Analysis of English language employment support provision in London for JSA and ESA WRAG customers

The Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion (Inclusion) was commissioned by the Greater London Authority to examine pre-employment English language provision in London and how it can be improved to help support Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), and Employment and Support Allowance work related activity group (ESA WRAG) customers into work

'This Is Real Misery': Experiences of Women Denied Legal Abortion in Tunisia.

Barriers to accessing legal abortion services in Tunisia are increasing, despite a liberal abortion law, and women are often denied wanted legal abortion services. In this paper, we seek to explore the reasons for abortion denial and whether these reasons had a legal or medical basis. We also identify barriers women faced in accessing abortion and make recommendations for improved access to quality abortion care. We recruited women immediately after they had been turned away from legal abortion services at two facilities in Tunis, Tunisia. Thirteen women consented to participate in qualitative interviews two months after they were turned away from the facility. Women were denied abortion care on the day they were recruited due to three main reasons: gestational age, health conditions, and logistical barriers. Nine women ultimately terminated their pregnancies at another facility, and four women carried to term. None of the women attempted illegal abortion services or self-induction. Further research is needed in order to assess abortion denial from the perspective of providers and medical staff

Practices of welcome with refugee and asylum seeking migrants in rural Wales: ‘literacies of doing’ and the (re) writing of place

This thesis examines practices of welcome with refugee and asylum seeker migrants in rural Monmouthshire, Wales. Centred on two case studies, it explores how people with very different experiences and histories of migration, and very different senses of familiarity with being in rural Wales, encounter each other through activities such as walking, cooking, dance, celebrations and outings, which take place in a variety of spaces from homes to community venues to hillsides. While there is valuable scholarship to be drawn on about welcome in the city, this study shifts the focus to a rural setting, one that is often considered unconnected to global issues such as migration and one which is often experienced as unwelcoming by racialised and minoritised groups. The theoretical framework brings Sara Ahmed’s work on modes of encounter together with conceptualisations of language as social participation. It draws on Doreen Massey’s conceptualisation of space as the intersections of stories so far set in wider power geometries and also to the complex relation to place that Avtar Brah’s notion of diasporic space offers. Moving away from ideas of integration the thesis advances the idea of ‘literacies of doing’ as way of reconceptualising relations of hospitality and emphasising the ways in which space and place are re-written through the spoken and unspoken language practices that members of these groups engage in as they find ways of being together. The approaches to research are grounded in a feminist praxis that seeks to account for, but not necessarily resolve, the issues of researching across inequalities. The methodology is considered as a form of creative bricolage, working with the resources available at the time (during the pandemic). This echoes the creative and improvisational ways of engaging with each other across difference that was evident in both case studies

In the Aftermath of the Battle of Olustee: A Beecher\u27s Surprise Visit to Florida

Isabella Beecher Hooker spent March 12-14, 1864, visiting senior army officers in Jacksonville. The timing was auspicious, given that her visit came just weeks after the only significant Civil War battle in Florida. The Federal defeat at Olustee had occurred on February 20. Moreover, she had access to regimental and brigade commanders through her brother, James C. Beecher, and her Hartford friend and neighbor, Joseph R. Hawley.1 At the end of her visit Isabella wrote to her husband offering observations about the battle and the Federal officer who led Northern troops in this engagement. The source of her information about General Truman Seymour, significantly, was the general\u27s own cousin, Caroline Seymour Severance.

Historic Notes and Documents: Harriet Ward Foote Hawley: Civil War Journalist

Between January 2, 1863, and February 7, 1864, Harriet Ward Foote Hawley wrote seven newspaper articles about her experiences in the South during the Civil War-four of which were written in Florida. For a woman to have done this in the period was extraordinary. While many women recorded their experiences during the Civil War, very few did so for newspapers. Historian James M. Perry described the era\u27s press corps as a group of fascinating men. Such a statement is not completely accurate, however. Historian J. Cutler Andrews identified a few women who covered the conflict. Among over three hundred Yankees, Andrews found four-Mary Clemmer Arnes, Jane Grey Swisshelm, Sarah Jane Lippincott who used the pen name Grace Greenwood, and Laura Catherine Redden who used the name Howard Glyndon. Surprisingly, Andrews found three women writing for Southern newspapers-an E.L. McE. who wrote for the Knoxville (Tenn.) Daily Register, a person with the pen name of Virginia who wrote for the Mobile (Ala.) Daily Advertiser and Register, and a Joan writing for the Charleston (S.C.) Daily Courier. The literature about journalists, therefore, suggests that while women were reporting, anything published by a woman in Florida during the Civil War must be regarded as remarkable

