Ensuring the right to education for Roma children : an Anglo-Swedish perspective

Access to public education systems has tended to be below normative levels where Roma children are concerned. Various long-standing social, cultural, and institutional factors lie behind the lower levels of engagement and achievement of Roma children in education, relative to many others, which is reflective of the general lack of integration of their families in mainstream society. The risks to Roma children’s educational interests are well recognized internationally, particularly at the European level. They have prompted a range of policy initiatives and legal instruments to protect rights and promote equality and inclusion, on top of the framework of international human rights and minority protections. Nevertheless, states’ autonomy in tailoring educational arrangements to their budgets and national policy agendas has contributed to considerable international variation in specific provision for Roma children. As this article discusses, even between two socially liberal countries, the UK and Sweden, with their well-advanced welfare states and public systems of social support, there is a divergence in protection, one which underlines the need for a more consistent and positive approach to upholding the education rights and interests of children in this most marginalized and often discriminated against minority group

How does mindfulness modulate self-regulation in pre-adolescent children? : An integrative neurocognitive review

Pre-adolescence is a key developmental period in which complex intrinsic volitional methods of self-regulation are acquired as a result of rapid maturation within the brain networks underlying the self-regulatory processes of attention control and emotion regulation. Fostering adaptive self-regulation skills during this stage of development has strong implications for physical health, emotional and socio-economic outcomes during adulthood. There is a growing interest in mindfulness-based programmes for pre-adolescents with initial findings suggesting self-regulation improvements, however, neurodevelopmental studies on mindfulness with pre-adolescents are scarce. This analytical review outlines an integrative neuro-developmental approach, which combines self-report and behavioural assessments with event related brain potentials (ERPs) to provide a systemic multilevel understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms of mindfulness in pre-adolescence. We specifically focus on the N2, error related negativity (ERN), error positivity (Pe), P3a, P3b and late positive potential (LPP) ERP components as indexes of mindfulness related modulations in non-volitional bottom-up self-regulatory processes (salience detection, stimulus driven orienting and mind wandering) and volitional top-down self-regulatory processes (endogenous orienting and executive attention)

Food choices of young people in Northern Ireland The influences and health implications

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN020981 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Quasi-Federalism and the Administration of Equality and Human Rights: Recent Developments and Future Prospects – A Preliminary Analysis from the UK's Devolution Programme

Following the UK's move to quasi-federalism in the 1990s, the Parliament and Assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland gained powers over the promotion of equality of opportunity in the exercise of devolved functions. Constitutional law also placed human rights obligations on the regional administrations. Analysis reveals that the first years of devolution have seen a rapid growth and territorialization of regulatory bodies, such as commissioners, inspectorates, ombudsmen – whose remit includes these cross-cutting issues. Given the rise of distinctive sub-state ‘equalities infrastructures’ in the devolved nations, a key question is whether the dynamics of self-reinforcing feedback processes predicted by historical institutionalism offer the potential for more effective equality and human rights practice at the meso-level. While the discussion reveals a significant increase in the state's capacity to monitor and regulate, examples of innovation and policy transfer – and a cautious, yet generally positive, assessment by policy actors – a number of issues and shortcomings are also identified. These include limited government oversight and a lack of inter-agency coordination. Overall, the emerging evidence suggests that, from a functional institutionalist perspective, devolution has made advances in embedding the regulation of equality and human rights in the regional state; however, historical institutionalism indicates that, while devolution may be viewed as a ‘critical juncture’, notions of ‘path dependency’ towards more effective equalities practice are, as yet, unfounded and significant challenges remain