Exploring support within educational provisions for children and young people experiencing sexual exploitation

Child sexual exploitation (CSE) can have huge impacts on a child’s physical and emotional wellbeing and have long-term consequences. Literature has found that professionals can have negative perceptions of children who are being sexually exploited, and this can affect the support they receive. To date, there has been little research exploring the education and support within educational provisions for children and young people experiencing sexual exploitation, suggesting the need for further research. This research aimed to fill this gap by exploring the perspectives from both school staff and from survivors of CSE. The following research questions were addressed; 1) what are Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCo) and Designated Safeguarding Leads’ (DSL) abilities to respond to the needs of children who have experienced CSE whilst in secondary schools in the South West of England (including knowledge, perceptions, practical support, and challenges), 2) what are adult survivors of CSE’s experiences of support within their secondary educational provision in the UK? This research consisted of two phases. Phase one took the form of an online questionnaire which was completed by 30 SENCos and DSLs across the South West of England. This used vignettes to explore the school staff’s perceptions, and open ended and closed questions to provide a mix of quantitative and qualitative results. Data have been analysed and is displayed in frequency tables and descriptive statistics. In phase two, four semi-structured interviews were conducted with adult survivors of CSE in the UK. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. Phase 1 findings revealed that the staff have a good level of training in CSE, they have positive perceptions of the victims and have good systems of support in place within their schools. It was felt that pastoral support and supportive relationships, multi-agency working, and systemic level approaches (including parental engagement and training), were the main strategies to help support a child or young person experiencing CSE. Barriers included working with the parents, engagement difficulties with the young person, difficulties in accessing services, the demands of school, and negative attitudes of the staff. It was felt that to achieve this, schools needed further training, funding and access to resources and the staff needed more support for their health and wellbeing when working within these populations. Phase 2 findings revealed eight main themes. The findings showed that the survivors had many difficulties whilst being at school and there was a lack of support. Negative attitudes and unhelpful stereotypes were prominent from professionals, which led to their abuse being minimised, or them feeling blamed. There was a lack of education around sex and healthy relationships, and staff did not have adequate understanding of CSE and abuse. This meant that signs of CSE went unnoticed and the adults were out of their depth or limited in the support they offered. There were difficulties in communication, and the survivors felt a lack of agency and control. The importance of a supportive positive relationship within school was highlighted, as well as holistic support, with an emphasis on supporting the child’s emotional wellbeing. This research is relevant for schools in understanding how to support victims of CSE, including addressing negative attitudes from professionals, promoting child and family engagement, providing holistic support with a focus on wellbeing, having a multi-agency approach and ensuring there is a high level of training for professionals working with children. Implications for educational psychology practice are explored at various levels of working, and future research directions proposed

IT Staff Turnover Intentions, Job Modification, and the Effects of Work Recognition at Large Public Higher Education Institutions

Information Technology (IT) leaders in public higher education are under increased pressures to leverage innovations in technology to address their institution’s strategic imperatives. CIOs modify jobs by increasing responsibilities or changing the tasks that IT workers perform. IT staff who experience job modification are susceptible to lower job satisfaction and increased turnover intentions. IT leaders in other industries have successfully used work recognition to improve job satisfaction but there is limited research pertaining to these conditions among higher education institutions. This study sought to determine the perceptions and effects of work recognition and job modification on the turnover intentions of IT workers employed at 71 large, publicly controlled, higher education institutions. The researcher conducted a quantitative study using structured equation modeling to measure the potential moderating effects of recognition on job satisfaction, affective commitment, and perceived organizational support as predictors of turnover intention. The researcher found that work recognition was effective at moderating the effects of responsibility increase and task replacement on job satisfaction for IT workers with respect to their preferences of work recognition types. IT workers perceptions of the relative strength and duration of various work recognitions was also determined. The findings contribute to the study of turnover antecedents by providing new information on the relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations and turnover intentions of IT workers at the institutions studied. The conclusions have implications for practice among CIOs in large public institutions regarding the importance and characteristics of work recognition as a tool for retaining IT staff

The Effects of Imagined Intergroup Contact on Attitudes Towards Male Bisexuals

Bisexual men regularly face prejudice from both heterosexual and homosexual individuals. These negative attitudes put stress on bisexual individuals that is associated with increased risk of mental illness, especially depression and suicide. There are currently no strategies with sufficient support from the literature to reduce this sexual prejudice. Imagined intergroup contact is a method used to reduce prejudice against an outgroup by asking people to imagine interacting with a member of an outgroup. The purpose of this research was to determine whether imagined intergroup contact was an effective intervention for reducing prejudice against bisexual men. Participants were randomly assigned to either the imagined contact group, in which they closed their eyes and imagined meeting a bisexual man for the first time from a third person perspective, or the control group, in which they imagined a nature scene. Participants then reported their intergroup anxiety, outgroup evaluation, perceived outgroup variability, attitudes towards bisexual men, and future intended contact. Results showed that there was no significant difference between the imagined contact group and the control group on any of the dependent measures. The effect of the imagination task, however, was moderated by participant gender. Although women had more favorable outgroup evaluations than men in the control group, there were no gender differences in outgroup evaluations in the experimental group. These results have implications for the effectiveness of the imagined intergroup contact method, as well as the way that gender influences sexual prejudice

Applicability of Three Alternative Instruments for Food Authenticity Analysis: GMO Identification

Ensuring foods are correctly labelled for ingredients derived from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is an issue facing manufacturers, retailers, and enforcement agencies. DNA approaches for the determination of food authenticitys often use the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and PCR products can be detected using capillary or gel electrophoresis. This study examines the fitness for purpose of the application of three laboratory electrophoresis instruments (Agilent Bioanalyzer 2100, Lab901 TapeStation, and Shimadzu MCE-202 MultiNA) for the detection of GMOs using PCR based on a previously validated protocol. Whilst minor differences in the performance characteristics of bias and precision were observed, all three instruments demonstrated their applicability in using this protocol for screening of GMO ingredients

Scalable simultaneous multi-qubit readout with 99.99% single-shot fidelity

We describe single-shot readout of a trapped-ion multi-qubit register using space and time-resolved camera detection. For a single qubit we measure 0.9(3)x10^{-4} readout error in 400us exposure time, limited by the qubit's decay lifetime. For a four-qubit register (a "qunybble") we measure an additional error of only 0.1(1)x10^{-4} per qubit, despite the presence of 4% optical cross-talk between neighbouring qubits. A study of the cross-talk indicates that the method would scale with negligible loss of fidelity to ~10000 qubits at a density <~1 qubit/um^2, with a readout time ~1us/qubit.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; simulations added to fig.3, with some further text and figure revisions. Main results unchanged