Nurse-Provided Foot Care for Populations with Severe Mental Illness: A Phenomenological and Swanson’s Theory of Caring Approach

Foot care is an essential element of health care for populations with, or at high risk for chronic diseases and foot abnormalities. However, nursing research regarding foot care specifically for patients with severe mental illness (a category which includes bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorder) is sparse. This mixed methodology phenomenological study seeks to provide a further understanding of how nurse-provided foot care and its implicit “caring” ethos impact this patient population, and what might this imply about creating models and educational protocols for the delivery of future evidence-based care. Methodology: Participants at a low-barrier day center for populations who self-identified as female, unhoused, and diagnosed with severe mental illness were treated with nurse-provided foot care. Data was collected from a five-question semi-structured interview, focused on the participant’s experience of foot care and then thematically coded. Results: Six participants fulfilled eligibility requirements, provided informed consent, and completed the semi-structured interviews. Five main themes emerged from data analysis: 1) apprehension to enjoyment, 2) self-criticism, 3) importance of hygiene, 4) inclusion of anecdotal experience, and 5) attitude of the practitioner. Conclusion: This research project called attention to the need for increased access and provision of hygiene supplies and the relevance of incorporating relationship-based therapeutic foot care. The process of addressing these issues will require focusing on these needs in the development of models for hygiene access provision as well as incorporating the importance of a Swanson’s Theory of Caring derived education protocol

The abstraction transition taxonomy: developing desired learning outcomes through the lens of situated cognition

We report on a post-hoc analysis of introductory programming lecture materials. The purpose of this analysis is to identify what knowledge and skills we are asking students to acquire, as situated in the activity, tools, and culture of what programmers do and how they think. The specific materials analyzed are the 133 Peer Instruction questions used in lecture to support cognitive apprenticeship -- honoring the situated nature of knowledge. We propose an Abstraction Transition Taxonomy for classifying the kinds of knowing and practices we engage students in as we seek to apprentice them into the programming world. We find students are asked to answer questions expressed using three levels of abstraction: English, CS Speak, and Code. Moreover, many questions involve asking students to transition between levels of abstraction within the context of a computational problem. Finally, by applying our taxonomy in classifying a range of introductory programming exams, we find that summative assessments (including our own) tend to emphasize a small range of the skills fostered in students during the formative/apprenticeship phase

Lone parent obligations: destinations of lone parents after Income Support eligibility ends (Research report no 710)

"As part of the Lone Parent Obligations (LPO) changes, from November 2008 lone parents with a youngest child aged 12 or over were no longer entitled to receive Income Support (IS) solely on the grounds of being a lone parent. Since then, the age of the youngest child has reduced to ten and over from October 2009 and seven and over from October 2010. Lone parents who are no longer eligible for IS have been able to move to other benefits as appropriate, including Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA). The JSA regime has been amended to include flexibilities for parents, for example, in the hours of work they are required to seek. The aim of this evaluation is to explore whether and how lone parent employment interventions provide an effective incentive to look for paid employment, alongside an effective package of support for workless lone parents, to enable them to find, enter and sustain paid employment." - Page 1

Molecular evidence for sediment nitrogen fixation in a temperate New England estuary

Primary production in coastal waters is generally nitrogen (N) limited with denitrification outpacing nitrogen fixation (N2-fixation). However, recent work suggests that we have potentially underestimated the importance of heterotrophic sediment N2-fixation in marine ecosystems. We used clone libraries to examine transcript diversity of nifH (a gene associated with N2-fixation) in sediments at three sites in a temperate New England estuary (Waquoit Bay, Massachusetts, USA) and compared our results to net sediment N2 fluxes previously measured at these sites. We observed nifH expression at all sites, including a site heavily impacted by anthropogenic N. At this N impacted site, we also observed mean net sediment N2-fixation, linking the geochemical rate measurement with nifH expression. This same site also had the lowest diversity (non-parametric Shannon = 2.75). At the two other sites, we also detected nifH transcripts, however, the mean N2 flux indicated net denitrification. These results suggest that N2-fixation and denitrification co-occur in these sediments. Of the unique sequences in this study, 67% were most closely related to uncultured bacteria from various marine environments, 17% to Cluster III, 15% to Cluster I, and only 1% to Cluster II. These data add to the growing body of literature that sediment heterotrophic N2-fixation, even under high inorganic nitrogen concentrations, may be an important yet overlooked source of N in coastal systems