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Although the foreclosure crisis is considered over, some areas of the U.S. continue to suffer from high foreclosure rates. This research presents findings from in-depth interviews conducted with 18 service providers who worked with families to prevent their foreclosures in Cleveland, Ohio. The research focused on better understanding the landscape of the Cleveland foreclosure experience. Service providers provided insight into families' experiences with the foreclosure process. The three main themes developed from the interviews included: (1) clients lacked knowledge about the mortgage process; (2) lenders exploited clients' lack of knowledge, setting them up to fail with predatory mortgages and targeting specific groups; and (3) mortgage servicers were inflexible, inconsistent, incompetent, and lacked regard for clients, except for local servicers. The findings provide implications for housing research, policy, and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses mixed methods and theory from cognitive anthropology to examine the cultural models of domestic violence among domestic violence agency workers, welfare workers, nurses, and a general population comparison group. Data collection and analysis uses quantitative and qualitative techniques, and the findings are integrated for interpretation. Findings reveal consensus among service providers on how controllable domestic violence factors are and whether they are most characteristic of victims or perpetrators, but diversity with regard to their understandings of the importance of the factors suggesting that occupational category alone is inadequate in predicting service providers' beliefs and subsequent delivery of services. The implications of the findings extend into the areas of domestic violence service delivery, cognitive anthropology, and mixed methods research. (Contains 4 notes, 4 tables, and 2 figures.)

This study employed a unique theoretical approach and a series of participant-based ethnographic interviewing techniques that are traditionally used in cognitive anthropology to examine and compare social work and anthropology students' cultural models of the causes of domestic violence. The study findings indicate that although social work students and anthropology students share understandings of a general model of domestic violence, social work students agree on distinctive elements of this model that anthropology students do not. These findings are important in better understanding the role social work education plays in developing social workers' understandings of the roots of domestic violence. (Contains 2 figures and 5 tables.)

Most studies of parents in drug treatment have focused exclusively on mothers, and few studies have examined the effects of parents' level of involvement with their children on the parents' drug use and psychological functioning, either before or after treatment. This study examined mothers and fathers (n = 331) who were parents of children under the age of 18; participants were sampled from 19 drug treatment programs across four types of treatment modalities in Los Angeles County. A majority of each group (57% of 214 mothers and 51% of 117 fathers) were classified as being highly involved with their children. At the baseline assessment, higher parental involvement was related to lower levels of addiction severity, psychological severity, and symptoms of psychological distress, and to higher levels of self-esteem and perception of parenting skills. In general, fathers had higher levels of alcohol and drug-use severity than did mothers, but fathers who were more involved with their children showed lower levels of addiction severity than fathers who were less involved. Parental involvement at baseline was unrelated to drug use at the 12-month follow-up, although parents who were less involved with their children reported experiencing more stressors. Given the association of parental involvement with lower levels of addiction severity and psychological distress at baseline, treatment protocols should build upon the positive relationships of parents with their children, and seek to improve those of less-involved parents. Key Words: Gender; Parental involvement; Drug treatment, Psychological distress., INTRODUCTION Research on parental drug abuse has focused largely upon its effects on children, whereas little research has focused on the parents themselves. Specifically, little is known about how being [...]

The purpose of this study was to conduct an exploratory qualitative study of the impact of foreclosure on health. Twenty-nine interviews were conducted with people who had children under the age of 18 years at the time of the foreclosure. Interviews explored perspectives on the foreclosure experience, including factors that led to the foreclosure, the meaning(s) the foreclosure has had for them, and the health care impact. Thematic analyses identified themes underlying families' descriptions of their experiences. Participant families described the stress of losing a home and how that had contributed to a number of psychological and physiological ailments. Psychological effects included high levels of perceived stress, anxiety, grief, and a sense of shame and failure, while physiological effects were often described as either stress-induced or existing issues worsened by stress. These findings are discussed with regard to their implications for improving services and policies offered to families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, began DNA testing and investigating nearly 5000 previously unsubmitted sexual assault kits (SAKs) from 1993 through 2009. We examined case files from a sample of SAKs that were tested but not previously adjudicated (n = 429). More than 10% (n = 45) involved victims who reported to police that a former or current intimate partner sexually assaulted them. This article integrates the available data on the offenders, the victims, the initial investigation, and the specifics of the assaults to provide a more complete understanding of intimate partner sexual assault (IPSA). More than one-third of the IPSA offenders were serial sex offenders; that is, the offenders sexually assaulted an intimate partner and another person(s). Comparing IPSAs to all other sexual assaults, IPSAs more frequently involved bodily force, less frequently involved a weapon, and IPSA investigations were more frequently closed because (1) the victims stated they lied or the police doubted the victims and (2) the victims declined to prosecute. The most common sequencing of events was a demand for sex by the offender followed by a verbal refusal by the victim and the use of bodily force in the sexual assault. The findings, however, indicate a great deal of variation in the sequencing of events surrounding the sexual assault, with over 25% involving no physical confrontation before or after the sexual assault and no demands for sex. Unsubmitted SAK data provide a unique window into understanding the understudied and underreported issue of IPSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]