What are Children's Centres? The Development of CC Services, 2004–20081

Children's centres are intended to be a mainstream, universal service. They began in 2004 and their origins are diverse. Some replaced various forms of local provision, most notably Sure Start programmes; others were established from scratch. Issues for exploratory empirical work have been identified from the guidance issued by central government. Using interview data from three urban local authorities, this article explores the nature of the ‘core offer’ that centres are expected to provide and the way in which they have pursued the goal of integrating staff and services. The article highlights the problems of balancing a focus on the child and on the parent; of reconciling childcare provision as part of the employability agenda and as a means to educational achievement for the child; of permitting local variation while achieving consistency; of the role of monitoring in relation to developing good practice; and of achieving integration in a mixed economy of care. We find that despite the greater specification of the core offer for children's centres compared to that for Sure Start, there are substantial differences between children's centres in terms of services, while the mixed economy of provision poses considerable challenges to the goal of integration.     

An empirical Bayes procedure for the selection of Gaussian graphical models

A new methodology for model determination in decomposable graphical Gaussian models (Dawid and Lauritzen in Ann. Stat. 21(3), 1272?C1317, 1993) is developed. The Bayesian paradigm is used and, for each given graph, a hyper-inverse Wishart prior distribution on the covariance matrix is considered. This prior distribution depends on hyper-parameters. It is well-known that the models??s posterior distribution is sensitive to the specification of these hyper-parameters and no completely satisfactory method is registered. In order to avoid this problem, we suggest adopting an empirical Bayes strategy, that is a strategy for which the values of the hyper-parameters are determined using the data. Typically, the hyper-parameters are fixed to their maximum likelihood estimations. In order to calculate these maximum likelihood estimations, we suggest a Markov chain Monte Carlo version of the Stochastic Approximation EM algorithm. Moreover, we introduce a new sampling scheme in the space of graphs that improves the add and delete proposal of Armstrong et al. (Stat. Comput. 19(3), 303?C316, 2009). We illustrate the efficiency of this new scheme on simulated and real datasets.     

Paternal supervisor gatekeeping: How supervising fathers hinder other fathers at work in their uptake of flexible work arrangements

This study explores the role that supervisors play in the low uptake of Flexible Work Arrangements (FWA) among fathers in France. We draw on 28 interviews with fathers who had requested access to FWA and reported on the reaction of their supervisors. These supervisors were all fathers themselves and had previously benefitted from such arrangements themselves, but did not grant such policies to other fathers. To understand these unexpected findings, we conducted an additional 16 interviews with supervising fathers in organizations who had previously enjoyed similar FWA. The findings show that supervising fathers can act as barriers to other fathers in their organizations who try to push for more gender equality. We identified four ways in which supervisors tend to dissuade fathers from accessing policies to which they are entitled: gender-role confirming discourses; career threats; practical reasons as a justification; and a lack of paternal workplace support. The findings highlight the role of men (in this case, supervising fathers) in the lack of increasing gender equality at work. By showing that fathers can function as ‘paternal supervisor gatekeepers’ for other fathers in their organizations, we open up new fruitful ways for studying gender equality in organizations.     

The effect of intent and character information on children's evaluations of third-party transgressions

Research in adults suggests that their perception of moral transgressions is affected by the moral character of the agent performing the transgression, such that undesirable actions enacted by ‘good’ agents are seen as less serious than those performed by ‘bad’ agents. This may be partly driven our tendency to view undesirable acts as less intentional when the agent has a perceived good moral character. It is currently unclear whether or not children make similar judgements. Therefore, we investigated if children's use of moral character information is consistent with their judgements of transgressions when the intent behind the act was ambiguous or blatant. Children aged 6–8-years (N = 60) viewed a series of six moral transgressions in which the protagonist's intent was ambiguous or blatantly harmful, and their moral character was described as being good, mixed or bad. The children were then asked how much they felt the behaviour was intentional, how severe it was and the degree of punishment it deserved. Transgressions performed by ‘good’ characters were viewed as less intentional than those by ‘bad’ characters, but only when the intent behind it was ambiguous. Similarly, transgressions performed by good characters were viewed as less severe and deserving of less punishment than those performed by bad characters, although this effect was not moderated by intent information. These pattern of findings suggest that the view of transgressions performed by good individuals as less serious than the same act performed by bad individuals is established early in development.     

