MY LATEST TRAINING

I have done my clinical social work training in Vilnius, in Antakalnis kids day center. There I have worked with three my groupmates. Although there were only six-eight children at that moment going to this center, so we decided to go separetely in two's every second day.

We were helping children doing their homework, sometimes, to entertain them, we showed them some movies, developed some discusions, took part in excercises every thursday with psychologist, of course, then we mostly were watching how the specialist worked with kids.

The best thing that I liked, was that children were very friendly, honist and open, and the social workers of that center also treated with us very kindly, gave us lots of advice, information, helped to do our excercises, purposes of training.

In conclusion, I would like to say, that this training was really interesting and useful in my future work, and future life, espacially helping my own chidren with doing their homework :)

Social needs: Poverty

There is no general definition of poverty. This is because the definition of poverty depends on the point of view of every person. Poverty may include material conditions, economic and social positions. In every country, in every society these three parts can be differ and defined variuosly. Commonly, poverty is excluded in two models: Absolute poverty and Relative poverty.


The first model is based on subsistence, what means that the government sizes up the amount of money, which is necessary to survive for one person. It also includes the basic human needs, such as home, medical treatment, education and likely.


The second model is based on a comparison of poor people with others in society. That means, that poverty in this case is defined as inequality between social classes.

Because there is no agreed definition of poverty, there also is no agreed measure. The measure, which is most commonly used in all societies, is based on income. For example, The World Bank uses the arbitrary standard of $31 dollars a month ($1 a day) and in the light of these standarts there are nearly 1200 million poor people in the world.

In conclusion, looking to the situation of Lihuania, there is quit good developed the system of support for poor people ( or for such people, whose income is less than the subsistence). The government can support people by giving them payouts, compensations of central heating, hot or cold water, electricity, help to find and buy an accomodation and etc.

Online listening- two podcast

1) www.bootcamp.com/todaysReport.jsp

"It is time for a home server"

2) www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/indexn?blogid=5

"Tim Goodman's TV Talk Mashine: at long last the debut of Question Girl"
I have listened two online podcast. Actually, there was very hard and difficult to find interesting theme and suitable level text, which computer could open to listen. I have visited more than 10, or maybe even 20 web sites and couldn't open any podcast.

At last I successfully opened two of texts. They weren't very difficult as I expected.

The first one was about servers, so vocabulary was quit difficult and I have to listen it twice to understand everything.

The second one was much easier than the first, there was native speakers speaking with American English accent, so it made listening simpler.

The only difficulty listening second record was that speakers laughed a lot and also they interviewed some other persons on the phone, so that it made listening a little harder, but at the same time and more interesting. It was not necessary for me to read the text for better understanding, because, as I already have mentioned, the vocabulary of both texts was quit easy understandable.

To sum it up, I hope that in the future I would not have any difficulties listening the online podcast. On the other hand, such a listening gives us a lot good experience to arise our listening skills, which will be useful in the nearest future doing our exam paper and, of course, in our future work, nevertheless what it will be.

ADOPTION

Adoption is the legal act of permanently placing a child with a parent or parents other than the birth mother or father.

There are three types of it:
1)Open adoption- it is when a child can know all the information about his adoption,his birth parents and the both parties can contact, share information, meet each other and etc.;
2)Semi-open adoption- birth parents and the adoptive parents can meet one or several times and later they can just exchange letters, postcards or e-mails;
3)Closed adoption-in the process of adoption can be shared important information, such as medical records, but after finishing adoption there is no contacts and information shared.

According to the living place of adoptive parties, there are two more types of adoption: a)domestic, which is divided to foster care adoption and intra-family adoption, and b)international one.

Foster care adoption means that a child is initially placed in foster care system for adoption. Intra-family adoption is when the adoptive parents become the child’s relatives after taking away his/her birth parents’ parental rights or after their death. Then mostly takes care of an orphan his/her aunts, uncles, elder brothers/sisters or grandparents.
International adoption is when the parties of this act live in different countries or states (federations). It is quit popular to adopt child from the abroad. And, for example, in Lithuania the foreigners who want to adopt a Lithuanian child have more privileges and better conditions to adopt than the native adopters.

In conclusion, there could be discussed a question, why people adopt children. There are lots of reasons. For example, a child often goes to foster care house because his parents have an inability to adequately care for him, or they maltreat with him, or involuntary lose their parental rights and etc. Adoptive parents reasons to adopt could be : inability to biological reproduction; the lack of a partner; step-parent adoption and etc.

