Valerie Bryan

University of South Alabama | USA · Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work

The Helping Professional's Guide to Ethics, Second Edition develops a comprehensive framework for ethics based on Bernard Gert's theory of common morality. Moving beyond codes of ethics, Bryan, Sanders, and Kaplan encourage students to develop a cohesive sense of ethical reasoning that both validates their moral intuition and challenges moral assum...

In 2010, the Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Program Directors (BPD) participated in the Social Work Congress in Washington, DC, along with other national social work organizations. In addition to sending selected Board members, BPD sent emerging social work educators to participate in a purposeful effort to ensure leadership continuity. T...

A mixed methods study of sexual assault as experienced in the queer community.

This chapter introduces a theoretical framework for ethical decision making that can be applied across cultures. A hypothetical example is offered for illustrative purposes.

Social work higher education leadership is facing a crisis. We detail the nature of the problem in this qualitative evaluation spanning five years.

Although there is strong support for community engagement and community-based participatory research (CBPR) from public health entities, medical organizations, and major grantfunding institutions, such endeavors often face challenges within academic institutions. Fostering the interest, skills, and partnerships to undertake participatory research p...

THE HELPING PROFESSIONAL’S GUIDE TO ETHICS: A New Perspective Valerie Bryan, University of South Alabama Scott Sanders, Cornerstone University Laura Kaplan, Walden University This book develops a comprehensive framework for ethics in the helping professions based on bioethicist Bernard Gert's theory of common morality. The prevailing model of et...

This article describes one university's efforts to partner with a local agency (the "Coalition") within a disadvantaged, predominantly African American neighborhood, to assist them with studying their community's health disparities and health care access. The final, mutually agreed-upon plan used a community-based participatory research approach, w...

Through the framework of power-control theory (PCT), we provide a model of juvenile offending that places the gendered-raced treatment of juveniles central to the analysis. We test the theory using a unique sample that is predominately African American, poor, and composed entirely of juvenile offenders. Multivariate models compare the predictive po...

Previous research pertaining to the citizen review panel (CRP) initiative indicates that discrepancies exist between panel member and state agency liaison perceptions of CRP effectiveness in fulfilling the CAPTA CRP mandate. This study explores the impressions of both CRP members and liaisons involving barriers to effective CRP–state child welfare...

Objective This study reports findings from a national study of citizen review panels (CRPs) for child protective services, examining the relationships between previously identified panel characteristics (including information flow between CRPs and states, group cohesion and panel self-governance) and perceptions of CRP effectiveness.Methods Panel m...

Recently, state child welfare systems have begun to acknowledge the challenges faced by adoptive families, and have responded with specialized programs to support and stabilize these families and prevent placement disruption and adoption dissolution. Adoption Support for Kentucky (ASK) is a consortium of parent-led adoption support groups, operatin...

In order to promote timely permanency for children in out-of-home care, citizen foster care review programs employ volunteers to monitor progress for children in the child welfare system. In addition to case file reviews, Kentucky implemented an Interested Party Review system in which foster care review board members meet with family members and ch...

This paper speaks to the complexity of the social work practice environment that requires social workers to know moral theory. The authors present a rationale for social workers using moral theory and demonstrate how this can inform ethical reasoning in the context of case decision-making.

Background and Purpose: Both the known negative impacts of foster care drift on children and the increasing cost of foster care placement have long been public concerns. Since the enactments of the 1980 Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act and the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act, states have been required to review the status of each child...

Like adult drug courts, juvenile drug courts have proliferated at a rapid rate during the past 15 years, but comparatively little research has been conducted on them. Although a few studies indicate that these programs appear to show promise as an intervention, almost nothing has been published using systematic and empirical methods to provide a de...

Practice research finds that many practitioners do not regularly provide clients with ful informed consent (Burkemper, 2004); that biases influence social workers' judgment o competency and the nature of information disclosed (Palmer & Kaufman, 2003; Zayas Cabassa, & Perez, 2005); and that violations relating to informed consent were among the ten...

This article summarizes early findings regarding social functioning and client satisfaction from a longitudinal study of women receiving treatment in a family drug treatment court located in the Midwestern United States (N = 33). Drug treatment court participants were interviewed at program entry and when they had completed 6 months of treatment. F...

State child welfare systems in recent years have been increasingly compelled to include citizen stakeholders in public policy evaluation. A key mechanism for increased citizen involvement has been the development of citizen review panels (CRPs) in the area of child protective services. Citizen review panels are groups of citizen volunteers who are...

Drug treatment courts have proliferated at a remarkable rate, to over 1,000 drug court programs by May 2001. Literature has developed which shows drug courts to be generally effective for reducing recidivism and drug use. However, research on juvenile drug court treatment has lagged behind its adult predecessor. Recent research efforts emphasize th...

A framework for resolving social work's ethical problems must allow for explicit discussion and justification (Osmo and Landau 2001). As opposed to a preoccupation with what "ought to be," it is argued that "what ought "not"" be" is the more useful question to ask when resolving a moral problem. The University of Kentucky's social work program has...