<p> Holocaust survivors are a diminishing population, yet they share a wealth of knowledge, and their vast experiences, life stories, and perspective are relevant now and for future generations. The goal of this exploratory study was to elicit information about posttraumatic growth among Holocaust survivors and the factors that may come into play. The questions focused on the time before, during, and after the war. This study is about a positive change an individual may experience as a result of a traumatic event, posttraumatic growth, a term coined by Tedeschi and Calhoun. A total of 13 people (7 females and 6 males) were interviewed for this qualitative study. All of the subjects identified with suffering from PTSD at one point in their lives, and 10 (77%) indicated that posttraumatic growth has been prevalent, mainly in domains of greater sense of personal strength and more profound appreciation of life. </p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-05, Section: A, page: 1989. Adviser: Dean Barry Ackerson. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-133) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thèse (M.Serv.Soc.)--Université de Sherbrooke (Canada), 2008. / Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 1 février 2007). In ProQuest dissertations and theses. Publié aussi en version papier.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf [158]-167).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Harvard University, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references.

Globalization has increased the interconnectivity in all aspect of life worldwide. The role of local state and local politics are questioned due to the increasing influences of variety of global forces. Social policies have been passed from place to place through different networks and actors. Policy transfer is one of the concepts used to study this complicated social reality by scholars from different disciplines. Existing researches of policy transfer tend to focus on state actors and international organizations. However, some scholars call for attention to local forces including action of the non-state actors that influence the policy transfer process in the bottom level. It is argued that researches should problematize actions that different actors adopted to compete for alternative policy meaning. Moreover, existing researches tend to focus on successful cases of policy transfer. There is lack of comparison of factors that facilitate or constraint non-state actors to transfer foreign policy ideas. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the discussion of policy transfer by the exploration on the various actions of non-state from the local NGOs, to transfer foreign policy ideas to compete for alternative policy meaning. In Hong Kong, committing to policy advocacy is a convention of the field of community social workers. Introduction of foreign policy ideas is one of the ways that social workers adopted to challenge existing policy. However, the neoliberal restructuring of welfare services had limited capacity for policy advocacy. This contradictory situation is met by community social workers who are involved in the policy process of urban regeneration. Community social workers have been traditionally assigned by the government to serve neighborhood affected by urban regeneration. It is found that they do not only advocate for policy changes, but also strengthen the policy ideas promoted by the government. Comparison of different actions of them can demonstrate factors that influence whether the non-state actors of local NGOs to transfer foreign policy ideas to compete for alternative policy meaning. This research is designed as a qualitative research. With the use of the Agency, Structure, Institution, and Discourse Approach, semi-structured interviews with 21 community social workers and key informants sampled by theory-guided sampling, secondary data analysis of 678 official documents, and participant observation to a major advocacy coalition were conducted. Data were coded and analyzed by using the qualitative data analysis software program-MAXQDA. Through initial coding, focused coding and theoretical coding, 27 and 7 codes and 6 themes were generated. This research suggests that action by non-state actors of local NGOs is a way of policy transfer. Comparison of the various actions between them can illustrate the dynamic of complicated meaning making process of policy transfer. It demonstrates different kinds of institutions may have different impact to the actors. They may facilitate the actors to compete for alternative policy meaning by the transfer of policy ideas, or constraint them to follow the dominant policy ideas.

The main research question in this thesis explores why some people volunteer and give money compared to those that do not. The thesis builds on existing research that explains volunteering and giving, but is primarily concerned with showing how the social environment – or the context – in which people live can explain individual decisions to volunteer and give. This thesis answers three main research questions with this central theme in mind. First, how do the background characteristics of people explain whether they volunteer or give? Second, net of background characteristics of people, how does the social environment (context) that people live in explain volunteering and giving? Third, how do background characteristics of people and the social environment in which they live interact to explain volunteering and giving? Each of the four empirical chapters focuses on research questions that have received limited attention in the literature, while also utilizing relatively unique data, in relatively unique contexts. The main results of this study are as follows. Comparatively, the shared profile of a volunteer and charitable giver is someone who is middle aged, more educated, married, richer, healthier, and a religious service attendee. Contextual country characteristics also displayed an independent effect of these individual-level characteristics: religious diversity and belonging to a religious minority group was associated with a greater likelihood of volunteering, but are not associated with giving. Income inequality is associated with a decreased likelihood of volunteering and giving for respondents in developed countries, whereas the opposite is true for respondents in developing countries, supporting Wilkinson’s relative income hypothesis. A curvilinear relationship exists between national devoutness and volunteering, whereas a strong positive correlation exists between national devoutness and giving. Females are more likely to volunteer and give in societies that exhibit more gender equality; and the lower educated are more likely to volunteer in more educated societies, but that they are not more likely to give in these societies. There is no support for the idea that income disparities in volunteering and giving are exacerbated in more socially unequal societies. In England, there was no support for the idea that a stable residential area promotes volunteering and giving among adults, while neighbourhood deprivation and ethnic diversity were strong negative predictors of both behaviours. Among the youth demographic in England, religious diversity of schools is not associated with any form of civic engagement. Ethnic diversity is positively related to school extra curricular activities, but negatively with youth club participation. Youths attending private schools were more likely to take part in school-based extra-curriculars, but less likely to take part in out of school clubs and groups.

