The role of the school nurse in protecting children and young people from maltreatment: An integrative review of the literature

Objectives. This review aims to describe the role of the school nurse in protecting children and young people from maltreatment by examining the international literature. Child maltreatment is a prevalent issue in global society today and includes physical, emotional and sexual abuse, neglect and exploitation. School nurses are ideally placed to identify and work with children and young people who are at risk of maltreatment through their regular contact with the school community. Design. Integrative literature review incorporating thematic analysis. Data Sources. Electronic databases British Nursing Database, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Medline, PsycInfo, Cochrane Library Database for Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL). Search Terms: Role, School Nurse, Child Maltreatment. Review Methods. Initial title and abstract review of 444 studies resulted in 78 studies for full text review. Additional search strategies identified one relevant study. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were employed as follows; (1) study published in the English language, (2) peer-reviewed, (3) primary research, (4) inclusion of school nurses (or equivalent role internationally) in the study sample, and (5) a focus on the role of school nurses in preventing child maltreatment. Studies were appraised using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme tool for qualitative studies and the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology checklist for mixed-methods and quantitative studies. Findings from the studies were identified, summarised and organised into a summary table, before being analysed thematically. Results. 21 studies met inclusion and quality criteria and were included in the review. Key themes that emerged from the analysis were; supporting the child and family, detective work, working with other professionals, training and supervision, barriers to protecting children and young people from maltreatment and trust. Conclusion. International literature highlights the variety of activities that school nurses may undertake in daily practice to protect children and young people from maltreatment. Several challenges to this role are identified, including time management and building relationships with children and young people. Recommendations for practice and further research are made

Parametric and non-parametric approaches to exits from fixed exchange rate regimes

Following the demise of the Bretton-Woods, increasing number of countries has been opting for flexible exchange rate regimes. Exiting from fixed regimes however is not without costs. Regime transitions have often been occurred in the midst of a crisis, which has considerable economic costs in terms of output contraction and exchange rate depreciation. Given the big number of countries having still fixed regimes and financial markets that are fairly close and expected to be liberalized sooner or later, issue of exiting a peg without incurring crisis is a real challenge confronting these countries. The aim of this paper is to determine the conditions under which orderly exit is possible. The paper employs Binary Recursive Tree and standard regression frameworks. Analysis shows that countries with higher output gap and overvalued real exchange rate, among others, are doomed to exit in a disorderly way. Following their exit, output collapses and exchange rate depreciates considerably. The ill-managed financial liberalization and macroeconomic stabilization programs seem to lay the seeds of instability. An interesting finding is that the conventional strengths of parametric regression analysis can be dramatically improved by utilizing findings of non-parametric BRT technology. Sample contains all countries depending on the data availability, and covers 1975-2004 period. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Multivariate Modeling of Daily REIT Volatility

This paper examines volatility in REITs using a multivariate GARCH based model. The Multivariate VAR–GARCH technique documents the return and volatility linkages between REIT sub-sectors and also examines the influence of other US equity series. The motivation is for investors to incorporate time-varyng volatility and correlations in their portfolio selection. The results illustrate the differences in results when higher frequency daily data is tested in comparison to the monthly data that has been commonly used in the existing literature. The linkages both within the REIT sector and between REITs and related sectors such as value stocks are weaker than commonly found in monthly studies. The broad market would appear to be more influential in the daily case. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2006Multivariate GARCH, Volatility modelling, REITS,