Learning from parents: A qualitative interview study on how parents experience their journey through the Dutch child protection system

The quality of parents' experiences with the child protection system (CPS) is related to the outcomes of their family's process in the system. The importance of collaboration with parents in child protection is underpinned by human and children's rights conventions addressing the right for family life and parents being first responsible in fulfilling children's rights. We interviewed 20 parents about their experiences with the Dutch CPS. Our thematic analysis shows that a CPS serving the best interests of their children is most important to parents. To realize this, professionals should (1) “not let it happen but do something,” (2) “get a clear picture of the family's situation,” and (3) “take parents seriously.” Parents emphasize that a system providing sufficient “money, time, and knowledge” is needed to facilitate professionals. Their experiences seem to influence their trust in the system and their attitude towards it. This study shows new insights in parents' experiences, such as their advice to professionals to determine the truth and to be decisive. This deepened knowledge about parents' experiences is essential for evaluating and improving the CPS.     

Deliberation and Ethnicity

Scholars typically suggest that deliberation, defined as communication guided by reason‐giving and inclusion, works best behind a veil of ignorance or when personal differences are bracketed. In this article we explore deliberation within ethnically diverse groups. We operationalize ethnicity in three ways: as an aspect of individual identity, as an identity that is made salient through priming, and as an enactment relative to interactions in particular situations. In this way, we can explore the applicability of our previous experimental results to ethnically diverse groups. We find similar results: within ethnically diverse groups, deliberation matters; participants are more likely to reconsider their positions when deliberating than when simply talking about politics. Ethnicity has no adverse effects on the quality of deliberation, indicating that bracketing has no significant impact. On the contrary, when conceptualized as a relational enactment, ethnicity is correlated with increased levels of reason‐giving and inclusion, and hence higher quality deliberation. This suggests deliberation works in multiethnic groups in much the same way as—if not better than—it does in homogeneous groups. Deliberation is a robust form of political communication that not only helps manage, but also embraces diverse subjective experiences as a part of the political process.     

No overall effect of urbanization on nest-dwelling arthropods of great tits (Parus major).

Urbanization has been shown to strongly affect community composition of various taxa with potentially strong shifts in ecological interactions, including those between hosts and parasites. We investigated the effect of urbanization on the composition of arthropods in nests of great tits in Flanders, Belgium. These nests contain taxonomically and functionally diverse arthropod communities including parasites, predators, detritivores and accidental commensals. Using a standardized hierarchical sampling design with subplots (200 m?×?200 m) nested in plots (3 km?×?3 km) of varying urbanization levels, we collected arthropods from nests of resident great tits after the young had fledged. Arthropods were extracted, identified to Primary Taxonomical Groups (PTG) and counted. Using generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) we found diverging effects of urbanization on PTG occurrences and abundances at various levels, but we did not find an overall signal in arthropod diversity or richness. Also, visual inspection of non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) plots did not reveal any community differences between urbanization levels at plot or subplot scales. Land use and environmental variables at different distances around nestboxes did not contribute much to the variation between communities. Our results indicate that arthropod nestbox communities are generally not adversely affected by urbanization, and even city gardens and parks harbor comparable communities to forests and suburban areas. We thus found no evidence for a parasite release effect due to urbanization, nor an increased risk of parasitism in human-dominated environments.

     

Worthy? Crowdfunding the Canadian Health Care and Education Sectors

Crowdfunding, the practice of asking for money from others using the Internet, is a major private means through which Canadians are funding their health care and education. Crowdfunding has proliferated in Canada during the 2010s and continues to grow, approaching the revenues of Canada's major traditional charities. Proponents describe it as an empowering practice from which anyone can benefit. If its gains are inequitably distributed, however, increasing reliance on this private funding mechanism, especially in core areas of welfare state provision, can further exacerbate inequalities of opportunity and income. This study asks why Canadians turn to health care and education crowdfunding and how equitably funds are raised using this novel method. Based on a mixed methods analysis of 319 campaigns conducted on two prominent crowdfunding platforms between 2012 and 2014, we find that crowdfunding users’ needs frequently correspond to known gaps in the contemporary social safety net, including in the area of cancer care, and that campaigns for older and visible minority Canadians face a disadvantage. We argue that health care and education crowdfunding is a response to the shortcomings of Canadian welfare state provision, but one that reproduces offline inequalities with potentially perilous consequences for democratic life and individual suffering.     

