Microsoft Word - 0. EDITORIAL Vol 15_2 _________________ William H. Barton, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus in the Indiana University School of Social Work on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis campus. Contact information: Email: wbarton@iupui.edu Copyright © 2014 Advances in Social Work Vol. 15 No.2 (Fall 2014), i-iv EDITORIAL Thank You and Good Night! William H. Barton Welcome to the Fall 2014 issue of Advances in Social Work. This issue represents the last one on my watch, as I retired from the Indiana University School of Social Work (IUSSW) last May. Since the journal moved to its current online, open-access format in the Fall of 2008, I have had the privilege of serving as its Editor, managing peer review, making final decisions, relaying both positive and negative news to authors, producing the issues, and trying to raise the profile of the journal. During that time we have seen an increase in manuscript submissions and the production of a number of excellent special, thematic issues under the guidance of exceptional guest editors. We now have nearly 1,000 registered users from all over the globe, more than 350 of whom also serve as peer reviewers. All of our archives, dating back to the very first issue in 2000, are now readily available from the Advances website. I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to Michael Patchner, Dean of the IUSSW, for his commitment to and investment of school resources in producing and sustaining Advances in Social Work. Thanks are also due to the Editorial Board (its membership may be viewed on the website), those colleagues who have edited special issues, and, especially, to the many authors and peer reviewers whose work constitutes the intellectual core of the journal. Finally, I would also like to thank Kristi Palmer, Associate Dean of Digital Scholarship, IUPUI University Library, for supervising the Open Journals platform and providing technical assistance. While it would be impossible to top our Spring 2014 special issue (Vol. 15, No. 1), “Eyewitnesses to History: First-Hand Accounts of Sages of the Profession,” containing 17 invited articles penned by some of the profession’s leading voices, the current regular issue presents an additional 17 articles on a variety of topics. What follows are brief descriptions of these articles, arranged in several loose groupings. The first three articles should be of broad interest. The first, by O’Brien, emphasizes the importance of congruence between social work values and our relationships and interactions, not just with clients, but with one another. The author’s view is that these ethical issues are relevant across many professional disciplines including psychiatry, family medicine, psychology, nursing, pastoral services, education, and rehabilitation therapy. The second, by Twill and Lowe, examines civic-mindedness among a sample of social work educators, community practitioners, and new graduates. Results of their web- based survey showed that traditional and field faculty were more civic-minded than new graduates and other practitioners; social work educators who focused on raising civic awareness in courses were more civic-minded than other colleagues; new graduates who had participated in service events were more civic-minded; and social workers, whether faculty or not, who had participated in collaborative research were more civic-minded. The third, by Nilsson, presents a philosophical discussion of the relationship between empathy ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK, Fall 2014, 15(2) ii and compassion fatigue. Specifically, he attempts to refute suggestions that compassion fatigue may be caused by too much empathy or compassion. Next is a set of articles related to child welfare. Utilizing a social exchange framework, Rice and Girvin conducted a qualitative study exploring interactions among parents and professionals in dependency court hearings. Findings revealed that a lack of reciprocity hinders the development of collaborative relationships that could support families. Cherry, Dalton, and Dugan note that worker self-efficacy is predictive of child welfare worker retention, job performance, and persistence. From a sample of 395 child welfare workers, Cherry and colleagues report the development of a new measure of self-efficacy with two domains, direct practice and indirect practice, which can be modestly predicted by worker characteristics upon hire and the training program the workers attend. Noting that children with special needs disproportionately receive child welfare services in out-of-home placements, Linton and colleagues introduce the Special Needs Adoption and Foster Exigencies (SAFE) model which captures the issues facing adoptive and foster parents of children with special needs during the engagement, assessment, and intervention phases of case management. This theoretical model was developed from a content analysis of online discussion forums of adoptive and foster parents of children with special needs using a phenomenological framework. The next two articles focus on interdisciplinary collaboration and social work education. From a survey of 112 health sciences and social work students, Lee and Shipe explore interdisciplinary collaboration experiences amongst social work and allied health sciences graduate students and examine factors that contributed to their interdisciplinary collaboration. Results showed that students with positive attitudes toward interdisciplinary health care teams and those with prior positive experiences of interdisciplinary collaboration demonstrated higher levels of interdependence. Students in medicine were less likely than those in social work to show interdependence. Mooney, Collie, Nicholson, and Sosulski report on a faculty-librarian collaborative approach to undergraduate social work research training. A key component of foundational research skills is the ability to successfully navigate the organizational and technological aspects of research data production. The library and information science profession can contribute to the training of this new arena of research skills known collectively as research data management. Mooney and colleagues present a case study of faculty/librarian collaboration with an undergraduate research team and provide an example of a data management curriculum. Luna, Horton, and Galin next present findings from a student survey