Including all children: finding out about the experiences of children with communication and/or cognitive impairments

Practitioners and researchers have made progress, in recent years, in seeking the views of children and young people. Less progress has been made in seeking the views of young people with significant communication and/or cognitive impairments. Drawing on the experience of three research projects and one Best Value review, this article details the lessons learnt, and action required, in order to find out about the experiences of this important group of children and young people. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Looking Behavior at Test and Relational Memory in 6‐Month‐Old Infants

Small‐scale eye‐tracking research lends support to behavioral studies of relational memory by 6 months of life. Here, in the largest eye‐tracking test of relational memory to date (n = 276), we replicate these findings and examine the impact of excluding data based on looking behavior characteristics at test. Past work examining infants' preferential looking toward arbitrary‐paired objects and scenes has excluded infants from analysis based upon “insufficient looking” at test. Yet, research suggests that variation in looking behavior may be associated with looking patterns during encoding, as well as trait‐like differences in visual and cognitive processing. Similar to past research, we observed evidence for relational memory among 6‐month‐olds. In keeping with past research, when infants were excluded based on “insufficient looking,” we observed evidence for relational memory only when infants were tested immediately. However, when exclusion criteria were relaxed, infants specifically demonstrated preferential looking during a presumably more difficult delay‐plus‐interference condition. Moreover, analyses revealed that looking behavior during encoding was associated with looking behavior at test. Together, results suggest that infants do possess rudimentary relational memory capabilities, but that experimenters' ability to detect these capabilities is influenced by both experimental conditions and individual differences in looking behavior.     

Tables for computing shortest confidence intervals involving the f-distribution

Tables of multipliers necessary for computing the shortest confidence interval in situations involving the F-distribution are presented. Such situations are illustrated with several examples.     

We Don't Need Your Help,But Will You Please Fix Our Children

A Bowen Family Systems therapist employs concepts of triangles and the family projection process to view a child's symptoms as embedded in the broader family patterns. This article will examine the dynamics of two family therapy cases where parents anxiously asked for their children's symptoms to be fixed. These cases will be used to explore the common presentation in child and adolescent mental health, where the parents are concerned for their children but are also keen not to open their own ‘can of worms’. The presenting problem in the first case was violent hostility between adolescent sisters and in the second case was an adolescent's anorexia. Drawing on client feedback, I reflect on the therapy process behind the divergent outcomes. In case one, the parents were willing to address their own troubled relationship and family of origin, while in case two, the parents discontinued therapy when family of origin dynamics began to be explored. The article suggests how the therapist can evoke parents' curiosity about their role in anxious family patterns, without them feeling blamed.     

Embodied Women at Work in Neoliberal Times and Places

In this article five women explore (female) embodiment in academic work in current workplaces. In a week‐long collective biography workshop they produced written memories of themselves in their various workplaces and memories of themselves as children and as students. These memories then became the texts out of which the analysis was generated. The authors examine the constitutive and seductive effects of neoliberal discourses and practices, and in particular, the assembling of academic bodies as particular kinds of working bodies. They use the concept of chiasma, or crossing over, to trouble some aspects of binary thinking about bodies and about the relations between bodies and discourses. They examine the way that we simultaneously resist and appropriate, and are seduced by and appropriated within, neoliberal discourses and practices.     

Shared Family Activities and the Transition From Childhood Into Adolescence

Drawing on time use data from the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study identified five different profiles of shared time between parents and young people at different stages of development. In childhood, all profiles had high rates of shared television viewing, but some were oriented toward in‐home activities and others toward activities outside the home (e.g., cultural events). These latter profiles tended to be higher in socioeconomic advantage, and the young people in them tended to demonstrate greater gains in math, but not reading, achievement across the transition into adolescence. In adolescence, shared activity profiles favored low amounts of shared time between parents and adolescents across activities and disfavored shared time in public domains.     

(De)Constructing the Risk Categories in the AIM Assessment Model for Children with Sexually Harmful Behaviour

This article critically analyses the AIM Assessment Model for children who have sexually harmful behaviour, exploring the underpinning knowledge and the processes involved. The model reflects current trends in the assessment of children, in child welfare and criminal justice services, producing categories of risk that lead to levels of intervention. When subjected to critical review, the knowledge base emerges as partial, contingent and obscured, and the process generates a particular construction of the subject which has consequences for practice. A social constructionist perspective is used to make visible some of the ways in which this knowledge is generated and how this may assist practitioners in considering the relations of power within such protocols.     

Careers in the third sector

The article explores the concept of career as it relates to third-sector employees. The results of a survey of third-sector employees in New South Wales, Australia, suggests a distinctive pattern of work orientation involving a preference for work that is both personally challenging and socially meaningful. Pragmatic considerations are also important for women with young children. These and other findings suggest that the majority of third-sector employees pursue a career that more closely fits Driver's spiral career model rather than the conventional linear career model. It therefore behooves nonprofit employers to tailor the organizational reward system to the motivational needs of their employees if they hope to maximize worker satisfaction and effectiveness.     

‘A Place of Our Own'? Teenage Mothers’ Views on Housing Needs and Support Models

Since 2003, government policy has required local authorities to provide support when they house lone teenage parents seeking accommodation. This qualitative study addresses young mothers’ routes into housing need and their experiences of housing access and support, drawing on interview and focus group data collected in 2003. The findings emphasise mothers’ preferences for forms of support which facilitate moves towards increased choice and independence. Reinforcing messages from other research, these findings also show a gap between concepts of ‘support’ embodied in government policy and those which inform practice, within agencies and among young people. © 2006 The Author(s). Journal compilation Copyright © 2006 National Children's Bureau.