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This article reviews the literature on non-profit volunteering to argue that the concept of ‘work calling’ is critical to broadening our understanding of volunteer motivation and retention. As an emerging concept, work calling is generally used to explain how individuals satisfy their calling by doing meaningful work. This concept is introduced to the issue of volunteer motivation and retention to detail why volunteers decide to join non-profit organisations and then willingly stay longer. Current theories explain volunteer motivation and retention by focusing on individual factors (commitment and job satisfaction) and organisational factors (management practices, volunteer tasks and organisational reputation). This article integrates work calling with these theories and thus contributes two important insights: (a) volunteers may choose to engage in meaningful work and, therefore, experience self-satisfaction and meaningful life by volunteering; and (b) work calling improves current theories of volunteering motivation and retention at both the individual and organisational levels.

If we are to develop an adequate understanding of those forms of loss and grief that are not directly connected with death, one important aspect of social life that needs to be considered is social justice—or, more specifically, social injustice. This chapter therefore explores the significance of discrimination and oppression and their relationship with loss and grief. The primary focus is on discrimination and oppression associated with race and ethnicity, but there are strong parallels with other forms of inequality, such as sexism and ageism. The aim is to highlight a number of key issues that connect discrimination and oppression on the one hand with loss and grief on the other, with a view to contributing to a fuller understanding of the complexities involved.

Understanding experiences of and responses to anxiety is foundational to developing robust theories of entrepreneurial behavior. Using open-ended, vignette and graphical elicitation interviews with 77 entrepreneurs, we inductively investigate the experience of and coping responses to anxiety during the entrepreneurship process. We develop a comprehensive and dynamic goal-striving model to explain experiencing and coping with entrepreneurial anxiety by integrating empirical findings with appraisal and control theories. In doing so, we theorize that entrepreneurial anxiety is endogenous to a cyclical conception of goal-striving, such that various sources of anxiety make sense only in consideration of the goals, standards or values to which they pertain. In this regard, entrepreneurs’ coping responses influence four different points of an iterative goal-striving cycle—an insight that moves beyond problematic static and binary coping classifications.

Deliberate self-harm (DSH) involves a physical act with the intent of harming the self. There are many precipitants to this behavior, with dissociation receiving increasing attention. The current study examined the quartile risk model for predicting deliberate self-harm, which proposes that four quadrants of dissociation (low normative, high normative, low clinical, and high clinical) represent varying levels of risk for engagement in DSH. The model posits that quadrants one and three (low normative, low clinical), protect against engagement in deliberate self-harm. Quadrants two and four (high normative, high clinical), represent an increased risk of engaging in DSH. The current study also investigated the association between shame and deliberate self-harm. College students (

Well-being is a concept which can connect together a number of important ideas that have a strong resonance for professional education and practice across the human services. This can critically include considerations of illness, crisis, and loss. Such acute moments in individuals’ lives can be examined through their precipitating events, coping mechanisms, and responses. This article explores some of the dimensions of well-being and how they facilitate a greater understanding of illness, crisis, and loss. These deliberations are then exemplified through a focus on alcohol and other drug use.

This chapter explores the subject of child development from an existentialist point of view. Central to existentialist thought is the critique of "essentialism", the tendency to adopt a view of individuals as relatively fixed entities. Existentialism therefore rejects the idea of child development as the description of a process of maturation that produces a relatively fixed "personality". The chapter reviews the dominant approaches to child development and highlights their often essentialist assumptions. Many approaches to child development have placed considerable emphasis on psychological factors, albeit not without retaining a strong biological focus. A further example of traditional theoretical approaches to child development is attachment theory. A wide range of professional groups work with children and young people and need to have at least a basic understanding of child development. Ageism can be seen to apply to children and young people in relation to loss and grief through the medium of disenfranchised grief.

There is no part of human existence that loss and grief do not reach, and the workplace is no exception to this. This article is therefore concerned with some of the implications of loss and grief in work settings in general and for workplace leaders in particular. By way of example, it explores in particular the needs of bereaved caregivers returning to work and the potential for stigma to emerge in relation to employment and bereavement. Central to the article is an argument in favor of the need for change within the workplace, specifically within the structures and systems that support bereaved caregivers returning to work. This article critically reflects on the leadership management challenge of supporting bereaved caregivers returning to, or seeking, work and addressing the problem of stigma in relation to employment and bereavement. Some structural and policy changes are highlighted to assist employers and bereaved caregivers faced with this situation.

Reflective practice has become an influential concept in various forms of professional education, for example, in nursing and social work. However, there has been a common tendency for it to be oversimplified in practice, and, furthermore, dominant understandings of reflective practice can themselves be criticised for lacking theoretical sophistication in some respects – particularly in relation to the social and political dimensions of learning and professional practice. This paper therefore seeks to clarify the theoretical underpinnings of reflective practice and to propose developments in relation to the missing sociological elements. It briefly reviews current dominant understandings of reflective practice before proposing developments in the theory base to make it more theoretically sophisticated in general and more sociologically informed in particular. In this way, the foundations for a critically reflective practice are sketched out.

