The Maltese community in Toronto : a proposed adult education strategy

In this article, we focus on the Maltese community in Toronto, Canada which, we argue, is suffering from a particular kind of oppression that is given little or no consideration in the existing literature. We name this oppression as that of small nation identity. The trivialization of small countries in the minds of ethnocentric individuals, and institutions/ organizations, has a strong bearing on the subjectivity of immigrants from these places of origin. By highlighting aspects of everyday life experienced by members of the Maltese community, the voice of a subordinate group is reclaimed, providing visibility to a community which has hitherto been invisible, its voice having been immersed in the "culture of silence". We also aim to explore the contradictory discourses that characterize the community. In the second half of the paper we propose an adult education strategy intended to affirm the roots of this community and provide the basis for better democratic living within the larger Toronto community.peer-reviewe

En un cruce de caminos : la educación para el trabajo social en Australia

Este artículo examina críticamente los cambios en la educación en Australia y las consecuencias de esos cambios en la dirección futura del trabajo social. La expresión "cruce de caminos" se utiliza en dos sentidos: en el primero, se refiere a un documento publicado recientemente por el gobierno australiano, documento que tendrá gran impacto en todo el sector de la educación superior. En el segundo sentido, se refiere a las consecuencias que estos cambios universitarios tendrán en los programas de trabajo social. Existe la expectativa de que los programas de trabajo social se vuelvan más "empresariales" (es decir, utilicen un pensar de comercio), de que se publique para sobrevivir como académico y finalmente, de que se utilice mas tecnología, mas profesores adjuntos (no titulares), y clases con más estudiantes. Desafortunadamente, la asociación profesional que acredita los programas de trabajo social esta por atrás y no en la vanguardia de todos estos cambios.The term ‘crossroads’ is being used in two senses in this paper. The first refers to the Australian Government’s recent Review of Higher Education (referred to as ‘Crossroads Report’) and the impact that the changes will have on the higher education sector and consequently social work education. And secondly, ‘crossroads’ is being used in the sense that social work education is being restructured by the changes occurring in universities. Social work programs are expected to be more ‘entrepreneurial’, more research oriented (‘publish or perish’), and more efficient in teaching methodology (this has meant emphasis on technology, use of adjunct staff and larger classes). The profession through the professional body (Australian Association of Social Workers) accredits programs but is ‘running behind’ the changes in higher education. The paper reviews critically these changes in social work education, the higher education sector and ‘welfare reform’, and how these changes may effect the future direction of social work educatio

Navigating Sense of Home: Migration experiences of Home and Community

Migrants experience significant stresses when transitioning to find a sense of belonging from one country to another (Kirmaryer et. al 2011), particularly when the nature of migration is forced. Language barriers, currency differences, different foods, written and unwritten rules of conduct as well as different climates all contribute to make the acculturative process difficult and stressful (Jackson & Bauder, 2014). Understanding how migrants navigate this process and the resources required to successfully integrate within a new host community is an important area of research both for migrants and the host communities. Using an archival dataset collected by researchers from the University of Genoa the aim of this presentation is to understand the relationship between psychological home, neighborhood attachment, sense of community and resilience within the migratory context. Our findings indicate that length of stay, and employment positively and significantly predict psychological home. With regards to resilience only psychological home was found to be positively and significantly predictive. Neighborhood attachment and sense of community were found to be highly overlapping concepts that may be seen as multiple measure of the same phenomenon. The implications of this study continue to highlight the importance of the understudied psychological home construct. For policy makers and community organizations investing in programming that allows people to develop and cultivate a sense of psychological home is an important way to foster resilience in migrants. Another implication of this study is that investment in existing and further programs and programming to help migrants enter into adequately paid jobs with good conditions can also have indirect effects such as promoting psychological home. Migrants who are able to successfully participate within the workforce are able to exert greater financial power within their host country and have greater opportunities at selecting, investing in and customizing their house thereby increasing psychological home. This has the indirect effect of promoting resilience through psychological home but most likely also promotes resilience through greater social resources and networks being available to the migrant

Attempted suicide: Listening to and learning from young people

Suicide has become a major international health issue. Australia records one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world and Queensland has one of the highest suicide rates in Australia. This study sought insights into the suicide attempts of young men and women who survived. In-depth interviews were conducted in Townsville, Queensland, with a small group of young men and women aged 16-24 to explore the circumstances leading to the attempted suicide, the help sought and their suggestions for more effective intervention. The findings offer insight into the needs of local at-risk youth and provide suggestions for intervention services and future research

Use and misuse of urine cultures and antibiotics in catheterised patients at a rehabilitation hospital in Malta