to assess perceptions of the effectiveness of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) strategies on writing skills and social work knowledge acquisition in an introductory social work class. WAC is a process that requires cross curricular collaboration, intra-departmental support, and faculty commitment to course development and implementation. Students reported that WAC strategies substantially improved their abilities to write in the discipline and learn course content. Also important to social work education, McCave, Shepard, and Winter discuss the importance of human sexuality as a critical subfield within social work. They examine the history and context of human sexuality and social work scholarship, as well as their experiences as sexuality scholars in social work, and suggests that the mechanisms for stimulating human sexuality social work scholarship are limited. The authors offer Barton/EDITORIAL iii suggestions for enhancing attention to this critical subfield via targeted changes in textbooks, journal articles, and national conference opportunities. Several articles related to special populations appear next. Maccio, DeRosa, Wilks, and Wright present the results from a survey of LGBT persons, looking at age differences in attitudes towards marriage equality. They found that older LGBT adults were less likely to find same-sex marriage important, but that age cohorts did not differ significantly on legalizing same-sex marriage. On a related issue, Montero used international poll data to look at differences in attitudes towards same-gender adoption and parenting across the world. Alas, it is my sad duty to report that Darrel Montero passed away in September before the publication of this issue. He had contributed several articles to Advances in Social Work and will be greatly missed. In this article, he noted that only 15 countries have legalized same-gender adoption with no restrictions, and two-thirds of these nations are located in Western Europe. Attitudinal surveys conducted in 16 nations indicate that a majority of respondents in these countries report support for same-gender adoption and recognize same-gender couples’ ability to successfully raise children. Wood, Hostetter, and Sullenberger used qualitative interviews to explore how college students construct attitudes about class differences among women. The results revealed that social class differences are constructed based on factors related to family of origin, personality, structural inequities, personal choices and relationships, as well as other intersecting experiences. Using an international sample, Wang, Smith, and Locke examined what variables were associated with social distancing of those with depressive and panic disorders among social work students. The results showed that levels of social distancing were related to age, knowing someone with a mental illness, type of disorder, level of conservatism, race, country, professional interest in mental health, level of student, and sex. Next is an article by Bai in which she analyzes the role of social work in the context of the special political, economic, cultural, and historical background in China. She notes that the Chinese government has started to diminish its role as a direct service provider while, at the same time, the traditional family and community have less capacity to take care of people. Yet, the social work profession does not appear ready to fill the gaps. The issue closes with two research reports. Gallagher and colleagues present results from an evaluation of an Indiana Drug Court, focusing specifically on identifying variables that predicted recidivism among drug court participants and comparing criminal recidivism patterns among drug court and probation participants. They found that drug court participants were less likely to recidivate than probationers who had similar offense and demographic characteristics. Pope, Loeffler, and Ferrell explored the experience of aging in rural Appalachia using qualitative interviews with geriatric service providers. They identified three prevalent themes associated with aging in rural North Central Appalachia: scarcity of resources, valuing neighbors and family, and the prevalence of drug use. Looking to the future, as of January, my colleague Dr. Margaret Adamek, a Professor in the Indiana University School of Social Work, will assume the position of Editor. She is an accomplished social work scholar and educator, known by many of you as an expert in gerontology and as the long-standing Director of IUSSW’s Ph.D. program. In addition, ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK, Fall 2014, 15(2) iv Valerie Decker, currently a doctoral student and a project evaluator for the Indiana Child Welfare Education and Training Partnership, will serve as the Assistant Editor. Our upcoming Spring 2015 special issue on “Technology, the Internet, and Social Work Practice” should be timely and engaging. Dr. Lauri Goldkind, of the Graduate School of Social Service at Fordham University, and Dr. John McNutt, from the School of Public Policy & Administration at the University of Delaware, will serve as Guest Editors for this special issue. Articles will address several themes, including the impact of mobile technologies on social work practice; confidentiality in an age of open communication tools; challenges and opportunities for using technology and communication tools to help clients; accountability practices, data use, and management in human services agencies; social networking’s impact on social work practice; electronic advocacy; digital community organizing; and ethical dilemmas that arise from use of technology in practice. As of this date, there have been 35 manuscripts submitted for review. Then, as usual, Advances in Social Work will produce a “regular” issue with a range of topics in the Fall of 2015. Look for a call for papers this spring or summer for a 2016 special issue on a topic yet to be determined. Stay tuned also for modifications/ improvements that the new Editor will surely bring. In the meantime, we hope that you find that the current issue contributes new knowledge to the realms of social work practice, research, and education. Keep working on those manuscripts to submit, tell your colleagues about Advances in Social Work, and urge them to register to submit articles and to join our growing corps of reviewers. The journal will be in good hands! Happy Holidays!