Children and safety in Australian policy: Implications for organisations and practitioners

Child safety is now a national policy priority in Australia. Extensive enquiries and reviews have escalated legislative and policy responses focused on developing, maintaining and monitoring “child safe” organisations. The recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse point to the importance of cultural conditions within organisations in supporting child safety and the need for responsive change in some organisations. Drawing on a recent policy analysis, undertaken as part of a larger Australian Research Council Discovery Project, this article examines how children and safety are constructed, within and across relevant state and federal government policies in Australia, and the implications of this. Distinctions are drawn between conceptualisations of children within the broader education policy context and two specific policy contexts in which children are considered particularly vulnerable to abuse – out‐of‐home care and disability. The findings indicate that policy discourses of “child safe” potentially foster different emphases and approaches in organisations. These have implications for the way children are positioned in relation to their safety, how their rights are recognised and implemented, and what is required to foster cultural conditions within organisations to best support children’s safety and wellbeing.     

Indiscriminate,Irrelevant, and Sometimes Wrong: Causal Misconceptions about Climate Change

Prior research demonstrates widespread persistence of beliefs about climate change causes and risks that are arguably misconceptions. They include believing pollution causes climate change, believing ozone depletion causes climate change, the combination of these two “green beliefs,” referred to as environmental problems, and believing natural climate variation significantly contributes to current climate trends. Each of these causal beliefs has the potential to weaken or divert support away from effective climate change risk mitigation policies. To assess this potential, we explore the nature and prevalence of these beliefs in the United States with a national sample of interviews (N = 77) and two national surveys (N = 1,013, N = 1,820), and apply regression and mediation analyses to explore whether they explain any of the variation in individuals’ concern or support for policy to mitigate climate change. Adherence to these beliefs—which reflect a variety of misconceptions illustrated in the interviews—differs by political ideology but is common, with over a third of interviewees mentioning one or more. Controlling for general knowledge, political ideology, and other factors, misconceptions about environmental problems are still associated directly with support for climate change policies. On average adherence to the belief that environmental problems cause climate change is associated with a 25% higher probability of policy support. In contrast, believing natural climate variability is a major recent cause of climate change is associated with a 7% lower probability of supporting climate policy, even after controlling for political ideology and other knowledge about climate change.     

Is it Time to Phase Out UNDESA's Regional Criterion of Development?

International migration to developing countries has attracted increasing attention because of its growing volume in absolute terms and its potential contribution to development. However, conclusions about what is happening in these countries depend crucially on the way migration and development are measured and analysed. This article shows that whether migrant stocks appear to be increasing or decreasing in developing countries depends on three factors: whether a regional or an economic criterion of “development” is used, whether volume is expressed in absolute numbers or as a percentage of total population, and whether the data include refugees and asylum seekers. The policy implications of these findings, which – due to the shortcomings of available data – can only be regarded as provisional, are then discussed. Better quality migration data and analysis informed by the limitations of the data are needed to provide a sound evidence base for current debates about migration policy.     

Including people with intellectual disabilities in the mobilities turn: mobile interviews in Toronto,Canada

ABSTRACT

Geographic research about disability and mobility often foregrounds the built environment as a site of in/exclusion. People with intellectual disabilities (IDs) have been mostly absent from this scholarship. To respond to this gap, we draw from an in-depth set of ‘mobile interviews’ with people with IDs in Toronto, Canada. Using a thematic approach, this paper suggests that more-than-material relations matter to the everyday mobilities and immobilities of people with IDs in urban settings. We aim to centre the participants’ experiences and call for greater inclusion of people with IDs in critical-geographic studies of the disability-mobility nexus. We highlight participants’ regular, planned, and spontaneous mobilities; their attitudes towards their own movement, stillness, and ‘stuck-ness’; and their experiences of staring in public spaces. The contingencies of belonging/exclusion, choice/regimen, and fitting/mis-fitting – as well as the more-than-material, varied, and contextual nature of those tensions – are present in many of the participants’ (im)mobilities in and through the city.     

