Toward Father‐friendly Parenting Interventions: A Qualitative Study

Levels of father participation in parenting interventions are often very low, yet little is known about the factors which influence father engagement. We aimed to qualitatively explore perceived barriers to, and preferences for, parenting interventions in a community sample of fathers. Forty‐one fathers across nine focus groups were interviewed using a semi‐structured interview. Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Key barriers to father participation identified included: the perception that interventions are mother‐focused; beliefs about gender roles regarding parenting and help‐seeking; mothers’ role as ‘gatekeeper’; lack of knowledge and awareness of parenting interventions; and lack of relevance of interventions. Fathers reported preferences for specific content and intervention features, facilitator characteristics, practical factors, and highlighted the need for father‐targeted recruitment and advertising. Many of the barriers and preferences identified are consistent with previous research; however, fathers’ beliefs and attitudes around gender roles and help‐seeking, as well as the perception that interventions are predominantly mother‐focused, may be key barriers for community fathers. Strategies to overcome these barriers and better meet the needs of fathers in promoting and delivering parenting interventions are discussed.     

Potential strategies to avoid progestogen-induced premenstrual disorders

Non-hormonal approaches to premenstrual syndrome (PMS) treatment such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are by no means effective for all women and frequently we must resort to endocrine therapy. During many of the hormonal approaches, PMS-like symptoms can be introduced or re-introduced during the necessary cyclical or continuous progestogen component of the therapy. This is seen with combined oral contraception, progestogen only contraception, progestogen therapy for heavy menstrual bleeding and endometriosis, sequential hormone replacement therapy and any therapeutic strategy for premenstrual syndrome where it is necessary to provide endometrial protection, including estrogen suppression of ovulation or add-back during gonadotrophin releasing hormone suppression. The link to progestogen is very often missed by health professionals. When the pattern of symptoms mimics the cyclicity of PMS, it is termed progestogen-induced premenstrual disorder. The need to use progestogen to protect the endometrium from the proliferative actions of estrogen can pose insurmountable difficulties in managing premenstrual disorders. In the absence of any really useful evidence, nearly all practice in this area depends on clinician experience. We cannot afford to wait for adequate research evidence to be produced - it never will - and so we must rely on empirical findings, clinical experience, theoretical strategies and common sense.     

Best Practice Principles for Community Indicator Systems and a Case Study Analysis: How Community Indicators Victoria is Creating Impact and Bridging Policy,Practice and Research

Numerous community indicator projects have been developed over the past 30 years and are now present in many countries including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South America. However, creating influence and action using community indicators requires long-term effort strengthened by partnership, policy applications, training and research. This paper provides a reflective case study analysis that reviews the development of the community indicator system of Community Indicators Victoria in Australia. The analysis includes a review of best practice indicator principles guiding the development of current and future community indicator systems and describes how these factors influenced the development, establishment, and expansion of the Community Indicators Victoria system.     

Scientific justification of social policies: concepts of language and immigrant integration

Population mobility, globalisation, and the Internet contribute to the change of immigration patterns and the emergence of new kinds of identities and integration strategies. It is necessary to re-examine the heuristic significance of this field's key concepts in order to ensure that relevant and theoretically sound knowledge consistently informs integration policies, measures, and programmes. This paper focuses on the concepts of language and maintains that a narrow-utilitarian approach to the issue of language and integration may thrive due to uncritical acceptance of an instrumentalist view on language as a means of communication and/or a social marker together with an essentialist concept of identity that stems from the sociolinguistic tradition. However, this conceptual framework does not correspond to the complexity of the integration process in a contemporary society. The present paper aims to contribute to the field of language and immigrant integration via outlining an alternative approach to language grounded in the ideas of Humboldt, Potebnja, and Vygotsky (language as a creative force, a worldview, and a mediating tool) and discussing its potential for addressing the issue of integration in contemporary conditions.     

The Early Development Instrument: An Examination of Convergent and Discriminant Validity

The convergent and discriminant validity of the Early Development Instrument (EDI), a teacher-rated assessment of children’s “school readiness”, was investigated in a multicultural sample of 267 kindergarteners (53% male). Teachers evaluations on the EDI, both overall and in five domains (physical health/well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language/cognition, communication/general knowledge), were related to direct, child-based assessments of performance on two standardized measures of school readiness, and measures of phonological awareness and early social competence. Regression analysis indicated that together the four comparison measures accounted for 36% of variance in overall EDI scores, each making a significant and unique contribution. Results supported the convergent validity of overall EDI scores but not the discriminant validity of EDI domain scores. Moreover, correlations between EDI scores and comparison measures varied widely across teachers, suggesting considerable individual differences in teacher’s ability to evaluate school readiness relative to direct, child-based assessments, and confirming that the EDI is more appropriate for deriving inferences at higher aggregated levels such as community or region. The validation of EDI domain scores remains an important challenge in future research.     

The child welfare response to serious nonaccidental head trauma

Serious nonaccidental head trauma (NHT) can leave permanent neurological damage in children who survive abuse. This study reports on child welfare's handling of NHT cases compared with cases of physical abuse and head trauma due to neglect with regard to placement in foster care, reunification with family, and safety issues. The results show that workers placed children with NHT in foster care immediately after the abuse but treated them no differently than other physically abused children regarding reunification.