PARENTING ALL OVER AGAIN : HISPANIC “ABUELITAS” RAISING GRANDCHILDREN IN THE CONTEXT OF SUBSTANCE ABUSE DISORDERS

Around 7 million grandparents in the U.S live with grandchildren under 18 and 39% have primary caregiving responsibilities. In Texas, more than 313,499 children under age 18 live with a grandparent who is responsible for them. Hispanic grandparents are disproportionately more likely to care for grandchildren compared to non-Hispanic whites. In San Antonio, Texas, 36.6 % of grandparents are the primary caregivers for their grandchildren. Parental substance abuse disorders have been identified as one of the causes prompting child removal from parental custody. To understand the experience of custodial Hispanic grandmothers raising their grandchildren, three focus groups were conducted in English and Spanish by three bilingual investigators. Twenty-three grandmothers, mean age 60, caring for an average of 3.2 children, 2 months to 17 years of age participated in the focus groups. The narratives were transcribed and analyzed in the source language. The following overarching themes were identified: Family is family, parenting all over again, this is a struggle but a blessing, what did I do wrong? , fear of losing the children to foster care, I do not trust anybody with my children, financial and legal challenges, role captivity, aging as a limitation, and hope for the future. The findings from the study contribute to the body of knowledge necessary to foster urgent policy changes aimed at supporting these grandparents who feel unjustly treated by human services agencies and the legal system. Programs to support custodial Hispanic grandmothers need to be linguistically congruent and culturally competent.

Mobilizing and engaging your community to reduce victimization and reinvest police resources

The Ontario government released its most recent Ontario Mobilization & Engagement Model for Community Policing (OMEM) in 2010, but many police services in the province are just now starting to move toward implementation. OMEM emphasizes having all community members and human services agencies working with the police to keep neighbourhoods safer, more secure, and healthier. The most appropriate service takes the lead in any community safety and wellbeing initiative. The new model requires considerable cultural change from all participants to be successful. This article outlines the Ontario Provincial Police efforts to implement OMEM and some of its early successes and ongoing challenges.

A Conceptual Framework for Information Technology in Social Work Practice

This article describes how information systems research in the human services can be facilitated with a conceptual framework that addresses the fundamental roles of data, information and knowledge in understanding organizational information systems. Using methodologies originating in information systems and organizational research, the resulting conceptual framework explains how we are to understand information technology from the perspectives of clinical social work, supervision, social work administration, policy, and community collaborations. It concludes by reminding us that to the extent we have done little to educate our students on the differences between data, information and knowledge, and to educate them based on research performed in our human services agencies, is the extent to which our professional practice relative to technology will not advance in the 21st century.

The Implementation of Families First NSW: Process lessons from the first four years

Families First is a NSW Government strategy that aims to improve the effectiveness of early intervention services supporting families and communities to care for children. Its implementation is the joint responsibility of the five NSW Human Services agencies: the NSW departments of Community Services (DoCS); Ageing Disability and Home Care (DADHC); Education and Training (DET); Housing; and NSW Health through Area Health Services. Area Reviews are one element of the Families First evaluation process. The reviews focus on the experiences of individual areas during the implementation of the strategy. They were not designed to evaluate individual services but to garner generalisable lessons for future implementation. This article sets out four categories of implementation lessons from the Area Reviews, relating to managing systems change, a systems approach to early intervention and prevention, family services system capacity, and Indigenous participation. These lessons reflect the challenges faced and achievements made in each of the three Families First Areas to improve the coordination of the service network and increase the provision of services for early intervention and prevention.

Measuring Success: Factors Impacting on the Implementation and Use of Performance Measurement within Victoria's Human Services Agencies

Evaluation of performance is now an accepted human resource management practice in many organisations. The research reported in this paper identifies factors impacting on the implementation and use of performance measurement systems in Victoria's human services agencies. It applied a conceptual framework to evaluate the influence of rational/scientific and political/cultural factors on their implementation. The results indicate that both political/cultural and rational/scientific influences are present when human services organisations in Victoria implement and use performance measurement systems. While the results do not contain an exhaustive list of influences that may impact on an organisation's performance measurement efforts, they do provide confirmation of the existence of these two distinct categories of influences, and are useful in understanding how such factors may affect the operation of performance measures. This paper advances our knowledge of how to develop new approaches that more effectively manage the implementation and utilisation of performance measures. The results will be of interest to human service organisations, government departments that fund these agencies and to those with an interest in the accountability of publicly funded bodies.