The Path from Foster Care to Permanence: Does Proximity Outweigh Stability?

This thesis investigates the relationship between foster care placement settings and discharges. Placement settings are where foster children live: foster homes, group homes, etc. There may be one or several placements for any individual child. In the interest of stability, federal funding to states depends in part on low numbers of placement moves. Federal reviews, however, do not consider whether the placement settings resemble permanent family life (foster homes compared to congregate care) or the direction of placement moves. Competing risks regression was used to analyze time to discharge data of foster children in Georgia. Discharges (competing risks) were compared based on the number and the direction of placement moves. Children with movement patterns that favored placements similar to permanent family life were found to have higher probabilities of discharges to safe permanence. This thesis promotes “proximity to permanence” as an important, but often overlooked, consideration in foster care placements

Development of Equipment for Clay Swelling Tests

Architectural Engineerin

Low frequency maintenance therapy with imiglucerase in adult type I Gaucher disease: a prospective randomized controlled trial

FWN – Publicaties zonder aanstelling Universiteit Leide

An advertising aesthetic: Real beauty and visual impairment

This article considers critical responses to disability in 20th-century Anglo-American advertisements from which a problematic advertising aesthetic emerges. The aesthetic is used to test the progressiveness of a recent trilogy of Dove advertisements that represents visual impairment. The conclusion is that while there has been much progress, the ableist advertising aesthetic of decades ago remains an issue in the 21st century. More specifically, the Dove advertisements are found to be underpinned by ocularcentrism, despite their apparent appreciation of visual impairment

Informed decision making about predictive DNA tests: arguments for more public visibility of personal deliberations about the good life

Since its advent, predictive DNA testing has been perceived as a technology that may have considerable impact on the quality of people’s life. The decision whether or not to use this technology is up to the individual client. However, to enable well considered decision making both the negative as well as the positive freedom of the individual should be supported. In this paper, we argue that current professional and public discourse on predictive DNA-testing is lacking when it comes to supporting positive freedom, because it is usually framed in terms of risk and risk management. We show how this ‘risk discourse’ steers thinking on the good life in a particular way. We go on to argue that empirical research into the actual deliberation and decision making processes of individuals and families may be used to enrich the environment of personal deliberation in three ways: (1) it points at a richer set of values that deliberators can take into account, (2) it acknowledges the shared nature of genes, and (3) it shows how one might frame decisions in a non-binary way. We argue that the public sharing and discussing of stories about personal deliberations offers valuable input for others who face similar choices: it fosters their positive freedom to shape their view of the good life in relation to DNA-diagnostics. We conclude by offering some suggestions as to how to realize such public sharing of personal stories