Macro social work practice includes those activities performed in organizational, community, and policy arenas. Macro practice has a diverse history that reveals conflicting ideologies and multiple theoretical perspectives. Programmatic, organizational, community, and policy dimensions of macro practice underscore the social work profession's emphasis on using a person-in-environment perspective. Thus, social workers, regardless of roles played, are expected to have sensitivity toward and engage in macro practice activities.

As community residents age, service delivery systems may not be equipped to meet their changing needs. The Naturally Occurring Retirement Community (NORC) model has emerged as a strategy to utilize existing resources and develop a comprehensive approach to maintaining older adult functional status. However, little has been written about how community capacity influences NORC implementation. A community capacity framework was used to analyze the themes that emerged from participant and service provider interviews at two diverse NORC sites. The findings revealed that perceptions of a sense of community and partnership management influenced the NORC experience for participants and providers.

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A ttribution theory posits that the ways in which people explain events helps them to manage, control, and master these events (Gotlib & Abramson, 1999;White & Barrowclough, 1998). Furthermore, attributions generally fall into patterns organized around certain dimensions. The first dimension involves the extent to which individuals attribute causes of events to internal (within the individual) or external (outside the individual) factors. The second dimension involves the extent to which individuals attribute causes of events to all-encompassing, global characteristics (e.g., the world is unsafe) or specific events or behaviors (e.g., a hurricane happened). The third dimension involves, depending on the theorist, the degree to which the person perceives he or she can control the event (Weiner, 1985) or the person's perception of whether the event will change or not (i.e., the extent to which it is stable; Gotlib & Abramson, 1999).Attribution theory has been applied to parenting behavior. The attributions parents give for their children's behavior affects how parents behave toward their children (White & Barrowclough, 1998). A literature review by Freeman, Johnston, and Barth (1997) indicated that mothers of children without problems employ a positive attributional bias for their children. They view prosocial behavior by their children as due to internal characteristics of the child that are stable in nature. At the same time, they see deviant behavior as situational and temporary. Such parents typically believe they have control over parent-child interactions because of their competence and skills.Mothers of children with behavior problems and parents who maltreat their children display an opposite pattern. They explain their children's deviant behaviors as due to dispositional and stable causes within their children. They also believe their children should have control over these behaviors). As a result, these mothers downplay their parenting practices as determining their children's behavior. Because they do not have control, apathy, depression, and hopelessness may follow (Gotlib & Abramson, 1999). Indeed, parents of children with CAREGIVERS OF CHILDREN