ONLINE LISTENING: Choosing a student exchange program to come to the US

Nowadays there are lots of oportunities to travel to foreign counties for study and work. There are lots of advertisments on press, dashboards of universities, in the internet and so on. That's why students, if they want to, can choose the best way of working and traveling and student exchange programs.
I have heard an online advertisment about exchange program in US. Is is easy to understand for me everything and background noise do not blocked me to hear everything. There was a suggestion for Ukraine students to go to the Us to study and to work. Usually such a students work in hotels or restaurant, but they can choose and other employers. Exchange means that two students from different countries changes for a one therm or a year.
Personally i don't want to go anywhere from my native country. I like living and studying there. I would not like to leave my family there even for a short time, because it is difficult to leave them for a weak at the moment, so i can not imagine how it would be if i would not see my baby for a months.
In my opinion, there are no better country than Lithuania, and there are many oportunities to work and to do a career in a native county. It is naive to think that there is better somewhere else where we are not.

VIRGINIA SHOOTING AND GUN CONTROL

CNN announces that Virginia Tech starts to return to normalcy after the shooting rampage. Last week there was a rampage made against students of Virginia Tech, Blacksburg. 32 students were shot deadly and 15 wounded by a Seung-Hui Cho, the student of this Tech. After shooting, he killed himself.
This week the shooter’s family made an announcement to press where they made a sorry for all families of victims. Sun-Kyung Cho, his sister, said: “He has made the world weep. We are living in a nightmare. Our family is so very sorry for my brother’s unspeakable actions. It is a terrible tragedy for all of us.”
Millions people in all over the world were shocked for such a tragedy and every state across the nation sounded bells and had moments of silence for the victims.
Police announce that Cho had two guns and fired 225 bullets. Each victim was hot for at least three times.
Nobody can say why Cho did so, police investigate any possible versions, checking his and others students PCs and cells.
The headmaster of Virginia Tech said to the students that they can go back to study or they can take current grade without finishing it. Most of students want to go back to the routine and everyday studies.
“In a sign of life slowly moving toward some sense of routine, the first athletic event since the massacre was held Friday evening on the sports-crazy campus, when Virginia Tech and the University of Miami took the field for a baseball game.
Before the game started, the crowd at English Field observed 32 seconds of silence, one second for each of Cho's victims.” – the AP reports.
The Virginia Tech campus massacre may ignite a national debate over gun control. Republicans and Democrats do not agree about this control. Because of 2008 years president election, there are many different opinions and even too “sweat” talks and debates about guns. One part is in a side of people who were victims or their relatives were victims and want to get striker gun control and harsher punishments for crimes, which were made in use of a gun.
On the other hand, there are many people, who scare to became a victim or about their relatives and want to hold a gun for protection. For such a people represents other part of government. So we should wait for new election and hope that the new president and new government would be wise enough to grant suitable legislation to control gun usage.

Employment law, restrict summary

Employment law is a law, which protects rights of workers, assesses duties of employers.

The main reasons, why employment law has developed so quickly and liken not long time ago, were industrialization and the power of employers, which was too big. The most part of legislation were made in 20th century. There were made o lot of new issues, laws and agreements, which warrant the equal right for employees, between men and women, against the cheesing of children and etc.

The basic 8 employment rights are:
1. Employees have to make a written summary of what they are doing at work;
2. A right to the maternity leave;
3. The summary of employees should be at least of a one week, if employment is to be ended;
4. A right for employees to the compensation in the reason of the unfair dismissal;
5. People working part-time are less protected;
6. The pensioners are not compensated for redundancy;
7. The employer can not dismiss a sick worker, unless the employer is a small business;
8. Companies, which have less than 5 workers do not have to re-employ a woman after the pregnancy.

Employees, who are not satisfied about being unfairly dismissed, can apply to the European Court, and hope, that their claim would be granted, because sometimes EC law gives better protection to the workers. EC purpose is that the all laws in all member countries would be equal and harmonized, because at the present-day, there are many of differences in each countries, for example, Sunday trading allows to sell whisky but not coffee and etc. But the one of the best rights of EC law is the right to strike.

In conclusion could be compared two big laws: Japan law and the western law. In Japan is unusual to take actions against employers, employees have less rights, but if they were hired, they possibly would not ever dismissed. Japan workers feel more secure then western ones and many Japan employees have a big opportunity to live in a big city, because their chiefs provide them a law-cost accommodation.