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University programs are currently faced with a number of challenges: how to engage students as active learners, how to ensure graduates are "work ready" with broad and relevant professional skills, and how to support students to see their potential as agents of social change and contributors to social good. This paper presents the findings from a study that explored the impact of an authentic, interdisciplinary project with health, architecture and landscape students. This project facilitated students' entrée into the lived experience of women and children requiring refuge services as a result of homelessness and/or domestic violence. Students collaborated with stakeholders from the refuge sector, visiting sites, undertaking individual research, exchanging ideas and problem-solving, to develop a design guide for a women's refuge. Focus groups were conducted at the conclusion of the activity to gauge students' perceptions of the value of the activity. Results indicated that the "hands-on" and collaborative nature of the learning experience in a real-world context was valued, primarily due to its direct relevance to professional practice. Architecture and landscape participants reported an increase in their understanding and knowledge of refuge clients, and many expressed a commitment to further learning and contribution to the sector. Nursing students felt that the authentic learning experience helped prepare them for the "real world" of practice and that it aided development of their professional identities and capacity to effect real-world change. The learning activity had a positive impact on knowledge acquisition and students' confidence to act as agents of social change.

Qualitative exploration of the experience of psychoanalytic psychotherapy complemented the quantitative evaluation of mental health and life functioning improvements in the Melbourne Study of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. Twice‐weekly treatment was offered to adults for 2 years by the private sector Glen Nevis Clinic for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, established by the Victorian Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists as a subsidized, low‐cost community service over 8 years. This paper is the second of two presenting the qualitative arm of the study, involving in‐depth narrative interviews with patients and psychotherapists. Analysis of 143 transcripts further contributes to evidence of the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in a community setting. The first qualitative paper reports themes concerning patient expectations of psychotherapy and perspectives of both patients and psychotherapists on the experience and benefits of the treatment. This paper reports what was perceived by participants as facilitative or challenging for therapeutic progress, illuminating how experiences of the nature of psychoanalytic psychotherapy may have affected the Implementation, Effectiveness and Maintenance of the program. The most notable facilitative factors emerging were the exploratory, insight‐oriented nature of the work, elements of the patient‐psychotherapist relationship, and the frame of the treatment. Challenges were also often seen as inherent to Effectiveness; however, proposing the frame of 2‐year treatment, as both an expectation and a limit, probably inhibited program Reach, Adoption and overall Implementation. The limitations and strengths of the qualitative arm of the research, together with implications for further investigation, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The naturalistic, longitudinal Melbourne Study of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy was conducted in a subsidized community clinic established by the Victorian Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists as a demonstration project operating over 8 years. It offered lower SES adults twice‐weekly psychoanalytic psychotherapy for 2 years. An independent research program used the RE‐AIM planning and evaluation framework to investigate the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance of the service. Complementary quantitative and qualitative methodologies studied mental health and general‐life functioning outcomes and underlying processes of treatment. Two papers present the qualitative arm of the research, exploring the lived experience of the psychotherapy, reported contemporaneously and retrospectively by patients and psychotherapists. This first paper details the qualitative design and methods employed. In‐depth semi‐structured narrative interviews during psychotherapy, upon completion at 2 years, and at an additional 8‐month follow‐up point for patients, were conducted. Analysis of the narrative transcripts of 143 participant interviews revealed themes regarding patient expectations of treatment and the perceptions of both patients and psychotherapists of the long‐term psychoanalytic psychotherapy experience and its benefits. Narratives thus provided evidence of the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance of the service. The findings enrich understanding of the effective processes underlying the outcomes of the quantitative arm of the study reported separately. The second qualitative paper presents the findings concerning participants' experiences of facilitative and challenging aspects of the treatment, as well as the implications of the qualitative findings overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Melbourne Study of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy examined the implementation, lived experience, and perceived therapeutic gains of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in a low‐cost, private‐sector community clinic. A first in Australia, this 8‐year demonstration project allowed naturalistic study of the impact and process of intensive, long‐term, time‐limited psychoanalytic psychotherapy delivered to self‐referred adults by clinicians with a common theoretical frame of practice. Presented in three papers, the research employed the RE‐AIM planning and evaluation framework, using complementary quantitative and qualitative methods, to study the psychotherapy service in terms of Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance. This first paper reports the Reach of the program to be 67% for those presenting for assessment for psychoanalytic psychotherapy, with Adoption of the full 2‐year treatment program being 60%. Improvements in mental health and life functioning provided quantitative evidence of Effectiveness for those completing the 2‐year treatment program, with Maintenance at 8‐month follow‐up. Patient age, gender and personality characteristics did not modify these improvements. In‐depth qualitative exploration of patient and psychotherapist perspectives regarding the psychotherapy is reported in the second paper highlighting expectations, experience and benefits of the psychotherapy. The third companion paper presents the qualitative findings concerning factors experienced as facilitating or challenging therapeutic progress. Each of the three related papers amplifies understandings of how low‐cost, long‐term but time‐limited psychoanalytic psychotherapy can be implemented in the community with adults otherwise unable to afford such treatment, and discusses lessons learned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluated the effectiveness of the HOPE program. Participants included 120 Chinese new immigrant parents with preschool children in Hong Kong from 13 preschools which were randomized into intervention group (HOPE) and comparison group (6-session parent education program). Parent participants completed measures on child behavior, parenting stress, social support and self-efficacy before and after intervention. The children were assessed on the WPPSI-R and receptive vocabulary before and after parent intervention. Results indicated significant decrease in post-intervention child behavior problems and parenting stress and increase in social support in the intervention group, compared with the comparison group. Implications for service delivery for parents of preschool children were discussed. (Contains 5 tables and 1 figure.)

