de abuelo y abuela en la sociedad española actual

Abstract

Current demographic changes and work-family reconciliation difficulties in Spain have resulted in an increase in the arrangement of grandparents caring for their grandchildren. However, in order to ensure that the relationship between both generations is a privileged interaction that promotes successful ageing, furthering our knowledge of the challenges that this field of study faces is necessary. On this basis, the purpose of this article is to review the theories regarding this family relationship, which, together with the empirical research into this area, comprise the basis of a three-pronged proposal that includes the keys or challenges to studying the role of grandparents: (1) the heterogeneity and multidimensionality in the study of this role; (2) the complex interaction of positive and negative aspects that produce significant ambivalence in grandparents as a reaction to their experiences in this role; and (3) the influence of the baby boom generation grandparents’ new characteristics.     

Chaotic attractors in the therapeutic system 1

Because little research had been done on the presence and role of latent communication in the context of team‐conducted family therapy, the writers set out to monitor unconscious responses generated under these conditions. Specifically, they investigated an ongoing family treatment situation conducted according to the “reflecting team model.” One team of therapists handles the actual treatment session, while the other observes from behind a one‐way mirror. During the course of a session, the second team makes suggestions to the treatment team either by telephone or by calling the therapists out of the treatment room.

As the project developed, the writers found that the unconscious responses of both family and treatment teams indicated a process at work beyond the conscious intentions of the participants. That is, the therapeutic enterprise was functioning as a dynamical system, whose increasing complexity suggested a self organizing principle at work. This paper traces the development of the system's movement toward greater complexity, identifies the specific interventions that indicate this process, describes how all participants demonstrated a high degree of resonance and synchronization with this overarching‐self organizing pattern. This paper serves to alert therapists to the role of unconscious communication within the therapeutic system and postulates that the generation of form within psychotherapy follows many of the same self organizing processes found in other human and non human systems.     

Timescapes of Security: Clocks,Clouds, and the Complexity of Security Governance

This article pulls together the disjointed complexification of security studies. Such analytical overview suggests that the perspective of “timescapes” allows for exploring the complexity that shapes meanings and practices of security and its governance. In this respect, it is the imperative to change that suggests the significance of complexity thinking to security studies—that is, it is alone in taking the discontinuities of global life seriously. Security, in this regard, is not merely about the clockwork of survival, but is redefined through the cloudlike adaptive contingency of “security as resilience.” In this setting, the security governance of complexity is identified through its dancing to the timescaped rhythms of uncertainty, cognitive challenges, complex risks, and exaptation prompted by the heterogeneity of global life.     

Helping South Asian Immigrant Women Use Resilience Strategies in Healing from Sexual Abuse: A Call for a Culturally Relevant Model

This article calls for the counseling and psychological field to construct a culturally relevant model for working with South Asian immigrant women survivors of sexual abuse to support their resilience and healing. Patriarchal norms of South Asian culture and acculturative stressors in the United States are examined to understand how they influence survivors' abuse experiences. The literature on South Asian women's experiences of intimate partner violence is reviewed in addition to resilience studies with women of color who have survived sexual abuse. Practice and research implications are presented.     

‘I don't want to be the mother of a paedophile’: the perspectives of mothers whose adolescent sons with learning disabilities sexually offend

The subject of sexual abuse is a major focus of professional and public concern. Sexual abuse of (and by) people with learning disabilities evokes even greater disquieting emotions, and makes severe demands on the social services, and the criminal justice system. The aims of the project were: 1) to determine whether group psychotherapy produced effective outcomes for adolescent boys with learning disabilities who exhibit sexually abusive behaviour, 2) to explore the perspectives of parents and other care-givers, and 3) to document the nature and extent of service support to families. This paper focuses solely on the mothers' perspectives. This was a three-year project with six boys (under 16) receiving group psychotherapy, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Clinical measures were used to track changes throughout the course of psychotherapy. Semi-structured interviews (taped and transcribed) were held (separately) with the boys, their parents, paid care-givers and the therapists. The mothers tried hard to make sense of, and come to terms with, what was happening to their sons and to themselves, they struggled to reconcile their own confused and often conflicting emotions, and to maintain their own sense of identity. They felt almost totally unsupported by the services, both in the past and present, and could see little hope for the future. There is an urgent need for development of effective and sympathetic services for the parents of boys with learning disabilities who have been abused, and who are now showing abusive behaviour.     

Conjoint Community Resiliency Assessment Measure-28/10 Items (CCRAM28 and CCRAM10): A Self-report Tool for Assessing Community Resilience

Community resilience is used to describe a community’s ability to deal with crises or disruptions. The Conjoint Community Resiliency Assessment Measure (CCRAM) was developed in order to attain an integrated, multidimensional instrument for the measurement of community resiliency. The tool was developed using an inductive, exploratory, sequential mixed methods design. The objective of the present study was to portray and evaluate the CCRAM’s psychometric features. A large community sample (N = 1,052) were assessed by the CCRAM tool, and the data was subjected to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. A Five factor model (21 items) was obtained, explaining 67.67 % of the variance. This scale was later reduced to 10-item brief instrument. Both scales showed good internal consistency coefficients (α = .92 and α = .85 respectively), and acceptable fit indices to the data. Seven additional items correspond to information requested by leaders, forming the CCRAM28. The CCRAM has been shown to be an acceptable practical tool for assessing community resilience. Both internal and external validity have been demonstrated, as all factors obtained in the factor analytical process, were tightly linked to previous literature on community resilience. The CCRAM facilitates the estimation of an overall community resiliency score but furthermore, it detects the strength of five important constructs of community function following disaster: Leadership, Collective Efficacy, Preparedness, Place Attachment and Social Trust. Consequently, the CCRAM can serve as an aid for community leaders to assess, monitor, and focus actions to enhance and restore community resilience for crisis situations.     

Locked Up,Then Locked Out

SUMMARY

Women prisoners face tremendous psychological, emotional, and physical hardships inside prison. These include isolation, separation from their families and children, lack of medical care and general abuse of their basic human rights. When they are released from prison, women confront institutional as well as psychological barriers to a successful return to their communities     

Parental Attitudes,Beliefs, and Responses to Childhood Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: The Parental Attitudes and Behaviors Scale

ABSTRACT

This paper documents preliminary examination of the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Parental Attitudes and Behaviors Scale (PABS), an OCD-specific measure of parental attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral strategies related to childhood OCD. Employing a sample of 123 youth (mean age = 11.7; 59% male, 79% Caucasian) diagnosed with OCD in an outpatient child anxiety clinic, we used exploratory factor analysis to produce a 3-factor solution representing the following domains of parental responses to childhood OCD: accommodation, empowerment, and hostility/blame. These scales demonstrated adequate internal consistency and concurrent validity, providing preliminary evidence for the psychometric integrity of the PABS.