Dads Tuning in to Kids: A randomized controlled trial of an emotion socialization parenting program for fathers

Fathers play an important role in shaping their children’s emotional competence although most literature has focused on the influence of mothers. Dads Tuning in to Kids (Dads TIK) is a parenting program that teaches fathers to coach their children in learning about emotions, while also helping fathers increase awareness and regulation of their own emotions. A randomized controlled efficacy trial of Dads TIK was conducted with a community sample of 162 fathers of a 4‐year‐old child attending preschool in Melbourne, Australia. Those allocated to the intervention attended a seven‐session manualized group program. Questionnaires were completed by fathers, the fathers’ partners and the children’s teachers at baseline and 6‐month follow‐up. Results were that fathers in the intervention condition but not control condition reported significant increases in emotion socialization, parenting satisfaction and efficacy, and reductions in their children’s difficult behaviors. Partners of fathers in the intervention condition reported reductions in their own emotion dismissing parenting and improvements in psychological well‐being. Partners and teachers reported significant improvements in children’s behavior across both intervention and control conditions. These findings suggest a father‐focused program appears to lead to changes in fathers’ emotion socialization skills that may have benefits for partners’ functioning and children’s behavior.     

Psychosocial experiences of concussed collegiate athletes: The role of emotional support in the recovery process

Abstract

Objective: Understand from whom concussed football players seek and receive emotional support, and whether this support is associated with injury perceptions. Participants: Football players (N?=?26) from three NCAA Division I programs. Methods: With approval from the head athletic trainer, concussed athletes (2017 season) completed short surveys within 4–6?days of diagnosis and when cleared to return. Results: Concussed athletes perceived their injury as a normal consequence of playing football, not serious, and reported little, if any, depression and anxiety. Athletes reported the most support from athletic trainers; the least from coaches and teammates. Emotional support was associated with fewer adverse psychosocial reactions, more sport-injury related growth, and greater intentions to report future concussion symptoms. Conclusion: Results from this pilot study suggest that emotional support during the concussion recovery process should be understood and fostered by university officials charged with the health and well-being of collegiate football players.     

When Heterosexuality is Questioned: Stifling Suspicion Through Public Displays of Heterosexual Identity

This study examined public heterosexual identity management practices of heterosexual-identified young adults in the United States. Analysis of 415 participants’ written narratives indicated that 41% (n = 169) described consciously engaging in public displays of their heterosexual status in relation to suspicion about their sexual orientation. This article describes our findings regarding five aspects of these narratives of suspicion: types of suspicion, causes of suspicion, reasons for concern about suspicion, the types of public displays of heterosexual status employed to quell suspicion, and intended audiences for these displays. Overall, the results indicated that heterosexual identity suspicion is multifaceted, this suspicion serves as a catalyst for public displays of heterosexual status, and the climate of suspicion described by our participants reflects and reinforces contemporary heterosexism.     

The social construction of strategic coherence: Practices of enabling leadership

The construction of “strategic coherence,” defined as the development of a system of mutually compatible meanings among organization members about desirable organizational directions, is clearly a crucial issue for organizations. Yet, how to achieve it is in part an open question. While previous studies have considered how strategic coherence may emerge across top levels of management through strategic planning activities and negotiations among senior leaders, we know much less about the contribution of other actors and processes behind the scenes (in non-strategy roles). Drawing on an ethnographic study of a public hospital's planning and project management practices, this paper therefore focuses on the bundles of practices, people and tools through which strategic coherence can emerge across different levels and sectors in mundane activities. We build on the concept of “enabling leadership”, grounded in practice theories of leadership, as our analytical lens. The study reveals how strategic coherence is socially constructed by practices of ‘fueling’, ‘shaping’ and ‘entwining’ mutually compatible meanings, in interactions among diverse people and tools. We propose a grounded model of the construction of strategic coherence as the progressive socialization of meanings about organizational direction that is not just administered from the top, nor naturally emergent from the grass-roots, but that is a collective and inherently socio-material accomplishment of enabling leadership.     

Social Contingencies in Mental Health: A Seven‐Year Follow‐Up Study of Teenage Mothers

This paper reports analyses from a 7‐year follow‐up investigation of women pregnant as teenagers who had been studied during their pregnancy and shortly following their child's birth. The objective of these analyses was to identify potentially modifiable factors that might influence or condition psychological adaptation within this high‐risk population. Consistent with prior research, differences in social support and in personal resources or attributes effectively predicted depressive symptomatology, suggesting that such differences constitute crucial mental health contingencies and thereby represent promising intervention targets. Contrary to prior research, differences in stress exposure were found to be of substantial explanatory significance, with lifetime accumulation of major, potentially traumatic events representing the most significant element. These findings suggest the need to develop a greater understanding of socially or programatically modifiable determinants of stress exposure and to take seriously the prospect of developing interventions that reduce such exposure.