Coordination between child welfare agencies and mental health service providers,children's service use,and outcomes

ObjectiveInterorganizational relationships (IORs) between child welfare agencies and mental health service providers may facilitate mental health treatment access for vulnerable children. This study investigates whether IORs are associated with greater use of mental health services and improvement in mental health status for children served by the child welfare system.MethodsThis was a longitudinal analysis of data from a 36-month period in the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW). The sample consisted of 1,613 children within 75 child welfare agencies who were 2 years or older and had mental health problems at baseline. IOR intensity was measured as the number of coordination approaches between each child welfare agency and mental health service providers. Separate weighted multilevel logistic regression models tested associations between IORs and service use and outcomes, respectively.ResultsAgency-level factors accounted for 9% of the variance in the probability of service use and 12% of mental health improvement. Greater intensity of IORs was associated with higher likelihood of both service use and mental health improvement.ConclusionsHaving greater numbers of ties with mental health providers may help child welfare agencies improve children's mental health service access and outcomes.Practice implicationsPolicymakers should develop policies and initiatives to encourage a combination of different types of organizational ties between child welfare and mental health systems. For instance, information sharing at the agency level in addition to coordination at the case level may improve the coordination necessary to serve these vulnerable children.     

Understanding School Counseling Internships From a Communities of Practice Framework

School counseling interns are on the boundary of communities of practice. This study explored how school counselors develop competence during internship experiences by analyzing an online dialogue taking place among a small group of interns. Feelings of being on the boundary intensified with unsatisfactory supervisor‐intern relationships (lack of mutuality of engagement) or when interns experienced a sense of powerlessness to effect change at their internship placements (negotiating their repertoire). As boundary dwellers, interns turned to peers to make sense of their experiences (accountability to the joint enterprise). Implications include the importance of the supervisor‐intern relationship and the relationships among internship peers.     

Neonatal Stepping in Relation to Terrestrial Optic Flow

This experiment examined whether newborn stepping, a primitive form of bipedal locomotion, could be modulated by optical flow. Forty-eight 3-day-old infants were exposed to optical flows that were projected onto a horizontal surface above which the infants were suspended. Significantly more air steps were elicited by exposure to a terrestrial optical flow specifying forward translation than by a rotating optical flow or a static optical pattern. Thus, a rudimentary coupling between optical flow and stepping is present at birth, suggesting a precocious capacity in the newborn to perceive and utilize visual information specifying self-motion. The findings may help the early diagnosis of infants with visual or visual-motor deficits and the development of visually based interventions for disabled infants.     

Student Learning Groups: Does Group Composition Matter?

There has been a shift in university teaching over the past decades to emphasize student achievement and persistence through high-impact practices and collaborative learning. While research supports the efficacy of these pedagogical strategies, it can be difficult to implement them on large campuses. Yet, many criminal justice professors assign students to work in small groups. This study, conducted at a university with a large underrepresented student population, found that the composition of student groups in one criminal justice class can affect the perceived benefits students receive in that class, in other classes, and in general. We found that students placed in a small group with classmates who shared some criminal justice classes reported more student-initiated collaborative learning, expanded support networks, and improved grades in shared courses compared to students in small groups with classmates who shared no classes. This simple intervention has the potential to mimic learning-communities with similar benefits.     

Equity,Equality, and Self-Interest in Marital Maintenance

This study investigated the extent to which generalized equity, a reciprocal exchange approach to maintenance (e.g., reward minus costs), and a self-interest approach (e.g., rewards only) were associated with marital satisfaction. An online survey was distributed to 547 heterosexual married individuals. Results supported equity predictions for six maintenance behaviors when using a categorical measure of equity, and for five of the maintenance behaviors when using a linear measure of equity. Counter to predictions, equity and sex did not interact on the use of maintenance. Finally, a combination of equity, reciprocal exchange, and self-interest predicted 57% of the variance in marital satisfaction.     

Sense of place in environmental education

Although environmental education research has embraced the idea of sense of place, it has rarely taken into account environmental psychology-based sense of place literature whose theory and empirical studies can enhance related studies in the education context. This article contributes to research on sense of place in environmental education from an environmental psychology perspective. We review the components of sense of place, including place attachment and place meanings. Then we explore the logic and evidence suggesting a relationship between place attachment, place meanings, pro-environmental behavior, and factors influencing sense of place. Finally, based on this literature we propose that in general environmental education can influence sense of place through a combination of direct place experiences and instruction.