African American Faculty in Social Work Schools: The Impact of Their Scholarship.

Purpose: This study assessed the citation impact of scholarship of African American faculty in the top 25 ranked schools of social work cited in the 2012 U.S. News and World Report.

An Exploratory Case Study of a Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline: Training and Practice Implications.

Using archival data, this case study systematically examines telephone calls received by a regional sexual assault hotline in the Southeastern United States over a 5-year period. A stratified random sample ( n = 383) reveals that hotline staff require diversity and depth in knowledge and skills, demonstrated by the hotline's primary use as a crisis service, combined with notable use by long-term survivors. Findings include the utility of the hotline by survivors and community stakeholders, categories of assault, the time gap between incidents occurring and contacting the hotline, call severity and urgency, and services and referrals provided.

Ethical guidelines for designing and conducting evaluations of social work practice.

We review selected aspects of current ethical guidelines pertaining to the design and conduct of social work evaluation and research studies. We contend that there are significant differences between social science research and evaluation studies, and that the uncritical application of ethical guidelines suitable for regulating social science research may hinder social workers undertaking clinical and program evaluations. What is needed are ethical guidelines that distinguish between retrospective and prospectively designed studies, which enumerate when voluntary and informed consent may not be necessary in order to use data obtained from clients, and clearer standards pertaining to exempting evaluation studies from oversight by Institutional Review Boards.

Social services in Sweden: an overview of policy issues, devolution, and collaboration.

This article is the first of three related to social welfare policy in Sweden. It presents an overview of social services in Sweden highlighting its history, financing, and the various welfare programs offered in one of the more unique liberal democracies in the world. Sweden has had a long-standing historic commitment to the social welfare of its citizens.

Living in poverty in America today.

No statistician, social scientist or tarot card reader is needed to attest that the gap between the rich and poor in America is increasing. Further, most Americans don't care that much about it. There are also more rich people today living in the U.

The story behind the story of collaborative networks -- relationships do matter!

This study reports data about the real story behind the current trend of mandated interorganizational collaboration of health and human service agencies. By means of qualitative design (N-22), public health managers were interviewed about the extent and nature of their collaborative efforts in the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children (HBHC) Program in Ontario, Canada. Using a conceptual framework of resource exchange theory, this study found that relational processes specifically: (a) previous relationships with other agencies and (b) interpersonal relations namely: informality, local community, open communication and resolving conflicts were the reasons for successful collaborations.

Attitudes and knowledge concerning alcohol abuse: curriculum implications.

This study presents data regarding social work practitioner experiences, attitudes and knowledge about alcoholism. A standardized instrument was used to survey BSWs and MSWs (N = 105) at three sites in Canada. Significant findings were: (a) these practitioners had low levels of knowledge about alcoholism as measured on the Alcohol Knowledge Scale (AKS), and (b) professional experiences, not personal ones, shaped their knowledge.