Substance‐dependent women becoming mothers: breaking the cycle of adverse childhood experiences

Parenting may be particularly challenging for substance‐dependent mothers who have grown up with parents who themselves had substance use disorders (SUDs). The aim of this study was to explore how substance‐dependent mothers describe their childhood experiences with substance‐abusing parents and the association between these earlier experiences and their own role as caregivers. Using purposeful sampling, mothers admitted for 1 year to a family ward at a substance abuse clinic were approached. Through in‐depth, qualitative interviews, nine substance‐dependent mothers described their lives in the form of present, past and future tense. The findings indicate that substance‐dependent women, who have experienced SUDs in their families of origin, face several major challenges when they become mothers. Some describe having lived their whole lives ‘on the edge of society'. This makes their rehabilitation process more complex. All mothers work to abstain from substances, process traumatic experiences and integrate their family into society. They need help to build supportive social networks and to establish a safe and predictable family environment for themselves and their children. The therapeutic implications of these findings will be discussed.     

Driving outcomes: learning to drive,resilience and young people living in residential care

There are continuing concerns about the experiences offered to older adolescents being looked after (‘in care’) in the UK and, especially, to care leavers. Questions are asked about the limitations of State care compared with normal family life. This paper reports on an initiative to provide driving lessons to a group of six young men living in residential homes in one city. It links with resilience theory – how individuals can have relatively good outcomes despite early adversity. A qualitative study was undertaken to explore the effects of the initiative, including individual interviews with young men, heads of homes in which they lived and children's services managers. The overall results indicated that the initiative was very worthwhile. The lessons were a significant part of young people's lives. Possible effects on young people were divided into personal, instrumental and social. Benefits were reported from all parties concerning young people's self‐esteem and self‐confidence, as well as in forging close relationships with supportive adults. Driving would not be seen as a panacea for complex personal histories and structural problems, yet this small experiment suggests that driving lessons could be of disproportionate benefit and there is a moral obligation to provide them in any case.     

Contact between birth parents and children in kinship care in a sample from Spain

Within the context of kinship care, the main objectives of this work are to study the characteristics of contact between foster children and their birth parents, and their relationship with key variables of fostering, the children and their kinship caregivers. The sample included 189 children from Spain and their kinship families. A semi‐structured placement interview and two scales relating to the child–caregiver relationship and child's psychological adjustment were used with the kinship families. The results revealed a significant percentage of foster children who had no family contact. Various visit types, frequencies and durations were described. Kinship care with contact, compared with placements without contact, was frequently characterized by the absence of professional supervision, and an affectionate child–caregiver relationship; moreover, children with contact were perceived to have fewer serious behaviour and socio‐emotional problems and a greater probability of family reunification. The regression analysis showed that the main predictors for how caregivers assessed contact were the children's emotional reaction during visits and the quality of the relationship between the kinship families and the birth parents. These results suggest the need for further research about contact, which will certainly have a major impact on professional intervention with these families.     

Who is Jobless? A Comparison of Joblessness in Rural and Urban Areas in China

Since market‐oriented economic reform was launched in China in the 1980s, unemployment has been recognized by the government. This paper focuses on the differences in joblessness in rural and urban areas between rural migrant workers, peasants, and urban citizens. The results indicate that people in rural areas frequently lose their jobs, which differs from the traditional perception. There is a significantly lower jobless rate in urban areas. In contrast to the results of previous studies, the employment situation of rural migrant workers is closer to urban citizens rather than peasants. Logistic regression results show that the elderly, women, and less educated citizens have a higher likelihood of joblessness, both in urban and rural areas. Minorities have a lower likelihood of joblessness in rural areas and a higher likelihood in urban areas. Chinese Communist Party members and people without dependent children have a lower likelihood of joblessness in urban areas.     

