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This chapter explores the impact of delivering culturally community family therapy with strength-based strategies, to transgenerational Black Haitian families living in Haiti and the Dominican Republic following the 2010 earthquake. A series of workshop intervention over several years, which were co-facilitated by community pastors and leaders provided a cultural-based intervention drawing on Black British and Caribbean culture, Haitian culture, Christian spiritual belief systems, in conjunction with some bi-cultural attachment and systemic methods and techniques. Community feedback through testimonies contributed to evaluation and outcomes in developing new strategies to manage stress, and family conflict and distress, together with developing new strategies in sharing a vision for the future across the community.

This paper examines themes that emerge from supporting adults who have been sexually violated by Church ministers and clergy. The author suggests that despite obstacles put in place by churches of all denominations, victims are beginning to speak out.

This article describes the personal experiences of a person with Asperger's syndrome who has used various services aimed at improving clients' mental health, both public and private. A number of experiences are described as summarised below.a) Post‐traumatic stress caused by experiences of school bullying, being dismissed from a job, and a period of unemployment resulted in the author's referral to a Christian counselling centre. There, specialised counselling sessions proved very beneficial.b) Difficulties in social skills resulted in the author being referred by his general practitioner to a psychiatric nurse, who in turn referred him to an excellent social skills and assertiveness course run by the Mind mental health charity. Experience of further social skills training is also described.c) Low self‐esteem and recurrent insomnia as a result of poor inter‐personal experiences and lack of career progress relative to peer group led to an extended sequence of counselling sessions with a private Christian counsellor. Guided cognitive therapy with this counsellor resulted in a substantial alleviation of both the low self‐esteem and the insomnia.d) The author also received further counselling, from a different counsellor to acquire assertiveness skills, and the ability to deal with aggressive people.In all, the author's experience of mental health intervention was mainly low‐cost Christian counselling, working through self‐help books, and the occasional social skills course. Very little use was made of medication and none of hospital‐based services.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the cover of research regarding Mosque Speechmakers (MSs) in the Arabic environment. The researcher tries to investigate the information-seeking behaviour of MSs in the State of Kuwait in terms of their thoughts, approaches, habits, preferences, tools and problems met when using of and accessing information.

The author employed a questionnaire, with a response rate 70.6 per cent (561/795).

The findings of the study revealed that most of MSs in Kuwait tend to be older (aged over 35 years), educated (mostly with BA degrees) and with an average monthly income over 300 KD ($1000 = 282 KD). The study showed that MSs were significantly seeking information to make a specific/general research, to collect necessary statistics, to make a speech/sermon and to present religious sermons/lectures. They preferred to use the home/personal library as well as the special library, specifically the Mosque library. The information-seeking behaviour of a large number of them indicated a preference for printed sources over electronic sources, and a good number preferred to access information through the audio-visual materials as well as the web. A very small number of them were looking for information for the purpose of making a speech (Friday speech/sermon). The study also showed that the most important sources of information MSs were seeking for were biographies, specialised books, particularly Islamic books, mass media (press, TV, videos, etc.). The study also showed that a large number of MSs were poor in the usage of foreign languages, and this in turn has negatively affected to take advantage of the vast information available in these languages. The unpretentious role of the library to deliver requested information, the use of foreign languages as well as the high cost of information were the most significant problems met by MSs when using of and accessing information.

This paper investigates the topic of MSs’ use of and access to information. This topic, unfortunately, has limited previous research, especially in the Arabic and Islamic environment.

The paper provides valuable insight into the information behaviour of a very important client group, namely, MSs.

Being the second one of its type throughout the Arab world, this study is characterised to be a distinguishing one among several studies conducted in the area of the information-seeking behaviour, especially with such a significant group of information users/seekers. Any findings resulted from this study may help in a better understanding of the MSs’ information-seeking behaviour, and may also help policy and decision-makers (Mosques and Islamic institutions) as well as religious information service providers to understand well the nature of these beneficiaries of information sources and to enrich the awareness of researchers and professionals on the topic of information-seeking behaviour of Mosque speechmakers.

In general, refugee camps are enclosed areas restricted to refugees and those assisting them. These camps are supposed to be temporary, and often lack even very basic social infrastructure and economic development. In many cases, however, they have become permanent homes for refugees, lasting in some cases over ten years. Using empirical evidence from the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana, this article examines the possibility and the practicalities of transforming refugee communities from their initial undeveloped state into more developed and modernised societies. It explores the role of the principal stake‐holders ‐ the refugees, the UNHCR and the host government ‐ in the practical transformation of the refugee community. The article concludes that refugees themselves can be instrumental in any substantial transformation of their communities, and that effective transformation is possible through concerted efforts by the various stake‐holders.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a ground-breaking survey into people's experiences of church and Spiritual Abuse (SA), in a context of issues of safeguarding and policy.

The survey was delivered online between April 2011 and December 2012.

The findings showed many people had encountered negative church experiences. Most respondents had very limited knowledge and understanding of SA and related support and intervention.

This survey represents the views of a small percentage of those who attend, or have attended, church and further more extensive research is required to provide a more comprehensive understanding. Additionally research is required within other faiths and cultural contexts.

It is evident that there is clearly a need to strengthen current safeguarding policy and practice with regards to SA.

This paper offers an initial insight into the challenges for safeguarding together with some suggested intervention strategies.

Little is known about the variations in service co-creation on social media, despite the resource integrating capabilities and co-creator roles afforded by these platforms. The gap is even more troubling in the nonprofit sector, where leveraging public interaction on social media is prevalent and vital to charitable and philanthropic endeavors. Arguably, such interaction is embedded in resource integrating activities leading to nonprofit service co-creation. This paper reports the forms, dimensions or service co-creation measures enabled by social media use in the nonprofits' sector.

The authors conducted a sequential exploratory mixed methods design. First, the authors interviewed 19 social media managers in education, health and social service nonprofit organizations to identify the varieties in service co-creation realized. Second, the authors surveyed 73 nonprofit organizations on social media and gathered 267 useable responses, which were used to analyze and validate the identified forms of service co-creation.

The authors found that nonprofit organizations realize up to seven forms of service co-creation using social media. These include co-ideating to tweak service ideas, co-diagnosing social needs and problems, co-assessing service events, co-transforming services to targeted communities, co-advocating for community and service reach, co-resourcing in service delivery, and co-experiencing through a pool of diverse service experiences.

This study develops a reliable and valid multidimensional measure for nonprofit service co-creation enabled by social media platforms. Theoretically, this study offers a nonprofit service co-creation model to drive nuanced explanatory research and service co-creation perspectives in other contexts and engagement platforms. Managerially, this research illustrates the variations in service co-creation, which inform the strategic value of social media to nonprofits and will assist nonprofit practitioners in planning and evaluating their service co-creation outcomes.