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Publications: Summaries

Global Program on Youth Publications

Poverty and schools: Interventions and resource building in home, school, and community.

This article focuses on: 1) Poverty and its affect on the development of children, 2) The affect of poverty on the systems that in turn affect children's development, 3) The multiple levels that affect the child's development, including: microsystems (home), exosystems (school), and mesosystems (community). The identification of interventions is done from an ecological perspective. The importance of accurately identifying the appropriate levels of interventions and the responsibility of each level is discussed. The article also discusses various programs identified to address poverty and the development of the child, including: 1) Head Start, 2) Family Resource Centers, 3) The Boys and Girls Club, 4) Big Brothers and Big Sisters, 5) Families and Schools Together (FAST) program. A review of the socio-historical context of poverty and education is also included in the article. Lastly, the ways in which social workers can help to begin to address these multi-systemic problems are discussed. These ways include:

-Acting as an advocate for the linkage of services in functional ways in order to change the nature of existing transactions for the advancement of academic achievement.

-The exploration of the utility of school linked services.

-The utilization of increased federal funds in the area of after-school programs, early intervention programs and programs that target the prevention of adolescent substance use and parent-school-community partnerships.

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Adolescent Children of Parents with Mental Illness: Cluster Analysis Results.

This article reviews literature on parental affective disorders and the influence they have on the children. The studies that were reviewed included both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. The concepts examined through cross-sectional research include:

· Self competence
· Social support
· Physical appearance
· Depressive symptoms
· Behavioral outcomes
· Conduct disorders, attention deficit disorders, formal thought disorders and motor deficit disorders.

The longitudinal studies that were reviewed examined the following concepts:

· Temperamental difficulties
· Internalizing and externalizing problems
· Social competence
· Coping skills
· Social/school functioning
· Resiliency

The review provides a criticism of the extant literature in this area. Major criticisms identified in the review include:

1. An inappropriate representation of the parents in regard to income levels, minority status and geographic location.
2. A lack of research into the buffering/mediating factors of those who are at increased risk of negative developmental outcomes.
3. The exclusion of important contextual contributors and duration of parental disorders.

The authors feel that even with these significant flaws, the literature does offer some useful information on trends and suggests avenues for future research. These suggestions include:

1. Replacing the linear correlational approach with more longitudinal studies
2. Identifying the differential impact on a variety of domains, (e.g., mental health, plus academic, peer, social competence/coping, and behavioral problems), over the life span of development.
3. Research that identifies subgroups of offspring, based on patterns of outcomes across all the major domains.

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Last updated: 5/15/02

University of Michigan Global Program on Youth, School of Social Work Building, Room 3743
1080 South University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1106 ssw.global@umich.edu

W.K. Kellogg Foundation

© 2002 by The Regents of the University of Michigan