Domesticating insurance,financializing family lives: the case of private health insurance for children in Finland

This article explores the domestication of a financial instrument that is much used in contemporary Finland, but that most of its users do not primarily think about in terms of being a financial instrument: the private health insurance for children. In Finland, all children are covered by social insurance and are entitled to free public health service with very low costs, if any. Yet, some 40 percent of families want to supplement this service with private products. Many fear that the popularity of the private health insurance for children contributes to a vicious circle that ends up weakening the legitimacy of, and the service given by, the public health sector; inequality in the face of health risks threatens to be aggravated, as well. Therefore, this financial instrument has become an object of political controversy. The main question of the article is: how do economic, political and moral valuations become intertwined in the domestication of insurance? The concept of ‘domestication’ is found helpful for analysing the pragmatics of valuation and for appreciating the dynamics and the heterogeneity of forces at play when financialization influences everyday life. The study argues that when financial instruments are appropriated they are also transformed; thus, they should not be viewed as homogeneous tools that have similar effects in all contexts of use. The main empirical materials studied are interviews with families with and without private health insurance policies for their children.     

‘You Feel It in Your Body’: How Australian Children and Young People Think about and Experience Feeling and Being Safe

In 2012, the Australian Government announced the establishment of a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The aim of the Royal Commission is to understand how and why sexual abuse occurred within Australian institutions and to provide guidance as to how future abuse might be prevented. The Royal Commission commissioned a mixed methods study to explore what children need to be safe and to feel safe, to explore how they determine their level of safety, and their observations about how institutions act to prevent and respond to safety issues. This article reports on the findings from the first phase of the study that involved focus groups carried out with children aged 4–17 years from different types of institutions. The discussion focused particularly on how children conceptualise safety and how they make judgments about their levels of safety. Children and young people's conceptualisation of safety had multiple dimensions, which include the idea that being safe and feeling safe are two distinct, interrelated but sometimes non‐concurrent experiences; that safety is identified and experienced as a set of feelings; trusting relationships are the foundation of safety; familiarity helps children feel safe; and safe environments are those that are ordered and orderly.     

‘Let's Talk About Children’: Investigating the Use of a Family‐focused Intervention in the Gambling Support Services Sector

The family‐focused mental health intervention, ‘Let's Talk About Children,’ has positively influenced the lives of families affected by parental mental illness. This paper outlines the use of this brief, strengths‐based intervention for parents with gambling and other co‐occurring issues from the gamblers’ support services sector. Over a six‐month period, a training manual and accompanying resources were adapted for the gamblers’ support services sector and a targeted training session developed. Nine problem gambling counsellors from three Victorian gambling support services trialled the Let's Talk About Children intervention over a four‐month period. Qualitative data were gathered through focus groups, interviews, and practice enquiry groups to determine the impact of the Let's Talk About Children model for gambling support services. The results are presented as ‘practice wisdoms and recommendations’ reporting on the impact of the trial and to provide some guidance to support others in the implementation of a specific family‐focused intervention. This paper reports on the first exploratory trial of Let's Talk About Children for the gambler's support services sector in Australia.     

Drawing Family Boundaries: Children's Perspectives on Family Relationships in Rural and Urban Ethiopia

This article explores how children conceptualise and practice family relationships in two social settings in Ethiopia. Based on ethnographic data, it discusses (i) how urban and rural children construct family; (ii) what family activities children do and which social positions they assume; and (iii) the convergence and divergence of meanings and practices of family relationships between urban and rural Ethiopia. The analysis demonstrates how ‘normative family’ and actual ‘family practices’ are shaped by socio‐cultural, material and spatial contexts. Insights drawn also reveal the complex ways in which access to material resources, geographical distance, rural‐urban locations and cultural traits such as patterns of marriage and child relocation practices shape family relationships.     

Disability,personalisation and community arts: exploring the spatial dynamics of children with disabilities participating in inclusive music classes*

This paper uses personalisation and the capabilities approach to explore inclusive music classes for children with disabilities in Scotland. It provides a unique insight into the impact of participation through the voices of the disabled young musicians, their parents and tutors. The study highlights the power of inclusive spaces to transform lives, to build confidence and contest disabled identities. It engages in the spatial dynamic of opening up inclusive spaces, as well as exposing emerging tensions in the liminal space that is created through movement between safe and supported spaces and the antithesis, spaces that disempower and marginalise. The findings suggest good practice around personalisation, when conceived of from a social justice perspective, as a template for working with other marginalised groups and in other professional settings.