This study reported a pilot trial of the Hands-On Parent Empowerment (HOPE) program, a 30-session program designed to instruct parents from disadvantaged backgrounds how to teach learning skills to their preschool children. The participants included 13 parents who newly migrated into Hong Kong from mainland China. The parents were required to complete questionnaires on child behavior problems, parental stress, social support, and self-efficacy before, during, and after intervention. The children were assessed on the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test before and after intervention. The results indicated a significant decrease in parent-reported child behavior problems and parental stress, an increase in Performance IQ and vocabulary knowledge among the children. These improvements were also observed by preschool principals. The pilot experience provides insights for social work practice in terms of inter-sectoral collaboration, program content, duration, and intensity in early support for challenged families. (Contains 3 tables.)

University public relations directors are offered guidelines for conducting an economic impact study to evaluate the institution's worth to the community. Discussed are positive and negative aspects of such studies, the selection of a formal or informal research approach, testing study validity, and disseminating the information. (DB)

Before a Children's Court decision is reached, a clinical assessment may be ordered by the court. This assessment often occurs when tension is high for the family and when well-established defenses may falter, and it can provide a prime, critical opportunity to facilitate positive change. Comprehensive psychological assessment at the Children's Court Clinic in Melbourne, Australia, indicates the intervention value of a serious attempt to understand the complexity of the psychological issues facing a child and family. With the aid of illustrative case studies, this article discusses the therapeutic aspects and implications of such assessment.

Using data from an outcome study of adult individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy, conducted in a low‐cost Australian clinic, a mixed‐methods approach was employed to investigate patient discontinuation. This paper addresses the qualitative component of the discontinuation study, which explored patients' reasons for leaving the clinic service upon assessment or in treatment proper. Of 205 patients commencing clinic contact, 41% discontinued during or shortly after the four‐week assessment period, while 40.5% of patients beginning psychotherapy withdrew before reaching the two‐year treatment limit. Across these two groups, former patients were interviewed about their therapy experience and decision to discontinue. Thematic analysis of 20 interview transcripts generated five descriptive categories of discomfort or dissatisfaction prompting discontinuation: clinic factors, therapist factors, patient factors, therapist–patient relationship factors and therapy factors. Findings suggest that experience of the clinic setting itself, together with negative patient perceptions of therapists and therapist interactional style, weres significant influences and that dissatisfaction with the psychotherapy process and outcome was more relevant than problematic patient factors in treatment withdrawal. A number of patients, mainly late discontinuers, reported positive experiences of psychotherapy and significant treatment gains. Implications of the findings, with specific emphasis on psychoanalytic treatment settings, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a powerful message and the right partners, the University of Utah convinced voters not to pass devastating tax cuts. Advice to institutions forced to defend themselves to the public is presented including: design a powerful message; be sensitive to the twists the debate is taking; etc. (MLW)

This study evaluated the effectiveness of the HOPE program. Participants included 120 Chinese new immigrant parents with preschool children in Hong Kong from 13 preschools which were randomized into intervention group (HOPE) and comparison group (6-session parent education program). Parent participants completed measures on child behavior, parenting stress, social support and self-efficacy before and after intervention. The children were assessed on the WPPSI-R and receptive vocabulary before and after parent intervention. Results indicated significant decrease in post-intervention child behavior problems and parenting stress and increase in social support in the intervention group, compared with the comparison group. Implications for service delivery for parents of preschool children were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]