Background: Children who enter foster care are known to show high rates of problems across a number of different areas, including their mental health, relationships and development, with difficulties often continuing into adulthood. There are indications that some of these baseline characteristics have an effect on a child’s outcome from foster care, but this evidence is limited due to an overwhelming reliance on administrative data for the analysis of potential links. In order to explore this more fully, face-to-face assessments with these children need to be conducted. There are known difficulties, including choosing reliable informants for the child, and deciding when is the best time to perform assessments. In this study, the aim was to explore some of the relevant issues while assessing, in the primary research question, how different child characteristics were associated with the quality of the relationship that the child had with their carer. Method: Seventy children aged between 6 and 60 months were examined between one and two months after they entered foster care. They were assessed as regards their mental health, language, cognition and relationships, and the results were compared with normative population data whenever possible (research question 1). The data were also explored to investigate to what extent the children had overlapping problems across the areas studied (research question 2). There is a lack of research on the mental health of very young children in care, and so a control group of 40 children aged 12-24 months were recruited from the general population, against whom they could be compared. This sample was age- and gender-matched with 20 children aged 12-24 months in the foster care sample (research question 3). It was possible to access the birth records of 38 of the sample with a view to assess whether the children had shown signs of being ‘at risk’ at birth (research question 4). The quality of the relationship between the child and their carer was assessed using a structured observation, the Parent-Infant Relationship Global Assessment Scale (PIRGAS). Regression analyses were conducted to analyse how the child characteristics of age,gender, mental wellbeing, cognition and language were associated with PIRGAS score (research question 5). In addition, the carer’s levels of commitment and experience were explored as potential contributors to the quality of this relationship (research question 6). The reliability of foster carers was assessed by investigating whether their level of worry related to the degree of problem that the child had. The child’s level of engagement in the cognitive assessment was measured and compared with the score they attained in the assessment, while the change in scores over time was also calculated (research question 7). Results: Research question 1. The results showed that, in line with previous research in the area, children who enter foster care are likely to be experiencing more problems with mental health, language, cognition and relationships than children in the general population, already at the time of entering care. Research questions 2 and 3. There was some indication that this difference between them and the general population may not be very pronounced in children under the age of 2. Children over the age of 30 months, on the other hand, were likely to have complex and overlapping problems. Research question 4. An examination of routine birth data showed that children who later came into foster care were already different from the general population at birth in having lower mean birth weight and higher likelihood of prenatal exposure to drugs. Research question 5. An examination of the primary research question showed that the child characteristics of age, gender, mental wellbeing, cognition and language together predicted 17% of the variance in the quality of the relationship between the child and their foster carer as measured by the PIRGAS. Some additional analyses revealed that mental wellbeing appeared to be the single most influential of the child characteristics. Research question 6. A complex interplay between the child’s wellbeing, carer commitment and relationship quality was also revealed with associations between all the factors. Research question 7. In some instances, the carers did not appear to be the most reliable informants for children in their care, sometimes reporting a lack of worry even when the child showed concerning symptoms or behaviours, as observed by the research team. There was a strong association between how engaged a child was in the task and how they performed on the task, and this has implications for how meaningful the score is as a predictor of ability. It was also possible to follow up a small number of the sample a year later. It was found that the cognitive percentile scores achieved when a child first entered care were not significantly different to those that they achieved a year later, suggesting that, despite the concerns about the validity of the assessments, these measures can be useful for predicting later performance. A much more mixed picture for language was found, in that scores achieved when a child first entered care showed little relationship to how the child performed a year later. Discussion: Overall, the results lend support to the notion of the importance of early intervention, with children over the age of 2 showing a greater number of problems as well as more complex problems than those under the age of 2. Mental wellbeing in the child, as measured by the presence of positive prosocial behaviours, showed associations with the quality of the relationship with the carer, as well as with the commitment of the carer. Carers did not report being worried about the youngest children who were not displaying these prosocial behaviours; thus it may be that foster carers are underestimating their importance, or are reluctant to report on such behaviours. The observations made over so many assessments and the work carried out to explore potential issues with the assessments guide recommendations for future work in this area. It is clear that there is a need to repeat measures to assess change, and to conduct holistic assessments, so that findings might be clinically interpreted in a meaningful way. Despite difficulties in assessing children who enter foster care, the findings underscore the importance of early assessment. The study findings confirmed that this is a vulnerable group, with very complex needs. Even though all children are likely to be negatively affected by the disruption that is entailed in entering foster care, only a thorough assessment will be able to identify which children also have underlying problems that will require support and intervention in addition to the safe and nurturing foster care that they all require.

<p> The purpose of this project was to create program to identify funding sources, and write a grant to fund a support group for veterans who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at the Department of Veterans Affairs of, Long Beach. The literature allowed this write to find the main causes of PTSD in this case being exposed to combat, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBO), and the consequences to PTSD (substance abuse, commit suicide, experience family conflicts). This writer also found Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PET), and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) to be effective intervention in treating veterans with PTSD. The proposed program is aimed at providing psychoeducation to veterans and to help improve the lives of our service men and women who suffer from PTSD. The program includes group counseling, and individual counseling for veterans, family counseling. Providing the proper training will help social worker better assess and serve our veterans who return from combat with PTSD. Actual submission and/or funding of the grant were not required for the completion of this project.</p>

<p> Natural disasters and catastrophic events have devastated hundreds of thousands of individuals worldwide. While governmental and disaster relief agencies attempt to respond as quickly as possible, individuals can be cut off from resources and services for extended periods, increasing stress and health complications. Individuals with mental illnesses are even more vulnerable in the aftermath of a disaster when they are cut off from vital medications and therapeutic services. Disaster preparedness promotes resilience and empowers individuals to take personal responsibility for their safety. The purpose of this project was to identify potential funding sources and write a grant proposal that funds the development and implementation of disaster preparedness classes for individuals living in the community with mental illnesses. Actual submission and/or funding of this grant was not a requirement for the successful completion of this project.</p>