Wendy Haight - Böcker

Mixed Methods Research for Social Work presents a step-by-step framework for constructing a mixed methods research project, along with a model for how social workers can play a sustaining role in the future of mixed methods research. In the first full length mixed methods research text for social workers, Wendy Haight and Laurel Bidwell illustrate the essential compatibility of social work and mixed method research.Rooting their argument in the historical and philosophical foundations of the profession, they explore both Jane Addams's contribution to American pragmatism and the proto-mixed methodologies employed by 20th century social worker researchers. The authors illustrate the unique opportunities that integrated methods present for understanding the complexities and nuance of contemporary social problems that are the focus of social work research.The second half of the book gives readers a clear, step-by-step guide for using mixed methodologies. Each step of the planning, design, and implementation process is illustrated by a contemporary research project and an interview with the researcher explaining their methods and rationale. This process allows readers to access the research process from both a quantitative and a qualitative stand-point, illustrating the variability and applicability of mixed methodologies to social workresearch.

Edith Hudley is an African-American grandmother who was born poor in rural Texas in 1920. In this beguiling book she tells how, through many vicissitudes, she achieved a better life for herself, her children, and grandchildren. But she is no stereotype. Without sentimentality and with considerable humor, she tells of both the privations and pleasures of her long life so vividly that she draws the reader into her world.In this book she tells her stories to two white academics who know her well. At the end of each chapter, they provide an "interlude" suggesting what her narrative can teach about the process of human development. As each stage of her life unfolds, they make it clear how her character and convictions were formed.Edith Hudley's convictions are strong, particularly about child-raising which has been her abiding interest as mother, grandmother, and "other" mother.She has more than her own family's welfare at heart. She has definite views on education and parenting, and her attitude to physical discipline will spark controversy. Not that that will worry her. She has never been afraid to speak her mind ("You always were mouthie," one of her brothers tells her.) What she has to say is well worth hearing.

Guided by developmental cultural psychology, this volume focuses on understandings and responses to disability and stigmatization from the perspectives of educators practicing in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. Synthesizing research that spanned over a decade, this volume seeks to understand disabilities in different developmental and cultural contexts.The research presented in this book found that educators from all four cultural groups expressed strikingly similar concerns about the impact of stigmatization on the emerging cultural self, both with children with disabilities and their typically developing peers, while also describing culturally nuanced socialization goals and practices pertaining to inclusive education. In providing a multicultural view of common challenges in classrooms from around the world, this book provides important lessons for the improvement of children's lives, as well as the development of theory, policy, and programs that are culturally sensitive and sustainable.

Methamphetamine destroys not only the lives of those who become addicted to it, but affects all corners of society, including the most innocent: children. This important book follows the case of rural Illinois, where in the mid-1990s methamphetamine production and misuse became a significant problem and, as a result, child welfare professionals saw an influx onto their caseloads of children whose parents were involved with the drug. The authors' account of the problems the children face, and of the efforts to help them, sheds useful light on possibilities for many other situations. Using a case-based, mixed-methods approach that capitalizes on rich qualitative data, the book examines parental methamphetamine misuse from a sociocultural perspective. Using extensive child welfare investigation data, participant observation, and in-depth interviews, the authors describe the perilous home lives of rural children whose parents misuse methamphetamine, where they are exposed to maltreatment, criminal behavior, and environmental danger. Many children end up with significant emotional and behavioral problems, especially posttraumatic symptoms, that will stay with them for years. Based on this descriptive information and the existing clinical literature, the authors designed a relationship- and narrative-based mental health program, "Life Story Intervention," that draws on the strengths of many rural communities including storytelling traditions. Pilot data from the program, shared here, suggests some positive results of the intervention on children's psychological functioning. To eradicate the problems caused by methamphetamine abuse will require years more of concerted effort and collaboration such as that described in this book. Social work and child welfare professors and students, researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers will find inspiration in this account of the success that can result, with this issue and others, when practitioners and researchers join forces to understand complex social phenomena and design, implement, and assess effective interventions.

Child welfare systems around the world provide essential services to protect the lives of children who are abused and neglected. Yet these systems can also do great harm. These negative consequences of system involvement are primarily borne not by adults who are willfully neglecting or seriously abusing their children, but by families and communities who are struggling under generations of poverty, racism, and genocide. The harm is also to the professionals committed to helping families who find themselves in an adversarial system that, too often, compounds the problems of families and communities. Moral Injury within the US Child Welfare System presents a fresh perspective on how we can create a US public child welfare system that both protects children physically, and minimizes the psychological harm it causes to the professionals and the families they serve. This perspective emerged from the lived experiences of young people, parents, and professionals involved in the system. It also emerged from decades of on-the-ground social work practice and research experience; and from lessons learned from history, and child welfare systems around the world (African American, Indigenous, Scottish and Japanese). In this book, Haight and Kingery identify the significant psychological harm experienced by those within the US public child welfare system and consider implications for creating a more humane, just, and, ultimately, more successful child welfare system.

This book addresses an international human rights issue: women's economic enfranchisement, specifically, their equal access to property using Akan widows from Ghana as a case study. The insidious effects of European colonialism contribute to the devaluation of Akan women beginning with gender roles imposed in childhood and continuing through inheritance practices that leave widows destitute. A close examination of Akan widows in their everyday, sociocultural contexts through ethnographic methods reveals the impact of property rights violations not only on the economic conditions of women and their children but also their psychosocial, spiritual, and moral well-being. Despite progressive national laws, many Akan widows lose access to the homes and farms they shared with their husbands, leaving them and their children destitute. According to customary law, those properties belong not to individuals, but to the husband's maternal family line of which his wife and children are not a part. Yet the Akan people are not without compassion, and Akan women without resilience. Some community leaders and in-laws do assist the widow and her children. In addition, some Akan widows do resist, persevere, and even thrive. Some gain peace through spiritual practices, and stability through innovative economic ventures with other widows and allies including international social workers. By deepening our understanding of the impact of property rights violations on women's lives as well as the ways in which some communities support them, and they actively resist such domination, we can extend the range of possible remedies to those who remain mired in challenges and in need of support.