The human–animal bond (HAB) is a powerful emotional attachment which often elevates pets to the status of a family member. Because companion animals typically live much shorter lives than humans, grief and loss is a problem that is frequently encountered. Disenfranchised grief over the loss of a companion animal is an area that is often overlooked by mental health professionals. Sife has developed a model for the stages of grief and loss specific to companion animals. Questions about pets should be a part of every initial assessment done on a client. Effective interventions include understanding the significance of the HAB and grief and loss; bibliotherapy; psychoeducation; the importance of rituals; and the use of pet loss support groups.

This mixed-method study explored how early childhood clinicians integrate play therapy into early childhood mental health treatment services with high-risk preschool children (ages 3 to 6 years) and their families, and its influence on parent involvement and the clinician-parent relationship. Interviews with parents and clinicians identified a parallel process with five distinctive phases of the integrative treatment process, all of which heightened parental involvement during home visits. Central to this integrative process was a supportive clinician-parent relationship that influenced parental confidence, empowerment, and ability to advocate for their child to friends and family, which led to improved familial understanding of child emotions and behaviors, natural supports and fewer feelings of social isolation. Interview data were triangulated and results identified specific play therapy interventions and significant relationships between play and other early childhood mental health interventions, which represent a possible need for specialized techniques and clinical trainings specific to this population. Further discussion of the integrative process along with clinical and research implications and needs are examined.

The expansion of infant mental health (IMH) to at-risk preschoolers and their families has contributed to the integration of relational play therapy (RPT) into IMH treatment services for this population. Integrating RPT allows access to specialized play and expressive techniques specific to preschool and family development, which improves the clinical ability to meet the multiple and complex needs of at-risk parent-child dyads and their families. This article will examine the RPT literature and explore the similarities and differences between IMH and RPT. In addition, two case studies will highlight a five-phase, integrative clinical-treatment process and provide insight into how IMH clinicians are integrating RPT models and maintaining adherence to the IMH treatment approach.

As it pertains to the adoption process, social work practice is in fact not a color-blind profession. The incidence of skin color discrimination by practitioners who place children is a consequence of the somatic norm image rooted in the mulatto hypothesis. Subsequently, light-skinned children are idealized at the expense of their dark-skinned counterparts as both are objectified. Discrepancies relative to skin color in the adoption process are a formidable challenge to investigate, given the limited available social work literature. While skin color as a demographic category may exist in the peer-reviewed literature, it is conspicuously absent from the databases which archive such literature. What is more, skin color discrimination is a breach of the National Association of Social Workers code of ethics. The elimination of adoption process discrimination will require macrostrategies grounded in policy. Said strategies for ethical adoptions couched in macropolicy must be fashioned from an evidence-based practice model.

Conscientious social workers would be remiss to exclude family and culture as essential aspects of life in social work practice. As a central part of Southeast Asian culture, family and spirituality are central components that may enhance the therapeutic potential of social work practice with Southeast Asian clients. Cultural sensitivity assumes the need to include practitioners who acknowledge and apply culturally specific principles in accordance with desired therapeutic outcomes. The ability of social workers to accurately perceive, conceptualize, and interact with Southeast Asian refugee clients is considered a necessity in a rapidly changing and complex world. This consideration must remain viable to sustain the integrity and prestige of the social work profession at-large.

This article examines the experience of 24 BSW students in a faculty- mentored undergraduate research experience (URE) over the course of 1 academic year. In particular, we sought to better understand students' self-perceived sense of competency across 15 specific research skills. In addition, we examined the URE's impact on students' knowledge about and attitudes toward research, as well as anxiety levels about research. A cross-sectional pre- and posttest design utilized both quantitative (survey) and qualitative (focus group) methodologies. All of the students' ratings of their 15 research skills improved over time; 3 were statistically significant. Students demonstrated the most gain in evidence-based practice, ability to use statistical software, and data entry and analysis. Both knowledge about and attitude toward research improved significantly. Anxiety levels were surprisingly low. The importance of faculty mentoring is discussed, and suggestions for future research are provided.

