Young peoples’ reflections on what teachers think about family obligations that conflict with school: A focus on the non-normative roles of young caring and language brokering

In “Western” contexts school attendance is central for an ‘ideal’ childhood. However, many young people engage with home roles that conflict with school expectations. This paper explores perceptions of that process in relation two home activities - language brokering and young caring. We interviewed 46 young people and asked them to reflect on what the teacher would think when a child had to miss school to help a family member. This paper discusses the young people’s overall need to keep their out-of-school lives private from their teachers

Using vignette methodology as a tool for exploring cultural identity positions of language brokers

This paper examines how vignette methodology can aid understanding of cultural identity. This is demonstrated through a study of child language brokers where a child is engaged in the cultural contexts of both the host culture and the home culture and must therefore negotiate new cultural identities. Participants were young people aged 15-18 years; some of whom were brokers while others were not. Drawing on notions of adequacy and inadequacy, visibility and invisibility, theoretical ideas around cultural identity theory and dialogical self theory can provide an understanding of how the young people moved through different (often conflicting) identity positions

‘‘You try to keep a brave face on but inside you are in bits’’: Grandparent experiences of engaging with professionals in Children’s Services

This article presents findings from an evaluation conducted in 2012, of the advice and advocacy service provided by the charity Family Rights Group for families involved with children’s services. It specifically focuses on the experiences of grandparents and explores accounts from grandparents who were either in the process of seeking care of their grandchildren or were already caring for grandchildren but without formal support or recognition. The findings suggest that there is a need to pay greater attention to the fears of such grandparents about children’s services in a context where there appears to be a policy preference for adoption. Also evident is a paradox at the heart of contemporary social work practices towards grandparents. While some felt dismissed and marginalized very quickly by social workers and imaginative approaches to care possibilities did not appear to be pursued, others were carrying enormous burdens of care often for very long periods of time without either financial support or legal recognition. To strengthen the care options for children and respect the ethic of care that is clearly to be observed operating in grandparenting practices, it is suggested that a more thorough interrogation of the multiple and often highly contradictory meanings attached to family is required on the part of social workers

Views and Experiences of Sex, Sexuality and Relationships Following Spinal Cord Injury: A Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis of the Qualitative Literature

Research examining the effects of spinal cord injury on sexuality has largely focused on physiological functioning and quantification of dysfunction following injury. This paper reports a systematic review of qualitative research that focused on the views and experiences of people with spinal cord injury on sex and relationships. The review addressed the following research question: What are the views and experiences of people with spinal cord injury of sex, sexuality and relationships following injury? Five databases were relevant and employed in the review: CINAHL (1989-2016 only), PsychInfo, PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science, for research published between 1 January 1980 and 30 November 2019. After removing duplicates, 257 records remained and were screened using a two-stage approach to inclusion and quality appraisal. Following screening, 27 met the criteria for inclusion and are reported in the paper. The review includes studies from fifteen countries across five continents. Two main approaches to data analysis summary and thematic synthesis were undertaken to analyze the qualitative data reported in the papers. The analysis revealed four main themes: sexual identity; significant and generalized others, sexual embodiment; and; sexual rehabilitation and education

Whose development are we talking about? Commentary on <i>Deconstructing Developmental Psychology</i>

A key theme within Deconstructing Developmental Psychology is how developmental descriptions produce particular kinds of subjects, where description provides the language and also the practices through which children are produced as subjects of concern, intervention and study. Burman argues that, “The normal child, the ideal type, distilled from the comparative scores of age-graded populations, is therefore a fiction or myth.” (Burman, 2008 p22). The production of the ‘normal’ child, and (assumed to be) universal developmental trajectory, are central to psychology as a discipline and to everyday knowledge and understanding of children. In parts of the global North government actions, such as early intervention to screen for ‘problematic behaviour’ in children and structured (often compulsory) parenting support programmes, draw on developmental science and (assumed) universal developmental pathways to underpin interventions (Holt, 2010)

[Editorial] Different adulthoods: Normative development and transgressive trajectories

In dominant representations of the life course, the move through time is assumed to be a relatively unproblematic developmental trajectory from childhood to adulthood, with some acknowledgement of potential turbulence in the transition. Feminist work, such as that of Erica Burman (Burman, 2018 and also see special issue of Feminism & Psychology 2015 for responses to her work), has highlighted the constructed nature of child development and the conceptual and political issues at stake in the proposition of a singular developmental trajectory. In this Special Section we extend this theorizing into a consideration of adulthood. Our interest is in how normative adulthood becomes naturalized through dominant developmental discourse

Mapping the social geographies of autism: online and off-line narratives of neuro-shared and separate spaces

This paper draws together empirical work that has been produced by the authors in two different autistic spaces: The Swedish paper Empowerment produced by and aimed at adults with autism, and English-speaking autistic communities on-line. While the two points of data collection are quite different, there are important points of commonality which enable us to explore central issues concerning autistic and neurotypical space and the meanings assigned to these in different contexts. The paper aims to introduce the notion of social geographies of autism, based on talks among adults with autism and a social movement to promote autistic identities, giving examples from our previous work that has spanned both on- and off-line spaces. Key issues discussed in the paper include a focus on autistic political platforms and the carving out of both social and political spaces for people with autism. In doing so, neuro-separate and neuro-shared spaces must be negotiated

Changing families, changing childhoods - changing schools?

This paper reports key findings from a study of young people’s engagement in ‘atypical’ activities in their families. The project focussed on young caring and language brokering as two roles which are not assumed to be “normal” activities for children and young people. The findings presented are from a survey of 1002 young people and from one-to-one interviews with a sample selected from the survey sample. The voices of young people in the interview study are used in the paper to illustrate the diverse range of childhood experiences. The paper discusses some of the ways in which pastoral systems in schools can take account of diverse childhoods and family needs more effectively than they have done in the pas

"You try to keep a brave face on but inside you are in bits": Grandparent experiences of engaging with professionals in Childrens Services

This article presents findings from an evaluation conducted in 2012, of the advice and advocacy service provided by the charity Family Rights Group for families involved with children’s services. It specifically focuses on the experiences of grandparents and explores accounts from grandparents who were either in the process of seeking care of their grandchildren or were already caring for grandchildren but without formal support or recognition. The findings suggest that there is a need to pay greater attention to the fears of such grandparents about children’s services in a context where there appears to be a policy preference for adoption. Also evident is a paradox at the heart of contemporary social work practices towards grandparents. While some felt dismissed and marginalized very quickly by social workers and imaginative approaches to care possibilities did not appear to be pursued, others were carrying enormous burdens of care often for very long periods of time without either financial support or legal recognition. To strengthen the care options for children and respect the ethic of care that is clearly to be observed operating in grandparenting practices, it is suggested that a more thorough interrogation of the multiple and often highly contradictory meanings attached to family is required on the part of social workers