A journey of embedding mental health lived experience in social work education

Abstract

The value of learning from mental health lived experience is widely acknowledged, however, the nature of lived experience involvement in Australian social work education seldom extends beyond guest lecturing. Further, few opportunities exist that build the capacity of people with lived experience to become educators within tertiary settings. In this paper we present the Valuing Lived Experience Project (VLEP), an initiative led by a Lived Experience Academic (LEA) that seeks to systematically and meaningfully embed lived experience into the social work curriculum at a Western Australian university by providing significant opportunities for the capacity building of both individuals with mental health lived experience and academics. Given the relative infancy of service user involvement in Australian social work education, the VLEP offers a number of opportunities for reflection and consideration. A long-standing partnership between a LEA and Social Work Academic is described, the activities and key learnings of the VLEP to date are outlined, and we offer our reflections on challenges encountered throughout the journey. We hope that our experiences and learnings can be drawn upon to progress lived experience participation in tertiary settings and further legitimise lived experience involvement in the education of social workers.     

Gillray and the French Revolution

James Gillray represented the horrid barbarities of the French revolutionaries in his famous political satires which dramatised the event and showed Louis XVI as a martyr. He made the public aware of the dangers of the French Revolution and transfered the bloody massacres in a British context for the purpose of propaganda, warning his fellow countrymen against the disorder, violence and anarchy which could spread over to Britain. James Gillray took a conservative stance and his hand-coloured etchings alluded to the harmful effects of the French Revolution which threatened British stability, the Monarchy and the Constitution.     

Gender Differences in the Role of Migrant Networks: Comparing Congolese and Senegalese Migration Flows

This paper uses recent longitudinal data collected within the Migration between Africa and Europe (MAFE) project to investigate gender differences in the role of migrant networks in international mobility. Furthermore, we compare Congolese and Senegalese migration streams to examine how the interplay between gender and networks varies across contexts of origin. We go beyond previous studies by considering the case of spousal reunification alongside other forms of migration: we separate the role of the migrant spouse from other network ties, as failing to do so overestimates the role of migrant networks in female mobility. We further find that Senegalese women are more likely than men to rely on geographically concentrated networks, composed of close kin and established abroad for a long time. Gender differences are much less pronounced in the Congolese case, which we relate to the more rigid patriarchal norms in Senegal, restricting female autonomy both in terms of mobility and economic activity.     

Tuning in to Teens: Improving Parent Emotion Socialization to Reduce Youth Internalizing Difficulties

Research in child development suggests that parents' emotional competence and emotion socialization practices are related to children's emotional functioning, including child internalizing difficulties. This research has not yet been translated into intervention or prevention programs targeting parents of older children and adolescents. The current study examined the efficacy of the Tuning in to Teens parenting program in improving emotion socialization practices in parents of preadolescents and reducing youth internalizing difficulties. Schools were randomized into intervention and control conditions. Data were collected from 225 parents and 224 youth during the young person's final year of elementary school (sixth grade) and again 10 months later in their first year of secondary school (seventh grade). Multilevel analyses showed significant improvements in parental emotion socialization and reductions in youth internalizing difficulties for the intervention condition. This study provides support for the efficacy of the TINT parenting program with a community sample.     

Barriers preventing high-quality nursing care of people with disabilities within acute care settings: a thematic literature review

This literature review was conducted to identify obstacles in the provision of quality nursing care to people with disabilities within acute care settings. Research in 2006 by the Disability Rights Commission found that people with disabilities have healthcare needs that are not being adequately met with the quality of care expected or anticipated. Obstacles to the provision of high-quality nursing care are a matter of concern to nursing clinicians, educators and researchers involved with establishing and maintaining professional standards of care for nursing practice. Therefore, this review has identified three major themes illustrating barriers to provision of high-quality nursing care in the acute care setting to people with disabilities. Themes identified were: professional competence, professional attitudes and organisational management. Nurses have an obligation to take into account the concerns and needs of individual clients with a disability.