Why Do Countries Regulate Environmental Health Risks Differently? A Theoretical Perspective

Why do countries regulate, or prefer to regulate, environmental health risks such as radiofrequency electromagnetic fields and endocrine disruptors differently? A wide variety of theories, models, and frameworks can be used to help answer this question, though the resulting answer will strongly depend on the theoretical perspective that is applied. In this theoretical review, we will explore eight conceptual frameworks, from different areas of science, which will offer eight different potential explanations as to why international differences occur in environmental health risk management. We are particularly interested in frameworks that could shed light on the role of scientific expertise within risk management processes. The frameworks included in this review are the Risk Assessment Paradigm, research into the roles of experts as policy advisors, the Psychometric Paradigm, the Cultural Theory of Risk, participatory approaches to risk assessment and risk management, the Advocacy Coalition Framework, the Social Amplification of Risk Framework, and Hofstede's Model of National Cultures. We drew from our knowledge and experiences regarding a diverse set of academic disciplines to pragmatically assemble a multidisciplinary set of frameworks. From the ideas and concepts offered by the eight frameworks, we derive pertinent questions to be used in further empirical work and we present an overarching framework to depict the various links that could be drawn between the frameworks.     

Nonverbal Deception Abilities and Adolescents' Social Competence: Adolescents with Higher Social Skills are Better Liars

High and low socially-skilled adolescents, ranging in age from 11 to 16 years, were led to be verbally deceptive or truthful about their enjoyment of a drink that either tasted good or bad. Short, silent videotaped samples of the adolescents while they were being deceptive or truthful were shown to a group of judges, who were asked to indicate how much each adolescent actually enjoyed the drink on the basis of their nonverbal behavior. Results indicated that, as predicted, adolescents with higher levels of social competence were generally better at deceiving than adolescents of lower social competence. However, these findings held primarily for younger adolescents. Furthermore, older adolescents were better at being deceptive than younger ones, and younger females were more proficient liars than younger males.     

The Contribution of Assisted Reproduction to Completed Fertility: An Analysis of Danish Data

Assisted reproduction has a minor but increasing influence on childbearing trends in advanced societies. In Denmark, the use of assisted reproduction technology (ART) has become particularly widespread. At the same time, Danish women born in the late 1950s and the 1960s experienced stabilization or even a slight increase in their mean number of children. Broad availability and widespread use of assisted reproduction may become important factors contributing to maintaining relatively high completed fertility among the younger cohorts of Danish women. To explore this idea, we analyze and project cohort trends in fertility rates among native Danish women born in 1960‐78 and examine the likely contribution of assisted reproduction to these trends. The projected proportion of children born after ART treatment shows a substantial increase from 2.1 percent among women born in 1965 to 4‐5 percent among women born in 1978, with an estimated net impact of ART (as compared with the hypothetical situation where no ART treatment was available) on the order of 3‐4 percent. When intrauterine inseminations are included, this implies that up to 7 percent of children of those native Danish women born in 1975 and later will likely be conceived by infertility treatment.     

A qualitative study of how caseload midwifery is experienced by couples in Denmark

Background

Caseload midwifery is expanding in Denmark. There is a need for elaborating in-depth, how caseload midwifery influences the partner and the woman during childbirth and how this model of care influences the early phases of labour.

Problematic Eating and Food-related Behaviours and Excessive Weight Gain: Why Children in Out-of-home Care Are at Risk

Emerging evidence suggests that abuse and neglect in childhood may play a role in subsequent development of obesity. One population group particularly at risk is children and young people living in out-of-home care (OOHC). Given this population is already a vulnerable group, identifying potential mechanisms by which childhood abuse and neglect increases risk for obesity is essential. A possible explanation is that problematic eating and food-related behaviours (i.e., emotional eating, compulsive eating, overeating, binge eating, stealing or hoarding food) might mediate the association between adverse childhood experiences and obesity. Hence, the overall goal of this paper was to provide a narrative review of eating and food-related difficulties for children in care and their possible association with unhealthy and excessive weight gain. This review revealed a shortage of existing empirical papers and signalled particular need for further examination of the mediating effects of problematic eating.