Objectives: To assess the effectiveness of a Healthy Families America (HFA) programme in meeting its goals and better understand the role of therapeutic alliance. Methods: One hundred and sixty-three families and their Family Support Worker (FSW) enrolled in an HFA programme completed five sets of measures over a five-year time frame. Results: Descriptive statistics provide a socio-demographic and programme involvement profile. Families demonstrated positive health and child development-related outcomes. Families improved in their ability to provide a positive home environment; children successfully met developmental milestones; and FSWs were highly effective in engaging families and creating a working alliance. Conclusions: Programme strengths and weaknesses are discussed within an international context with implications for future research in this area.

‘Blaming the victim’ policies remain largely intact under the façade of family law and policy construction. Based on empirical evidence, lack of employment for Black men is a major factor in their inability to sustain the Black family as a functional unit. The existence of child-focused family laws has had a devastating effect upon the construction of family policies vis-à-vis Black men. Evidence-based policy-making (EBPM) is intended to provide a means for creating legislation independent of politics. EBPM is predicated on the most rigorous scientific evidence available from recognized experts in relevant fields. Accordingly, policy-makers loyal to the Black family may simultaneously rescue its children and play a pivotal role in its viability.

This paper describes the evolution of a university–community child welfare learning collaborative based on an adaptation of the teaching hospital concept. This partnership between an agency providing a range of child and family welfare services and two university units, the school of social work and outreach, was intended to accomplish multiple agency, university and community goals: implement best practices in the agency, enhance social work education, increase staff resources in child welfare, influence public policy, and improve the lives of children and families in the child welfare system. The major strategy was ‘Grand Rounds’ modeled after the system used to train medical students through multiple transactions with experts in a clinical setting. The first year was very successful, with students, agency staff and faculty giving the sessions high ratings in content, quality and utility. One key to the success of the initiative was that it was an agency‐driven process and was based on working relationships of mutual respect and trust. Building such relationships takes both time and effort. Future challenges will include garnering the resources, both human and financial, to sustain the collaboration over time.

This paper describes sociodemographics, program involvement, and outcomes for 115 families involved in a rural HFA program. HFA-involved families fared well in concrete areas, yet demonstrated fewer positive changes in abstract goals. Subgroup analyses revealed relationships between mothers' sociodemographic characturistics and outcomes. HFA programs must allow for variability in implementation based on context. The effectiveness of persistent outreach in a geographically-dispersed area with families who do not engage with home visitors merits reexamination. While the riskiest families should always be given the opportunity to participate, we suggest that rural implementation may be most effective when utilized as part of a triage case management model which better integrates child welfare, mental and physical health care systems.

A quantitative study funded by the U.S. Children's Bureau as part of a national Child Welfare Faculty Development Program evolved over three years into a revealing qualitative narrative, with a secondary quantitative component. Most salient were the unintended effects of both managed care and privatization of state government on the feasibility of implementing a carefully designed project. These rapidly changing practice trends were incorporated in teaching a MSW research methods class through the use of a poignant case example, which facilitated clear integration of research, practice, policy, and child welfare.

The effectiveness of a community-based parent education and support program in improving risk factors associated with physical child abuse (i.e., parental stress, impaired parent-child interactions, verbal and physical aggression, and poor quality of the overall home environment) was tested. Pre- and posttest data were collected on 116 families for three structured programs and every three months for one ongoing support group. Level of program involvement was framed as duration (length of time) and intensity (programming per week). Strongest gains were made by parents who participated in the more intensive programs. Especially notable in regard to the most intensive program, was the mandatory parent and child components, four contacts per week, clear identification of risk factors, and the provision of transportation when needed. These findings have important implications for targeting service delivery for families with preschoolers at risk of physical child abuse.

