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This paper explores the use of participatory action research (PAR) with children diagnosed with mental health issues. We argue that critiques from the sociology of childhood are useful for guiding PAR with children. First, we describe and critique values and assumptions that underlie research and practice with children who experience mental health issues. Second, we outline key qualities of the sociology of childhood, discuss their implications for PAR with children diagnosed with mental health issues, and touch on ethical issues. Five themes are explored: (a) values, (b) ontology/epistemology, (c) views about children, (d) agency/power in children's relationships with adults, and (e) intervention/change focus. We conclude by encouraging community psychologists to consider PAR with children diagnosed with mental health issues.

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Although critical scholarship and community psychology share similar aspirations, the links between them remain unexplored and under-theorized. In this article we explore the implications of critical scholarship in various specialties for the field of community psychology. To understand the contributions of critical scholarship to a theory of power and action for social change, we conducted a systematic analysis of a ten-year period of publications in seven journals associated with the critical scholarship tradition. We created precise criteria for the concepts of power and action and applied them to the publications. Results indicate an interesting paradox at play. Whereas community psychology is more action oriented than critical scholarship, its actions fall short of challenging institutionalized power structures and the status quo; and whereas critical scholarship is more challenging of the status quo than community psychology in theory, it has failed to produce viable actions that challenge the status quo. We discuss the implications of this state of affairs for the development of a more critical community psychology.

Community-engaged researchers have a responsibility to community partners to get beyond the traditional researcher stance to take on the active role of critical friend. On the basis of my own community research experiences in the USA, in this article, I argue that there is added value in taking on the practice of critical friendship to encourage a higher degree of critical reflection and critical practice in our partners and in our work together. In the context of long-term, trusting relationships with community partners, researchers can play the role of critical friend working together to shape critical community praxis on the basis of critical theorizing, critical reflection, and a shared commitment to working for social justice. Those trying to make a difference in communities are often isolated and can benefit from opportunities for dialogue with other community practitioners within a critical frame of reference. Although not without risks and challenges, stepping into this role allows us to put into sharper relief the gap between community practice that challenges injustice and practice that maintains it.

This paper describes the challenges and benefits of an action-research project with a Nashville-based nonprofit human service organization. In our view, outmoded human service organizations are in serious need of innovation to promote psychological and physical wellness, prevention of social problems, empowerment, and social justice. This project aims to develop and evaluate value-based organizational processes and outcomes designed to transform human services. Although the goal of moving human services from ameliorative to transformative approaches is invigorating, our efforts have revealed expected and unexpected barriers to this process of change. Two main barriers are a strong cultural current working against change and irregular pacing of the change efforts. Positive outgrowths of the project include a new organizational philosophy that includes attention to issues of justice and equality, and changing individual and organizational beliefs and practices. Clear messages regarding the changes desired and a highly participatory process have facilitated these initial outcomes. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. A R T I C L E INTRODUCTIONA number of persisting and stubborn paradoxes beset health, human, and community services. Although it is widely accepted that a strengths-based approach is more humane and engaging than a deficit orientation, many institutions require their workers to embrace a retrograde way of categorizing people (Mullaly, 2002). Although prevention is acknowledged to be better than cure, research indicates that the vast majority of public resources, up to 99% of them, are allocated for treatment and rehabilitation (Nelson, Prilleltensky, Laurendeau, & Powell, 1996). Although the praises of empowerment have been sung for quite a while now, a vast number of community residents feel detached, alienated, and out of control when it comes to receiving services or interacting with health, human, education, and community service workers. Finally, although the limitations of person-centered interventions have been widely documented, a transition toward efforts for community-wide and systemic changes has been terribly slow in coming (Albee, 1998; Smedley & Syme, 2000;Stokols, 2000Stokols, , 2003. So entrenched is the reigning paradigm that well-documented alternatives, even ones that have been empirically validated, have failed to make a dent in the dominant modus operandi of health, human, and community services (Prilleltensky & Nelson, 2002). For reasons having to do with the power of tradition, habituation, and the status quo, we reinforce a helping industry that is out of step with the dire realities of disadvantaged communities.In light of the shortcomings of a deficit-oriented and reactive approach that fails to empower people or to change community conditions, we wish to pursue an alternate method we call SPEC. The acronym stands for strength-based approach, prevention, empowerment, and changing community conditions. We claim that these four complementary elements need to be implemented simultaneous...

In an environment where community based organizations are asked to do increasingly more to alleviate the effects of complex social problems, networks and coalitions are becoming the answer for increasing scale, efficiency, coordination, and most importantly, social impact. This paper highlights the formation of a poverty reduction coalition in south Florida. Our case study approach chronicles a developing coalition in Miami-Dade County and the role of one organization acting as lead to the initiative. Drawing on interviews with lead organization staff, participant observation field notes, network mapping and analysis of documents and artifacts from the initiative, we analyze the local organizational context and illuminate important processes associated with supporting a developing coalition. Findings offer a picture of the interorganizational relationships in the community using social network analysis and identify the organizational capacity factors that contribute to and inhibit the formation of a cohesive and effective coalition in this context. This study also highlights the utility of an action research approach to organizational learning about coalition-building in such a way that informs decision making.

Increasingly, the risk assessment community has recognized the social and cultural aspects of vulnerability to hurricanes and other hazards that impact planning and public communication. How individuals and communities understand and react to natural hazard risk communications can be driven by a number of different cognitive, cultural, economic, and political factors. The social sciences have seen an increased focus over the last decade on studying hurricane understanding and responses from a social, cognitive, or decision science perspective, which, broadly defined, includes a number of disparate fields. This paper is a cross-disciplinary and critical review of those efforts as they are relevant to hurricane risk communication development. We focus on two areas that, on the basis of a comprehensive literature review and discussions with experts in the field, have received comparatively little attention from the hazards community: 1) research concerning visual communications and the way in which individuals process, understand, and make decisions regarding them and 2) the way in which vulnerable communities understand and interact with hurricane warning communications. We go on to suggest areas that merit increased research and draw lessons or guidance from the broader hazards/social science research realm that has implications for hurricane planning and risk communication, particularly the development and dissemination of hurricane forecast products.