Audrey L. Begun

Adults with Mental Retardation and Their Aging Mothers: Impacts of Siblings.

This article examines the relationships between adults with mental retardation and their nonhandicapped siblings and the effect of these relationships on the well-being of aging mothers. Families are found to differ in their level and pattern of sibling involvement. Mothers whose children provided support to the adult with retardation had better well-being than mothers with no other children or no involved children. These findings are discussed in the context of family systems theory and parent-child relationships during later years.

Human Behavior and the Social Environment: The Vulnerability, Risk, and Resilience Model

The author presents the vulnerability, risk, and resilience model as a mechanism for improved content integration in the Human Behavior and the Social Environment sequence in social work education. The model demonstrates the interaction of community and social context variables with individual characteristics in the development of social work problems. The five steps in the model are (1) define the social work problem of concern, (2) identify risk and protective factors in the social context, (3) identify intrinsic vulnerability and invulnerability characteristics, (4) intersect these two, and (5) explore intervention: and prevention options. In addition, she provides a rationale and background for the model, describes the model itself, and develops an example from social work practice (adolescent substance abuse) for social work education.

A Measure of Critical Thinking About Practice

This article describes a measure that assesses ability to think critically about whether to adopt a treatment method. The measure is called PRIDE1 (Principles of Reasoning, Inference, Decision-Making and Evaluation). PRIDE1 takes about 80 minutes to administer an emotional audiovisual argument and to obtain written responses. Scoring each response takes expertenced raters from 2 to 10 minutes. Pearsons r interrater reliability on 5 trials range from. .78 to 96. There was no statistically significant correlation between responses on PRIDE1 and research knowledge, as measured on the Kirk-Rosenblatt Research Knowledge Scale. This study suggests that there may be little or no association between research knowledge and ability to think critically about practice.

Intervening with Women in Jail around Alcohol and Substance Abuse During Preparation for Community Reentry

The Women and Jails Project involved a jail in-reach brief screening and feedback intervention for women experiencing problems with alcohol or other substances. The screening and brief intervention (SBI) protocol involved the application of an evidence-informed screening interview (the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test-Including Drugs, or AUDIT-12) and the provision of personalized feedback on each womans screening results, delivered in a brief motivational interview format. Comparisons of interview data while incarcerated and 2 months postrelease indicated significantly greater improvement in alcohol and other substance use screening results (lower AUDIT-12 scores) among women randomly assigned to intervention versus treatment as usual groups. This greater improvement could not be attributed to greater treatment engagement because that difference was not significant. The authors discuss practice and future research implications of the jail in-reach intervention and providing resource information to women preparing for community reentry.

Intimate Partner Violence: An HBSE Perspective.

This article presents a developmental vulnerability/resilience and risk/safety framework to educate social work students about intimate partner violence. The framework adopts a multidimensional perspective to understanding development (a) among individuals who are violent toward intimate partners, (b) among those toward whom they are violent, and (c) within family systems; it also covers prevailing socio-environmental contexts. The utility of this framework for Human Behavior in the Social Environment (HBSE) education is discussed.

Mental Health and Substance Abuse Service Engagement by Men and Women During Community Reentry Following Incarceration

Individuals reentering the community following incarceration are at high risk for experiencing mental health and substance use problems. This longitudinal study explores patterns and barriers for engaging treatment services during early reentry. Seventy-five men and 62 women in jail, prison, or community based correctional facilities (CBCFs) participated in pre- and post-release interviews. Findings indicate that services were engaged at a lower-than-needed rate and barriers were greater for individuals leaving jails compared to prison or CBCF. Exploratory factor analysis of the barriers instrument is presented. Implications for extending service access to this population are discussed, as are future directions for research.

Sibling Relationships and Foster Care Placements for Young Children.

There are a variety of ways in which the evolving knowledge base related to childrens sibling relationships applies to the practice of social work with young children. This article1 explores the implications of sibling relationships literature for the foster care placement of young children. The author discusses attachment, kinship, socialization, caretaking, and cultural diversity issues along with both intentional and unintentional sibling segregation concerns. 1The author submits acknowledgments with gratitude to the University of Wisconsin‐Milwaukee School of Social Welfare Writers’ Guild and Adrienne Haeuser for their critiques of draft versions.

The Writer's Guild: A Model of Support for Social Work Faculty

The retention and promotion of social work faculty is partially dependent upon their success in publishing. Because of a perception among junior faculty at one Midwestern university that writing barriers posed a threat to their career development, they developed a Writers Guild. The Guild model represents a collaborative, non-hierarchical approach to supporting scholarship. In this article, the authors describe the model, discuss some of the challenges involved in its formation, and offer recommendations for transplanting the model to other schools.

Looking Out from the Inside: Incarcerated Women's Perceived Barriers to Treatment of Substance Use

Using the Allen Barriers to Treatment Instrument (ABTI), 299 women incarcerated in a local jail were asked about the barriers they believed they would face in seeking treatment after their release. The top reported barriers were the inability to pay for treatment, the lack of health insurance, and long waiting lists for publicly funded care. An exploratory factor analysis was used to categorize the ABTI barriers into seven factors these women believed would stand in their way: Program Characteristics, Non-Gender Specific Programming, Treatment Site Access, Financial Access, Personal Beliefs About Use & Recovery, Community & Social Environment, and Children & Work Obligations.

CATCH Court: A Novel Approach to “Treatment as Alternative to Incarceration” for Women Engaged in Prostitution and Substance Abuse

Judge Paul Herbert asks each woman on the day’s docket: “How long have you been clean today?” “238 days, Sir.” Applause. “That’s great! Everyone here is proud of you,” he responds. “186 days, Your Honor.” Applause and a “Way to go!” from the woman’s cheering squad. “I got 212 days clean myself.” More applause and cheers. “104 days, Judge!” Applause. “I am very proud of you for that!” says the judge. “20 minutes.” Dead silence. “I stepped out and bummed a cigarette at the lunch break.” And the judge says, “We’re going to have a talk when this is over, you and me.” The social worker reports that this woman also “dropped dirty urine” earlier. Everyone knows this woman is going to jail when she leaves court today. This is how one crowded session at CATCH Court in the Franklin County Ohio Municipal Courtroom 12C began. Two women seated front and center of the spectator area said they were there to see if Judge Herbert