Undergoing a traumatic experience can be a life-changing event, having a significant impact on individuals, families, communities, workplaces and societies. Traumatology is therefore a complex field of study demanding a sophisticated level of understanding to serve as a theory base. This article explores the potential for existentialist philosophy to make an important contribution to our understanding of trauma and its effects. It presents trauma as an existential injury and explores the psychosocial basis of traumatic experience — that is, conceptualising trauma as having both psychological and sociological dimensions, the combination of which has profound existential resonances. While the theoretical ideas discussed can be applied to trauma at any stage in the life course, this paper focuses in particular on childhood trauma. Consequently, child abuse is used as an example of how trauma can have a significant (and detrimental) effect on identity development, invoking a need for a commitment to trauma re...

In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis on employee welfare or, as it is being referred to with increasing frequency, “workplace well-being.” Traditional approaches to such issues have tended to be either medicalized (via occupational health interventions) or individualized (for example, through employee assistance programs—EAPs). This article proposes a broader approach based on the problem-solving perspective of occupational social work. It is argued that such a broader approach offers a sounder foundation for tackling workplace problems and promoting well-being in general and for addressing the challenges of loss, grief, and trauma in the workplace in particular.

Background: Studies have suggested that inception rates of deliberate self-harm among different ethnic group adolescents are broadly similar. Aims: We set out to study the rates of adolescent self-harm over a calendar year in Ealing - part of West London. Methods: All cases of deliberate self-harm presenting to the A&E department and paediatrics were identified and socio-cultural factors studied. Ethnicity was obtained using self-ascription. Results: A total of 76 cases were identified over one year. Using the at risk population as denominator, no differences in inception rates were noted according to ethnicity. Overdoses were the commonest method used for deliberate self-harm. Conclusions: The similarities between the Asian and white adolescents suggest that some common aetiological factors may be at play. The risk factors may be related to gender rather than ethnicity in this age group.

* Summary: A review of the neglected area of the relationship between loss and grief and the less well-documented areas of discrimination in relation to age, disability and sexuality. * Findings: There is an extensive and long-standing literature base relating to loss and grief. However, the major focus of such work is predominantly psychological and individualistic in its focus. Only recently a solid body of work relating to the sociological dimensions of loss and grief has begun to build up. This new literature has largely followed the pattern of the development of anti-discriminatory practice in social work, with a major emphasis on class, race and gender, and little attention paid to the less well-established forms of discrimination such as ageism, disablism and heterosexism. * Applications: This article explores the relationship between these three forms of discrimination and loss and grief, with a view to establishing the importance of developing a broad-based anti-discriminatory practice in this important area of social work.

We have previously described the development and initial validation of a telephone administered cognitive test battery (TACT). This report investigates the retest reliability of the TACT battery between telephone administration and face-to-face administration and measures the concurrent validity of the test components against a standard test of cognitive ability, the WAIS-RUK. Data were collected on 27 participants aged 62–63 years. There was a two- to 10-month interval between time 1 (telephone) and time 2 (face-to-face) administration. Intra-class correlation coefficients for telephone versus face-to-face administration of the TACT were satisfactory for all component measures except for ‘object rotation’ and WAIS similarities. There was no evidence of systematic cheating on the telephone-administered test. Tests of concurrent validity showed stronger correlations for the TACT battery components with verbal tests rather than performance tests, as measured by the WAIS-RUK. A few administration difficulties are noted and recommendations for change are outlined. The TACT is a convenient assessment tool with potential for measuring cognitive change in epidemiological studies. Copyright © 2001 Whurr Publishers Ltd.

Older people are no less prone to experiences of crisis and loss than any other age cohort. Indeed, it could be argued that this group is even more prone to such experiences, although both the therapeutic literature on crisis intervention and the thanatological literature on loss and grief pay relatively little heed to the needs and circumstances of older people. This article therefore seeks to go some way toward redressing the balance by exploring the significance of crisis and loss as part of the lived experience (le vecu) of older people. The arguments presented are set in the context of the need to recognize and challenge the significant role of ageism.

The position of children in the social order can be seen as an ambiguous one. On the one hand, they are highly valued, at a rhetorical level at least, as the basis of the future generation. On the other hand, however, they can be seen to be marginalized and disenfranchised, protected from more aspects of social life than is strictly necessary. This paper explores some of the important issues relating to children’s disenfranchised social position, with specific reference to issues relating to death, dying and bereavement.

The considerable number of major disasters in the last decade have had a significant impact on very many children. Some have been victims, some bereaved, others just generally anxious and frightened by their proximity to, or awareness of such disasters. Additionally, many personal disasters-accidents, illness, family breakdown, and, of course, child abuse-befall children and their caregivers, producing a traumatic, crisis-torn existence for large numbers of children, a proportion of whom will come to the attention of the caring professions. One dimension relatively unexplored in the growing literature on the subject of disaster work is that of the existential or “ontological”. A number of existentialist concepts can help us piece together a picture of this missing dimension. This article explores some of these key concepts to show their applicability to this complex and demanding area of health and social welfare practice. To explore the basic questions of ontology I shall draw on existentialist ...