Grant Charles

The College of Health Disciplines, at the University of British Columbia (UBC) has a long history of developing interprofessional learning opportunities for students and practitioners. Historically, many of the courses and programmes were developed because they intuitively made sense or because certain streams of funding were available at particular times. While each of them fit generally within our understanding of interprofessional education in the health and human service education programs, they were not systematically developed within an educational or theoretical framework. This paper discusses the model we have subsequently developed at the College for conceptualizing the various types of interprofessional experiences offered at UBC. It has been developed so that we can offer the broadest range of courses and most effective learning experiences for our students. Our model is based on the premise that there are optimal learning times for health and human services students (and practitioners) depending upon their stage of development as professionals in their respective disciplines and their readiness to learn and develop new perspectives on professional interaction.

Stigma is a pervasive social mechanism with negative ramifications for people who experience mental illness. Less is known about the stigma experiences of families where a parent has a mental illness. This review aims to identify and synthesize evidence on the concept of stigma and stigma-related experiences and outcomes reported by parents and children living with parental mental illness. An integrative review method was employed, with PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items of Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses) guidelines to search and select literature and extract and analyse data. This approach allows for inclusion of theoretical and empirical literature and for concept definition. Fifty-eight papers, mostly from the USA, Australia, and the UK, met the inclusion criteria. Stigma was primarily conceptualized in families as a marked difference that was negatively appraised, and which could be internalized. Some articles examined how underpinning assumptions could shape the behaviour of individuals and groups and be embedded within social institutions and structures. For parents, mental illness stigma was interconnected with stigma relating to perceived violations of social and cultural norms related to parenting. Children's experience of stigma resulted in bullying, embarrassment, guilt and social isolation, and efforts to conceal their parent's mental illness. One outcome was that stigma prevented children and parents from seeking much needed supports. Public health policies and campaigns that focus exclusively on promoting open disclosure of mental illness to foster community education outcomes are unlikely to be effective without additional strategies aimed at preventing and redressing the structural impacts of stigma for all family members.

• Summary: In this article we report the findings of a qualitative study of social workers' experiences of receiving care from their clients to present a case for a re-examination of the social worker—client relationship. • Findings: Participating social workers describe their awareness of the mutuality within their relationships with clients, including an awareness of the care their clients have and express towards them. However, participants report that this openness to mutuality and reciprocity in their relationships with clients is subversive of social work practice norms, which warn against dual relationships. These findings indicate that there is a serious disconnection between social work training and standards, and the ways social workers practice in the field. This puts workers in a potentially untenable position caught between ideals of professional behaviour and their relationships with their clients. • Application: The findings of this study suggest the need for potentially radical shifts in how we conceptualize worker—client relationships within social work practice. We suggest that the accommodation of a theoretical orientation that incorporates an understanding of mutuality of care and the interdependency of identity and human development within all interpersonal relationships provides a significant opportunity to our profession to reexamine how we interact with our clients.

While inhalant abuse is a significant problem among Canada’s Aboriginal (indigenous) people, it is poorly understood. This study was conducted in response to these issues. The authors followed 78 Aboriginal young people who received treatment for inhalant abuse in a program established by the federal government. Data were based on a secondary analysis of case files as well as follow-up information from community workers.\nSeventy-four percent of the 78 young people tracked during follow- up relapsed after discharge from treatment. Many of the young people came from backgrounds marked by isolation, poverty, family violence and substance abuse. The average age these young people started using solvents was 9.72 years. Gasoline was the most common inhalant used. Inhalant use was often accompanied by alcohol and drug abuse. A logistic regression model predicting who would relapse indicated that young people who abused inhalants immediately before admission, those who were described as unmotivated in treatment and those who were hospitalized during treatment had the greatest risk of relapsing during follow-up. Implications are discussed.

The Interprofessional Rural Program of British Columbia IRPbc was established in 2003 as an important first step for the Province of British Columbia, Canada, in creating a collaborative interprofessional education initiative that engages numerous communities, health authorities and post-secondary institutions in working toward a common goal. Designed to foster interprofessional education and promote rural recruitment of health professionals, the program places teams of students from a number of health professional programs into rural and remote British Columbia communities. In addition to meeting their discipline specific learning objectives, the student teams are provided with the opportunity to experience the challenges of rural life and practice and advance their interprofessional competence. To date, 62 students have participated in the program from nursing, social work, medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, pharmaceutical sciences, speech language pathology, audiology, laboratory technology, and counseling psychology. While not without numerous struggles and challenges, IRPbc has been successful in meeting the program mandate. It has also had a number of positive outcomes not anticipated at the time the program was established.