Katherine Tyson McCrea

Indicated Truancy Interventions for Chronic Truant Students A Campbell Systematic Review

Objective: Examine the effects of indicated interventions on attendance with chronic truant students. Method: Systematic review and meta-analytic methods, following Campbell Collaboration guidelines, were utilized. A comprehensive search identified 5 randomized and 11 quasi-experimental studies. Results: The mean effect on attendance outcomes was moderate, positive, and significant, g = .46, 95% confidence interval [.30, .62], p < .05, translating into an improvement in attendance by an average of 4.69 days; however, significant heterogeneity was observed. Moderator analyses found no significant differences in mean effects between studies on variables tested. Discussion: Chronic truant students benefit from interventions targeting attendance behaviors; however, no program stood out as being more effective than others. Mean rates of absenteeism at posttest in most studies remained above acceptable levels, indicating a need for more effective interventions. The paucity of research, gaps, and deficiencies affirm the need for strengthening the evidence base. Recommendations for practice, policy, and research are discussed.

The Practice of Compassion in Supervision in Residential Treatment Programs for Clients with Severe Mental Illness

ABSTRACT Clinical supervision for residential care staff is essential and yet has rarely been studied. Drawing from the reflective practice tradition, we interviewed residential care supervisors about their clinical decision-making processes and analyzed the data qualitatively to identify common themes and distill their beliefs and reported practices. We found that supervisors prioritized a compassion-based model of supervision characterized by fostering staff self-care, developing staffs empathy and responsiveness to clients, helping staff with disappointments in their relationships with clients, accurately evaluating client progress, preserving safety, and nurturing teamwork. A supervisors subjective experience of his caregiving of staff could be explained using a second-level analytic concept we termed a caregiving heuristic—ones beliefs, values, and guidelines for action as a caregiver—of which compassion was, for these supervisors, a foundational element. The supervisors envisioned compassion as a central means by which they could prevent compassion fatigue, develop their staffs caregiving heuristics, and improve job satisfaction and quality of client care.

Caregiving Heuristics: Valuable Practitioner Knowledge in the Context of Managing Residential Care

Improving practice depends on accurate understandings of practitioner knowledge, which are not easily attained, partly because practitioners unevenly apply formal theory and also rely on reflective processes and power bases that are significantly different from those of researchers. Focusing on residential care managers’ subjective experience of their own knowledge and clinical decisions, this study examines their application of theories, their beliefs and practices, challenges they faced, and factors managers described as related with good and poor client outcomes. Uninterested in formal theory and evidence-based practice models, the managers demonstrated a patterned, action-oriented, value-based ‘knowledge-in-action’ (per Floersch) we termed caregiving heuristics. Managers combined multiple interventions from diverse models to attain the best possible outcomes, using a strategy defined by Brandstatter, Hutchinson, and Gigerenzer as the priority heuristic. They creatively developed guidelines (at various levels of explication) for their decision-making. Unique to each practitioner, caregiving heuristics could be compared; elements were commonly held by managers. From these managers’s caregiving heuristics, guidelines for residential care management were distilled and included emphasizing compassion, providing supportive relationships so clients experience themselves as partners in their change process, developing clients’ strengths, and creating a community that restores clients’ dignity and provides psychological and material resources.

Clients’ Hope Arises from Social Workers’ Compassion: Young Clients’ Perspectives on Surmounting the Obstacles of Disadvantage

While social workers strive to build disadvantaged African American youths’ resilience by improving services, rarely are those youths’ perspectives included in research. In a previous evaluation of an after-school program, disadvantaged African American youths prioritized instructors’ compassion and said compassion engendered hope. This study explores their connection between compassion and hope more deeply. Focusing on Snyders hope theory, this study examines the connection between compassion and hope as individual traits (using standardized scales) and as relational, action-based experiences (using qualitative analysis of interview data). Instructor actions that youths identified as compassionate and as engendering hope were encouragement, problem solving, responsive empathy, and affirming that good choices could bring about good futures. Youths built their hope by internalizing their instructors’ compassion.

‘How does that itsy bitsy spider do it?’: Severely traumatized children’s development of resilience in psychotherapy

This article explores the ways in which traumatized children make use of a treatment relationship to develop their resilience. First, the concept of resilience is deepened by synthesizing elements from two theories: 1) Self-Determination Theory’s emphasis on the importance for a person’s well-being of her/his choices of goals of relatedness, autonomy, and competence (Ryan & Deci, 2008) and 2) Hope Theory’s formulation that central constituents of hope are the ability to conceptualize pathways towards goals and a conviction of competence in goal attainment (Snyder, 2002). Applying this understanding of resilience to long-term child-centered psychotherapy, this study describes how the therapist and eight children in long-term psychotherapy co-identified treatment contracts and goals. By listening to children’s presentation of their concerns, the therapist communicated to the children her understanding of the children’s priorities. The children affirmed and/or revised the goals. This process continued throughout treatment, as goals were attained and children and therapist co-identified subsequent goals. The co-identified goals included sustaining a trustworthy, pleasurable alliance with the therapist; responding adaptively to disappointment; being able to think clearly; regulating violence toward self and/or others; developing friendships; caring for their bodies; mastering the challenges of learning and athletics; and optimizing their caregiving relationships (with parents and therapist). The goals could be categorized according to aspects of self-determination, specifically autonomy, relatedness, and competence. The therapeutic relationship can help children experience the pathways towards and fulfillment of their constructive goals, affirming their selfreflective competence. The resulting awakening of their hope and self-determination builds their resilience.

Cocreating a Social Work Apprenticeship with Disadvantaged African American Youth: A Best-Practices After-School Curriculum

Abstract Cocreating an after-school program with disadvantaged African American youth (2006–2011) resulted in a social work apprenticeship. In a participatory action, youth-led evaluation process, youth (N = 203) prioritized positively impacting their communities, especially mentoring community children and promoting alternatives to community violence. Starting from the strengths perspective and self-determination theory, topics youth valued included human rights, peace-building, trauma and stress management, and mentoring. Knowledge about human development and interviewing helped youth experience the fulfillment of being mentors. A subsample (n = 133) described what they learned about social work, and 43% of those reported an interest in pursuing a social work career.