Child labour is a matter of national concern: What is the curriculum doing about it?

There is fine line between work or labour that is appropriate and acceptable, minimum working age for children and when work becomes inappropriate and unacceptable for children. While some children do work that is beneficial for them; others are trapped in illegal labour practices. The elimination of child labour is high on the international agenda of the Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Yet, the South African school curriculum seems to be silent on the issue. A non-empirical qualitative document analysis conducted  on all South Africa’s compulsory school curricula for Grade 1–9 revealed that while some subjects engage with concepts related to legal or illegal labour practices to some extent, others do not engage with these concepts at all. It appears that much more attention needs to be given to the difference between legal and illegal child labour practices to help prevent children from becoming victims of illegal labour practices. This paper closes by highlighting further research needed to address the issue of illegal child labour practices – specifically on raising awareness in the school curriculum as a preventative measure

Introduction to "Spiritual Care for People with Cancer"

There is little question that the diagnosis and treatment of cancer increase existential and spiritual needs and that these needs relate to how patients adjust to their experience. This Special Issue of Religions focusses on studies examining spiritual needs and spiritual care interventions among people with early-stage cancer (stages 0–III) or who have chronic/returning types of cancer. The spiritual care interventions discussed in this Special Issue involve multi-or interdisciplinary forms of spiritual care. Interestingly, all studies in this Special Issue emphasize the narrative and meaning-making dimension of spirituality. More research is needed on the relational and embodied dimensions of spirituality. The varied methodologies and disciplines applied in the studies of this Special Issue show the complexity and richness of spiritual care, which needs to be reflected in the organization of oncological care as well

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) in healthcare chaplaincy:What, why and how?

Outcome research is becoming increasingly important in healthcare chaplaincy, to improve the quality of chaplaincy care and to justify the need for healthcare chaplaincy services. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are instruments enabling the assessment of healthcare chaplaincy outcomes. In this paper, I discuss how PROMs might be implemented in healthcare chaplaincy. PROMs can be used for patient monitoring, quality improvement and external transparency. PROMs can reflect any dimension of patient health and functioning, but they must be sensitive to change and relevant to the chaplaincy care context that is being evaluated. The choice of PROsassessed reflects the vision on the profession and its responsibility. Reduction of the profession to that which can be measured with PROMs should be avoided. Thus, the selection and implementation of PROMs in healthcare chaplaincy requires careful considerations, which can be supported by use of the PROM cycle illustrated in this paper

A beacon in the storm:Competencies of healthcare chaplains in the accident and emergency department

Introduction: In several Dutch hospitals, healthcare chaplains provide care to accompanying persons at the accident and emergency (A&E) department, even though they have not been trained for such a dynamic, high-intensity environment. We therefore examined the competencies they feel they need in this setting.Methods: Interviews were conducted with 14 healthcare chaplains from nine hospitals, and with five A&E nurses from two hospitals.Results: All respondents considered healthcare chaplaincy essential in the A&E department. Our findings support the need for psychosocial and communicative skills, knowledge of mourning processes, flexibility, sensitivity, and reflexivity. Additional competencies included sensitivity to existential concerns, practicing presence, a person-centered approach, medical knowledge, and letting go of a solution-oriented approach.Discussion: The chaplains questioned the sufficiency of their leadership skills, pragmatism, and medical knowledge. To ensure their sustained availability for people in crisis, more systematic efforts are needed with regard to aftercare, evaluation, and self-care on the part of healthcare chaplains

Positioning Chaplaincy in the Pluralistic and Multidisciplinary Dutch Care Context

The professional identity of chaplains is under question because of societal trends of disaffiliation from and pluralization of religion, and of deinstitutionalization of care. Chaplaincy in the Netherlands looks to discourse around “meaning” to navigate these challenges. The use of the term “meaning” as the central concept in the professional identity of chaplaincy (and, by extension, spiritual care) is not undisputed, however. There are three related critiques: 1. Meaning and meaning-making have a strong cognitive and intentional connotation, which does not do justice to the lived experience of meaning and might lead to a medicalization of meaning. 2. The term meaning places the professional identity of chaplaincy in the instrumental discourse of other professions, which might lead to “abuse” of spiritual care toward external objectives such as health, (hedonistic) well-being, and/or economic gain, instead of internal objectives such as faith and spirituality. 3. A focus on meaning leads to a marginalization of religion, both societally and within chaplaincy, which might negatively affect chaplaincy’s core competence of hermeneutic understanding and worldview counseling. We conclude that finding one language to present the discipline might not be feasible and desirable. Instead, we advocate for the revitalization of the hermeneutic competency of chaplains.</p

Does Spirituality or Religion Positively Affect Mental Health? Meta-analysis of Longitudinal Studies

The objective of this meta-analysis was to determine the longitudinal positive effect of religion or spirituality (R/S) on mental health. We summarized 48 longitudinal studies (59 independent samples) using a random effects model. Mental health was operationalized as a continuous and a dichotomous distress measure, life satisfaction, well-being, and quality of life. R/S included participation in public and private religious activities, support from church members, importance of religion, intrinsic religiousness, positive religious coping, meaningfulness, and composite measures. The meta-analysis yielded a significant, but small overall effect size of r = .08 (95% CI: 0.06 to 0.10). Of eight R/S predictors that were distinguished, only participation in public religious activities and importance of religion were significantly related to mental health (r = .08 and r = .09, respectively; 95% CI: 0.04 to 0.11 and 0.05 to 0.12, respectively). In conclusion, there is evidence for a positive effect of R/S on mental health, but this effect is small