The role of child-keyworker attachment in the residential care of Saudi children

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyBackground It has been shown that the carer-child relationship is highly important for the wellbeing and development of children residing in care homes. The quality of staff attachment, or child attachment to the staff, affects the quality of life, development and behaviour of children in residential care homes. There is a need for further study regarding the effects that the characteristics of care staff in terms of attachment of staff on child outcomes in orphanages. In Saudi Arabia orphaned children are still cared for in orphanages, although foster care does take place. For social and economic reasons there has been an increase in the number of these children, and while the material provision in terms of facilities is of a high standard, due to the economic wealth of the country, there is a lack of proper emotional care due to a lack of understanding of the importance of carers as attachment figures. Added to this problem is the fact that Saudi orphanage staff are poorly trained and managed, not well paid and overworked, which could have a detrimental effect on the children in their care. Aims Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the role of attachment in the carer – child relationship and current problems and challenges in the provision of routine care and support by carers in residential care in Saudi Arabia, with focus on staff-child interactions. Methods A mixed methods approach was adopted, involving a qualitative study to explore staff perceptions of the problems and challenges in providing care, and a quantitative study to provide data about the moderating and mediating effects of attachment on children’s mental wellbeing. The quantitative study was a longitudinal study carried out in two phases with a 12- month gap and included Study-I and Study-II. The research investigates the mediating effect of child attachment between staff related factors and child behavioural problems, thus was hypothesised that the quality of child attachment to the care staff would mediate the effects of staff attachment style, staff burnout and staff psychological distress on child psychological distress. Furthermore, how staff related factors which include, in addition to staff attachment, burnout and staff psychological distress moderate the impact of child attachment on child psychological distress. To achieve this specialist questionnaires were used. Results The qualitative study (Study I) revealed problems in delivering care to children, issues of social development, how social needs are fulfilled, fostering activities, mechanisms for integrating children into the social stream and behavioural issues. Moreover, it was revealed that staff were deprived of adequate training, career opportunities and suffered poor working conditions. Study-II found that staff attachment avoidance moderates the effect of child attachment avoidance on child distress. Moreover, the effects of staff general distress on the child behavioural problems were moderated by the staff attachment style for interaction avoidance, while the effects of staff burnout were moderated by all child attachment styles. Study-III found that child attachment security at time 2 mediated the effects of both staff attachment and anxiety and avoidance at time 1 on child psychological distress at time 2. Also, child security at time 2 mediated the effects of staff burnout and general distress at time 1 on child distress at time 2. These findings suggest that attachment styles of staff to the children affect the psychological wellbeing of the children. Also, these results suggest that the staff’s undesirable characteristics lead to greater child psychopathology through the development of an insecure staff-child bond. Conclusion Overall, the study has implications for the appropriate provision of care which includes attachment figures, to ensure the proper psychological development of the children and avoid behavioural problems. The study highlights the need for and importance of secure child-staff attachment and how the lack of training, psychological support for staff, and understanding of attachment and psychological needs of the children can have detrimental effects

SHELDON Smart habitat for the elderly.

An insightful document concerning active and assisted living under different perspectives: Furniture and habitat, ICT solutions and Healthcare

ELDERLY SINGAPOREANS' PERCEPTIONS OF UNDERGOING JOINT REPLACEMENT SURGERY: A QUALITATIVE STUDY

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Localization system for carers to track elderly people in visits to a crowded shopping mall

© 2017 IEEE. This work presents a real-time localization system developed for professional care givers to track residents of an aged care facility during their visits to a crowded, multi-story shopping mall. The proposed system consists of a Wi-Fi based self-localization platform integrated into a wheeled walking frame and an application installed in a hand-held tablet device for displaying the locations of walker users. The density of people in the shopping mall changes significantly during the day thus the expected Wi-Fi signal strength at a given location is subject to large variations. However, Identifying the location to be within a given area is adequate and the average speed of motion is less than 0.5 m/sec. In this paper, an algorithm that addresses these unique requirements is presented. We exploit the signal strength characteristics of existing Wi-Fi network and prior knowledge of the building floor plans for developing our core algorithm. The environments is divided in to cells that are either enclosed spaces or divisions of larger open regions. The probability density function of the Wi-Fi signal strength of each cell is estimated using Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) and is used in a probabilistic framework to estimate the user location. Motion model of the users as well as the detection of floor transition events are used to enhance the performance of the location estimator. The algorithm was implemented using an Odroid-C1 computer and a tablet with Android operating system. Results obtained during field trials at Roselands Shopping Mall in Sydney are presented

Towards a Legal end Ethical Framework for Personal Care Robots. Analysis of Person Carrier, Physical Assistant and Mobile Servant Robots.

Technology is rapidly developing, and regulators and robot creators inevitably have to come to terms with new and unexpected scenarios. A thorough analysis of this new and continuosuly evolving reality could be useful to better understand the current situation and pave the way to the future creation of a legal and ethical framework. This is clearly a wide and complex goal, considering the variety of new technologies available today and those under development. Therefore, this thesis focuses on the evaluation of the impacts of personal care robots. In particular, it analyzes how roboticists adjust their creations to the existing regulatory framework for legal compliance purposes. By carrying out an impact assessment analysis, existing regulatory gaps and lack of regulatory clarity can be highlighted. These gaps should of course be considered further on by lawmakers for a future legal framework for personal care robot. This assessment should be made first against regulations. If the creators of the robot do not encounter any limitations, they can then proceed with its development. On the contrary, if there are some limitations, robot creators will either (1) adjust the robot to comply with the existing regulatory framework; (2) start a negotiation with the regulators to change the law; or (3) carry out the original plan and risk to be non-compliant. The regulator can discuss existing (or lacking) regulations with robot developers and give a legal response accordingly. In an ideal world, robots are clear of impacts and therefore threats can be responded in terms of prevention and opportunities in form of facilitation. In reality, the impacts of robots are often uncertain and less clear, especially when they are inserted in care applications. Therefore, regulators will have to address uncertain risks, ambiguous impacts and yet unkown effects

Proceedings of the 9th international conference on disability, virtual reality and associated technologies (ICDVRAT 2012)

The proceedings of the conferenc

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality