Women’s perceptions of how their dyslexia impacts on their mothering

Women with children have been depicted as struggling to justify themselves in the shadow of intensive mothering ideology. However, little is said about women who have a disability such as dyslexia, and how disability may intersect with intensive mothering ideology to present additional challenges. In this paper, life-story interviews are drawn upon to start to unpack the ways in which mothering and dyslexia may intersect. The themes discussed include: fear and perceived challenges of having a child with dyslexia; how mothers perceived their impairments manifest in their mothering, including poor organisational skills, short-term memory, reading and spelling; and how mothers may attempt to reframe the apparent contradiction between a ‘good’ mother and a mother with dyslexia by, for example, portraying themselves as a positive role-model for their child and better able to identify and cater for their child’s needs.     

Caregiver–Youth Communication about Sex in South Africa: The Role of Maternal Child Sexual Abuse History

Much of the research on child sexual abuse focuses on negative outcomes. This brief report explores a potentially protective parenting behavior among black South African female caregivers with and without a child sexual abuse history. Using cross-sectional baseline data, we hypothesized that caregiver child sexual abuse history would be positively associated with caregiver–youth sex communication and this relationship would be strongest for girls. Youth whose caregiver experienced child sexual abuse were more likely to report communicating with their caregiver about sex than youth whose caregivers did not experience child sexual abuse; however, this relation did not hold for caregiver reported communication. Child sexual abuse survivors’ ability and decision to discuss sex with their youth has the potential to protect youth from sexual risk and demonstrates resilience among a group rarely acknowledged for positive parenting practices.     

Many Faces of Openness in Adoption: Perspectives of Adopted Adolescents and Their Parents

Parents and adolescents (mean age, 15.7 years) from 177 adoptive families participating in the second wave of the Minnesota/Texas Adoption Research Project were interviewed about their post-adoption contact arrangements. The sample included families with no contact, stopped contact, contact without meetings, and contact with face-to-face meetings between the adolescent and birth mother. Openness arrangements were dynamic, and different openness arrangements were associated with different experiences and feelings. Adoptive families with contact reported having higher levels of satisfaction about their openness arrangements, experiencing more positive feelings about the birth mother, and possessing more factual and personal knowledge about the birth mother than did families without contact. Adolescents and adoptive mothers in the contact with meetings group reported the greatest satisfaction with their openness arrangements; those with no contact or stopped contact reported the least satisfaction with their arrangements. Participants having no contact were more likely to want the intensity of contact to increase in the future rather than stay the same. Many participants already having contact wanted it to increase in the future. Fewer than 1 percent of all participants wanted to see the intensity of contact decrease.     

Learning for the Twenty-First Century: Maximising Learning Transfer from Learning and Development Activity

This article builds on the learning gathered from the evaluation of a Scotland-wide child protection training programme. Based on Kirkpatrick's four-level framework, the study aimed to evaluate the impact of the learning programme on the practice of participants in the workplace. The study prompted the authors to examine the literature on maximising learning transfer across a range of occupations. This literature is discussed in the light of the findings from the evaluation and the experience of the authors in designing and implementing continuous professional development programmes in social services.

The practice of inspection, monitoring and audit seems to have impacted negatively on staff's willingness to participate in data collection, and coupled with what appeared to be confusion about data protection legislation, the perceived burden of audit and inspection has significant implications for research and evaluation activity.

Suggestions are made for the future design, delivery and evaluation of learning and development activity, and the role of managers is explored in relation to their responsibility for preparation, support and follow-up of workplace learning.     

Interactions of Behavior and Environment as Contributing Factors in the Discharge of Residents with Dementia from Assisted Living Facilities

While retirement communities have existed for over fifty years, they have received relatively little analysis. A clear consensus on definition does not even exist. Based on a literature review, we offer a definition that includes several criteria related to the housing units, boundaries, services and/or leisure amenities, age restrictions, voluntary relocation, and shared space. We delineate the variety of types of retirement communities and address the current and future challenges facing retirement communities. Such a discussion is urgent, given the lack of current housing policy, when both the potential demand and pertinent financial challenges are greater than ever.     

British Constructions with Constitutions: The Formal and Informal Nature of 'Island' Relations on Montserrat and Gibraltar

This article explores social, economic and political relations on two British Dependent Territories (BDTs) -- Montserrat and Gibraltar. This article notes that though BDTs are British colonial constructions, created, sustained and modelled upon and by Britain, they differ from Britain in that they have political constitutions. They also exhibit an ambiguous dependence and independence upon and with Britain. This article goes on to look at social and economic relations on Montserrat and Gibraltar before comparing and contrasting the political climates on each BDT. Throughout this article, it is suggested that there is a dynamic tension between formal and informal aspects to managing life. Finally, this article concludes with a discussion about the suitability of the split between Executive and Legislative Councils in these two BDTs.     

Family separation and the impacts on refugee settlement in Australia

In recent years, governments, researchers, non‐government organisations, service providers and international institutions have become increasingly concerned with how to best support the settlement of refugees in UNHCR resettlement nations. Anxieties about the formation of a refugee underclass and the intergenerational impacts of social stratification motivate such inquiries. Settlement is often viewed through either of two lenses; the biomedical frame or the social inclusion frame. These frameworks are complementary rather than exclusive. It is from this combined theoretical perspective that this paper explores the impacts of family separation on the settlement of refugees in Australia. Drawing on focus groups and in‐depth interviews across three refugee background communities in metropolitan Melbourne, the paper finds that family separation has pervasive impacts on the wellbeing of the participants and on their capacity to participate and direct their own futures. Family separation is found to be a barrier to settlement and therefore a crucial consideration for the design and provision of settlement services to people with refugee backgrounds.