The study examined the relation between maternal representations of attachment relationships from childhood and current parent-child interactions with their own preschool aged children. Thirty-six mother-child dyads were recruited from a community sample. The Adult Attachment Interview was converted into a questionnaire (AAIQ) and used to classify mothers as either ''secure'' or ''insecure.'' The mother-child dyads then engaged in a 20-min, videotaped play interaction task, The quality of maternal representations of attachment relationships was related to the degree of dyadic synchrony, as well as maternal affect and style of relating. Secure mothers and their children engaged in a more fluid, synchronous process of give-and-take than insecure mothers and their children. Tn addition, secure mothers expressed more warmth and affection, and their style of relating was less intrusive and more encouraging of child autonomy than insecure mothers. Children of secure mothers sought closer contact and were more compliant than children of insecure mothers. These interaction patterns were uniquely related to maternal representations of attachment, independent of maternal age, education and SES. There were no differences in these patterns of relating between mothers who had experienced loving relationships in childhood (continuous secure) and mothers who had come to terms with unloving and painful childhood relationships (earned secure). Therefore, rather than the quality of childhood histories, it was the manner in which these early experiences were mentally organized and integrated in adulthood that was significantly related to current parent-child interaction patterns. Finally, these differences in parent-child interaction patterns that were apparent on the observational measure were in contrast to information obtained from a maternal self-report measure.

The effectiveness of a community-based parent education and support program in ameliorating risk factors associated with physical child abuse was tested. Data were collected on 34 families at three points in time with a combination of questionnaires, interviews, and telephone contacts. Parental depression and stress were significantly reduced, but social support and child misbehaviors were not. The authors offer suggestions for tailoring programs, including strategies to treat depression and stress, the addition of social-skills training to facilitate involvement in healthy support networks, and the development of a cohesive child program. Parent–child programs that are part of a comprehensive service-delivery system may have the best chance for meeting the needs of violent families.

ABSTRACT The need to improve the integration of research and practice has long challenged social work educators. Few doctoral research courses adequately address the social context of research, as most focus on introductory methodology, and clinical as opposed to policy applications. This paper describes how an innovative doctoral program evaluation outreach course was developed to address a problem originating in the community. The course was successful in teaching the political and ethical aspects of research, fostering a community-university team, teaching both qualitative and quantitative research skills, and providing students with a hands-on opportunity to traverse the practice-research tightrope.

This study examines parental regulative communication across misbehavior situations and child resistance. Regulative messages are analyzed using Applegate et al.'s (1985) hierarchical scheme for coding `reflection-enhancement', or the degree to which parents encourage their child to reflect on psychological consequences of misbehavior. We explore several questions about regulative communication that have been de-emphasized in previous research, including how parents mix power-assertion and reflection-enhancement within the same message, how parents as a group vary their responses depending on how their child has misbehaved, how parents also differ individually in the degree to which they vary across situations and how parents respond after child resistance. Our findings tentatively suggest the need to develop more detailed and contingent views of parental regulative communication.

Psychological maltreatment between siblings is one of the most common yet often underrecognized forms of child abuse. Whether it occurs in conjunction with other maltreatment or in isolation, sibling psychological abuse can have harmful effects on family members. Such impaired interactions are often indicative of larger problems within the family system. This article brings attention to an important family dynamic through the use of a case example, and offers suggestions for assessment and intervention approaches.

The impact of population size across twenty-three west Michigan counties was examined to determine access to prenatal care, low birth weight, and infant mortality. Surveys were completed by forty-five managers of hospitals and county health departments. Service availability, sociodemographic, system-related and lifestyle factors were examined as contributors to perinatal support utilization. Low birth weight and infant mortality were highest in the small- and large-sized counties. Positive birth outcomes in medium-sized counties may have been due to greater availability of infant and child health services through health departments, and the targeting of resources to specific problem areas, such as smoking cessation. The need for a comprehensive maternity system, which views health care as a basic right, is discussed.