Background One of the most common samples submitted to microbiology laboratories are urine specimens for culture. Objectives To assess the indications for obtaining urine cultures in a cohort of catheterised patients. The appropriateness of antimicrobial therapy in response to urine culture results was also studied. Method All catheterised inpatients at Karin Grech Rehabilitation Hospital in Malta who had urine cultures taken over a 3- month period in 2016 were included. Data included the indication for sample collection, any documented urinary symptoms, culture results, antibiotic use before and after culture result and any change in antibiotic. A departmental presentation on the appropriate care of catheterised patients was delivered and a re-audit was carried out in 2017. Results There were a total of 38 patients who were catheterised and had one or more urine cultures taken in 2016 and 55 in 2017. The commonest indications documented were fever and retention. Their indication was not documented in the medical notes in around 50% of samples taken for both years. The culture result was documented in 15% of cases in 2016 increasing to 40% in 2017. The commonest bacteria cultivated included E.Coli and Klebsiella. Empirical antibiotics were given in approximately 45% of cases who had a urine culture taken. In both 2016 and 2017, antibiotics were switched due to resistance in around 10% of all episodes when urine cultures were taken. Conclusion Lack of documentation of the indication and culture result was evident. This improved in the re-audit. A high percentage of cultures taken did not influence the clinical management. The study clearly shows inappropriate use of urine culture requests and the need to follow available guidelines.peer-reviewe

ARC Discovery Grant Project: Challenges, possibilities and future directions : A national assessment of Australia's children's courts. ACT Report

This report summarises the findings of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) component of the Australian Research Council funded Discovery Project: Challenges possibilities and future directions: a National Assessment of Australia’s Children’s Courts. This project was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant. The ACT study was one of nine parallel studies – one covering each state and territory and the ninth, based on the eight others, focusing on Australia as a whole. Each study had its own set of Chief Investigators and in the ACT these were Professor Peter Camilleri and Professor Morag McArthur. A book, published by Springer, is under preparation which will outline the findings of each jurisdiction and of the national research project

Advancing the sustainable tourism agenda through strategic CSR perspectives

This paper links the corporate social responsibility (CSR) paradigms to the sustainability agenda. The objective is to sharpen the strategic base of responsible behaviour in tourism enterprises. The design follows a comprehensive literature review about sustainable tourism from a hospitality industry perspective. Theoretical underpinnings suggest that the tourism and hospitality industries are continuously witnessing changing attitudes on the part of both the consumers and the enterprises. This contribution provides some details about the sustainability agenda as it explains how it emerged following Brundtland's report. Afterwards, it identifies key contributors who raised the issue of sustainable tourism as well as CSR policies, including inter-governmental committees and non-governmental organisations. It is believed that synergistic and shared value approaches are relatively straightforward and uncomplicated. Therefore, such notions are more easily taken up by academics or by tourism and hospitality stakeholders. There is continuous discourse in many international fora, conferences, seminars and colloquia about sustainable tourism, responsible behaviour and the related subjects. However, the discussions are usually characterised by presentation of theories which define the concepts, rather than being practical workshops which identify the business case and how to trigger active participation in the tourism industry. Relevant literature indicates that value-driven approaches focus on improving tourism and hospitality business performance through effective and efficient practices in their workplace environments. This contribution suggests that long-term sustainability can be reached if industry practitioners successfully address their societal and community deficits.peer-reviewe

Responsible tourism that creates shared value among stakeholders

This paper maintains that responsible tourism practices can be re-conceived strategically to confer competitive advantage. It looks at the extant literature surrounding the notions of “responsible tourism” and “shared value”. A qualitative research involved in-depth, semi-structured interview questions to discover the tourism and hospitality owner–managers’ ethos for responsible tourism. Secondly, telephone interviews were carried out with tourism regulatory officials. The findings have revealed that discretionary spending in socially and environmentally sound, responsible policies and initiatives can create shared value among tourism enterprises and their stakeholders. In a nutshell, this paper indicates that responsible tourism led to improved relationships with social and regulatory stakeholders, effective human resources management, better market standing, operational efficiencies and cost savings, along with other benefits.peer-reviewe

Blogs : web journals in language education

This publication is the outcome of an ECML project which, over the course of three years, investigated the design of educational blogging platforms and their use in the language classroom. The accompanying CD-Rom includes the entire corpus of blogs produced during the project – the good, the bad, the ugly and the indifferent. Mining this heap of verbiage turns up many fascinating gems. This booklet describes our experiences of working with language teachers and students taking their first steps in blogging, and should be of interest primarily to teacher trainers and language teachers who wish to harness the educational power of the “writable Web”. There are many excellent free blogging hosting services available to the adventurous teacher – Blogger, WordPress and Class Blogmeister all welcome educational users. If the teacher can rely on technical help and the school has access to its own Web server or has shared server space, then the blogging platform included on the CD-Rom can be freely installed for use by any number of teachers and students. The software runs on an IIS-based server (IIS 5 or above with ASP, MS Access and certain other optional modules that are documented on the CD-Rom). Since the installation itself is not just a point-and-click affair, some degree of configuration is necessary to suite the server set-up, and therefore some technical expertise in Web server administration and scripting is required. Once set-up, of course, the platform is accessible using any Web browser and should require little or no maintenance. Although fully functional (it has in fact been in use for over a year by more than 600 teachers and students), the platform is still in the early stages of development. It is released under a GNU General Public License1 to encourage software developers to extend and enhance it. Foremost in the development road map for this platform is the design of a proper data abstraction layer, integration with a variety of popular DBMS back-ends (especially MySQL), implementation of a proper blogging API, and porting the platform over to PHP. Finally, thanks are due to all the teachers and hundreds of students, both in Europe and Brazil, who bravely struggled with the idiosyncrasies of the software as it underwent one revision after another. Thanks are also due to the ECML for their support throughout the project, and especially all the staff at the ECML for always making us look forward to our next visit to the wonderful city of Graz.peer-reviewe