Addressing the midwifery workforce crisis: evaluating an employment model for undergraduate midwifery students at a tertiary maternity hospital in Melbourne, Australia

Background and aims

In Victoria, maternity services are under significant strain due to increased numbers of women giving birth and critical workforce shortages. Hospitals have experienced challenges in adequately staffing maternity units, particularly on postnatal wards. In 2008, a tertiary maternity hospital in Melbourne introduced a model where undergraduate midwifery students were employed as Division 2 nurses (SMW_Div2) (enrolled nurses), to work in the postnatal area only. This study explored the pilot employment model from the perspective of the SMW_Div2 and hospital midwives.

Methods

A web-based survey was administered to hospital midwives and the SMW_Div2s in the employment model in January 2010. The survey explored the views of midwives and SMW_Div2s regarding the perceived impact of the model on workforce readiness, recruitment and retention, and clinical competence and confidence.

Findings

Forty-seven of 158 midwives (30%) and five of nine SMW_Div2s employed in the model responded to the survey. Both groups considered the model to have benefits for the organisation, including increased: student workforce readiness; clinical confidence and competence; and organisational loyalty. Both groups also considered that the model would facilitate: workforce recruitment; a teaching and learning culture within the organisation; and enhanced partnerships between students, hospitals and universities. Caution was expressed regarding workload and the need for ongoing support for SMW_Div2s working in the model.

Discussion and conclusion

SMW_Div2s and midwives were positive about the introduction of the paid employment model at the Women's. The findings are consistent with evaluations of similar programs in the nursing setting. The employment model has potential short and long term individual and organisational advantages, which is important in the context of increasing births and workforce shortages. Progression of such models will be contingent on the collaboration and cooperation of the various stakeholders involved in maternity workforce and education.     

Mothers and fathers’ experiences of high conflict past two years post separation: A systematic review of the qualitative literature

Abstract

Within a child custody context, this article systematically reviewed the available qualitative research of post separation, high conflict, co-parenting relationships. Separated parents’ experiences of high conflict were reportedly embedded in pervasive mistrust and disdain, and underpinned by concerns over differing parenting styles, or the other parent’s ability to adequately care for the child. The factors that potentially maintained conflict were parental concerns regarding the child’s safety and well-being when in the care of the other parent. The factor that potentially escalated conflict was disdain directed at the other parent’s concerns. Recommendations for future research and implications for social policy for these families are discussed.     

Demonstrating LGBTQ+ Affirmative Practice in Groups:: Developing Competence through Simulation-Based Learning

Clinical Social Work Journal - Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual and/or gender minority (LGBTQ+) populations experience significant mental and behavioral health...     

Working together: using group relations theory to understand and rethink the interplay between administrators and social work practitioners

This essay attempts to explain and theorise observable tensions between the roles of social work practitioner and administrator. It uses the psychoanalytic concepts of primary task and authority to draw attention to this under examined area. Employing illustrative vignettes from practice, it argues that a lack of integration between the roles leads to worker dissatisfaction and weakens service delivery. The essay then suggests that the false split between the roles of social worker and administrator is symptomatic of wider political policy in which public sector budget control is set in opposition to service user need and/or professional judgement. Taking inspiration from the work of Clare Winnicott, it calls for an integrated managerial system in which both roles are enabled to work together to develop common, service user orientated goals and practice.     

Diasporas and Fragile states – beyond remittances assessing the theoretical and policy linkages

ABSTRACT

There is a need for further refinement of the complex relationship between diaspora communities, their transnational social networks and fragile states. Research clearly shows that many diaspora mobilise to support their causes, but this often creates unevenness in outcomes and inequalities in access to resource especially in fragile states settings. We argue that remittances address only part of the state fragility problematique and that there are other, equally important roles for diaspora beyond remittance flows. We develop this argument by first explaining why a broader definition of state fragility improves our understanding of the importance of different kinds of diaspora linkages between home and host state. We then identify additional factors that can contribute to a reduction of state fragility and evaluate these against six cases.     

Social protection assessment‐based national dialogue exercises: Cambodia,Indonesia, Thailand,Viet Nam

Between 2011 and 2013, the International Labour Organization, in collaboration with governments and several United Nations agencies working as part of the Social Protection Floor Initiative, conducted social protection assessment‐based national dialogue (ABND) exercises in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Viet Nam. The exercises were carried out in order to take stock of existing social protection realities in the respective countries, including social insurance, social assistance and anti‐poverty programmes. These inventories present a comprehensive picture of what elements of national social protection floors (SPFs) are in place, where “holes” in national floors exist, and provide a framework within which to propose recommendations for the further design and implementation of social protection provisions that guarantee at least the SPF to the entire population. This article describes the methodology for conducting ABND exercises, the situational analysis of the SPF in four countries, and the policy recommendations that were formulated for achieving basic health care and income security for children, the working‐age population and the elderly. The results of preliminary calculations of the cost of implementing proposed policy options are also outlined.     

Thinking through Domestic Pluralities

Abstract

This article reflects on the meanings of home and domestic space among a group of women, who over the past five decades or so have sought to create alternative public and intimate living spaces. The protagonists who enact the ethnographic narrative are a small group of older lesbians, mainly feminist activists, residing in the metropolis of London. In this article, their life experiences are recounted through memories of domestic space, mainly that of the kitchen. I explore the way the domestic kitchen is experienced, spoken about, and imagined by this specific group of women. In this ethnography, the kitchen emerges as a contested, transformative, and political domestic space. Throughout, I illustrate how this seemingly private space is in fact entangled with larger notions of culture, society, kinship, and politics; and, like the everyday, is fraught with norms, codes and pluralities, and also with emotions, deviations, contestation, and transgression.     

Parenting Stress,Parental Reactions,and Externalizing Behavior From Ages 4 to 10

The association between parenting stress and child externalizing behavior, and the mediating role of parenting, has yielded inconsistent findings; however, the literature has typically been cross‐sectional or unidirectional. In the current study, the authors examined the longitudinal transactions among parenting stress, perceived negative parental reactions, and child externalizing at 4, 5, 7, and 10 years old. Models examining parent effects (parenting stress to child behavior), child effects (externalizing to parental reactions and stress), indirect effects of parental reactions, and the transactional associations among all variables were compared. The transactional model best fit the data, and longitudinal reciprocal effects emerged between parenting stress and externalizing behavior. The mediating role of parental reactions was not supported; however, indirect effects suggest that parenting stress both is affected by and affects parent and child behavior. The complex associations among parent and child variables indicate the importance of interventions to improve the parent–child relationship and reducing parenting stress.