Parental Linguistic Input and Its Relation to Toddlers’ Visual Attention in Joint Object Play: A Comparison Between Children with Normal Hearing and Children With Hearing Loss

Parent–child interactions are multimodal, often involving coordinated exchanges of visual and auditory information between the two partners. The current work focuses on the effect of children's hearing loss on parent–child interactions when parents and their toddlers jointly played with a set of toy objects. We compared the linguistic input received by toddlers with hearing loss (HL) and their chronological age‐matched (CA) and hearing age‐matched (HA) normal‐hearing peers. Moreover, we used head‐mounted eye trackers to examine how different parental linguistic input affected children's visual attention on objects when parents either led or followed children's attention during joint object play. Overall, parents of children with HL provided comparable amount of linguistic input as parents of the two normal‐hearing groups. However, the types of linguistic input produced by parents of children with HL were similar to the CA group in some ways and similar to the HA group in other ways. Interestingly, the effects of different types of linguistic input on extending the attention of children with HL qualitatively resembled the patterns seen in the CA group, even though the effects were less pronounced in the HL group. We discuss the implications of these results for our understanding of the reciprocal, dynamic, and multi‐factored nature of parent–child interactions.     

The effect of the still‐face paradigm on infant behavior: A cross‐cultural comparison between mothers and fathers

Most still‐face paradigm (SFP) studies have been done in Western families with infant–mother dyads. The present study investigated the SFP pattern in 123 Dutch and 63 Chinese 4‐month‐old infants with mothers and fathers. The classic SFP effect was found for positive affect and gaze in both countries. For negative affect, Chinese infants showed a different SFP pattern than Dutch infants. With fathers, infants displayed a less pronounced SFP pattern for positive affect and an increase from the still face to the reunion for negative affect. Only a minority of infants showed the expected SFP pattern across episodes. Our findings support that infant emotion expression is influenced by parent gender and cultural context. An interesting avenue for further study is the exploration of the origins of within‐ and between‐gender and culture differences in affective communication between parents and infants.     

A viable care migration programme for Australia's ageing population: Recruiting migrant personal care workers for Australian aged care

Scholars and stakeholders alike have proposed the recruiting of migrant personal care workers as part of a strategy to respond to a prospective aged care deficit in Australia's ageing population. In recent years, there has been an increase in care migration to fulfil shortages among Australia's culturally and linguistically diverse and more remotely based populations. However, it is a difficult and resource‐intensive process to recruit migrant personal care workers under the labour agreement stream of the Temporary Skills Shortage visa. This article addresses the lacuna in existing literature dealing with the question of how Australia's migration framework ought to be structured to recruit migrant personal care workers as part of a strategy to prevent, or respond to, an aged care crisis. The article argues that the formation of an aged care industry labour agreement based on geographical and niche subsector labour market need is necessary to ensure the accessibility of the programme to aged care organisations. However, it is also argued that the introduction of a new low‐skill visa would better facilitate the recruitment of migrant personal care workers.     

Poverty affects access to regular source of primary care among the general population in Hong Kong

A territory‐wide two‐stage stratified random sample of 2,282 community‐dwelling Hong Kong adults were surveyed between 2014 and 2015 to investigate the association between poverty and regular source of primary care utilization. Poverty was operationalized by income‐poverty and deprivation. About 94% of our sample reported having regular source of primary care (Western and/or Chinese medical practitioner) and about 69% among them were in private sector. Multivariable logistic regression showed that people who were income‐poor and deprived were less likely to have regular source of primary care (income‐poor: OR = 0.523, p = .027; deprived: OR = 0.488, p = .007) and visit private primary care doctors (income‐poor: OR = 0.445, deprived: OR = 0.222, both p < .0001). Those who had chronic diseases were more likely to have regular source of primary care (multimorbid: OR = 10.709, p < .0001), but less likely to access care in the private sector (one chronic disease: OR = 0.690, p = .019; multimorbid: OR = 0.374, p < .0001) than those without. Further, being older and less skilled were significantly associated with less likelihood of visiting a private doctor. Path analysis showed that the number of chronic diseases had significant indirect effect on having regular source of primary care with being income‐poor and deprived as the mediators (β = ?.0183, p = .0016). Therefore, despite a public health‐care system that aims to deny no one from adequate health care for lack of means, regular source of primary care in Hong Kong is found to be pro‐rich. Future policies should tackle the problem of health‐care inequalities to meet the needs of the underprivileged.     

Adapting the Friends of the Children programme for child welfare system‐involved families

Research has shown the importance of long‐term, caring adults for children in foster care. This paper reviews the Friends of the Children (FOTC) long‐term mentoring programme and how it was adapted to serve children and families with child welfare system involvement. This study's two research questions are (1) How do Friends (FOTC's paid professional mentors) currently work with, and in turn, have an impact on, child welfare‐involved families? and (2) How can Friends better support child welfare system‐involved caregivers and families to promote family stability, permanence, and child well‐being? Data were collected from 21 caregivers (foster and biological), 24 FOTC Friends, five child welfare workers, and five teachers. Qualitative analyses of focus group, interview, and open‐ended survey data revealed a wide variety of ways Friends currently support children and families. In addition, several recommendations were made for strengthening programming. These findings provide valuable insights into providing long‐term mentoring to child welfare system‐involved children and families.     

More present than absent: Men who use domestic violence and their fathering

An earlier article referred to the “absent presence” of the perpetrator in the lives of children and their mothers who have lived with domestic violence. It identified the ways in which the shadow of the perpetrator continued and was evidenced in the “symptoms of abuse” that both women and children experienced in spite of his absence. The current article argues that fathers who use violence are actually more present than absent in the lives of children (and women), even following separation. A mixed method approach surveyed men in Men's Behaviour Change Programs (N = 101), and interviewed women who had experienced violence (N = 50). The studies reported that the majority of men in both the quantitative men's study (80%) and the qualitative women's study (77%) had substantial contact with children. The women's interviews highlight the problematic fathering that many of their children experienced, both before and after separation. They reported very high levels of child abuse and poor attitudes to both women and children. The article concludes that the family violence and child welfare systems are poorly configured to address fathers who use violence and continue to hold substantial parenting roles, including following separation.     

Poverty alleviation,coverage and fiscal sustainability: Investigating the effect of a new social pension in Hong Kong

This article synthesises the characteristics of social pensions across Asia and evaluates the effect of a new social pension in the Hong Kong SAR, the Old Age Living Allowance (OALA), on poverty alleviation, coverage rates and fiscal sustainability. We found that the effectiveness of the OALA in reducing old‐age poverty was limited, although it has led to an increase of retirement pension coverage by 6%. The OALA is projected to face substantial cost increases in the medium and longer term. Increasing the level of OALA benefits would be a direct means to enhance its poverty alleviation effect but may potentially be hampered by concerns about the fiscal sustainability of such changes. More obfuscated alternatives for Hong Kong policy makers to affect old‐age poverty alleviation include adjusting the indexing rules of benefit level payments and the eligibility criteria to reduce the stigma attached to the current policy choices.