Portrayals of Child Abuse Scandals in the Media in Australia and England: Impacts on Practice, Policy, and Systems

This article describes how the media have played a key role in placing the issue of child maltreatment and the problems associated with child protection high on public and political agendas over the last 50 years. It also describes how the influence of the media is far from unambiguous. Although the media has been crucial in bringing the problems into the open, it often does so in particular ways. In being so concerned with scandals and tragedies ∗ Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Bob Lonne, School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology, Victoria Park Road, Kelvin Grove, Queensland 4059, Australia. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected]. in a variety of institutionalized and community settings, the media have portrayed the nature of child maltreatment in ways which deflect attention from many of its core characteristics and causes. A focus on the media is important because of the power the media have to help transform the private into the public, but at the same time, to undermine trust, reputation, and legitimacy of the professionals working in the field. This concern is key for those working in the child protection field and has been a source of tension in public policy in both Australia and England for many years

Paresthesia free spinal cord stimulation in experimental chronic neuropathic pain

Chronic neuropathic pain is a great burden for patients, often leading to disability and reduced quality of life. Conventional pharmaceutical treatment often does not result in sufficient pain relief or is accompanied by unacceptable side effects. Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is an advanced treatment option for these patients that do not respond to pharmaceutical treatments. However, conventional SCS is not perfect and the SCS-field is ever evolving, resulting in more recently developed paresthesia free (PF-) SCS paradigms. These PF-paradigms still require optimization to potentially increase treatment efficacy. This thesis describes the effects of various types of PF-SCS paradigms on mechanical hypersensitivity in rodent models of chronic neuropathic pain. In addition, the involvement of spinal serotonergic and GABAergic systems in the analgesic mechanisms of PF-SCS is characterized. The findings in this thesis provide an important fundament for the (mechanism-based) optimization of PF-SCS-induced analgesia in patients suffering from chronic neuropathic pain

The social and cultural context of remembering : implications for recalling childhood sexual abuse

Remembering is a social cultural activity. Contributors to this Special Issue were asked to address how conversations about personally experienced past events might or might not influence subsequent memory, especially in light of current controversies regarding historical memories of sexual abuse. For many years, the study of human memory focused on the individual engaging in a cognitive activity that produced a specific representation of a past event at a specific time point. But as the papers in this issue make clear, memory is an active ongoing social process that has cascading effects over time, an idea first developed by Bartlett (1932) and championed by Neisser (1982). Even when reminiscing to ourselves, there is an imagined audience, a way of expressing memories of our past selves to our current selves (Halbwachs, 1925/1952). What is remembered about any given event on any given day will depend on both the history of that memory, the specific local context within which the individual is remembering, and the larger sociocultural developmental history within which the individual is embedded (Nelson & Fivush, 2004). In this commentary, we pull the threads through these contributions, and discuss three major factors that contribute to remembering: language, emotion and time. These are, obviously, “big” constructs, but we try to weave together arguments and findings presented across the contributions to this issue. We end with some thoughts on what this might mean specifically for remembering childhood sexual abuse

Child welfare inequalities: new evidence, further questions

Research internationally has identified large differences in rates of child safeguarding interventions, recently characterized as child welfare inequalities, markers of social inequalities in childhood with parallels to inequalities in health and education. This paper reports a Nuffield Foundation-funded study to examine the role of deprivation in explaining differences in key children's services interventions between and within local authorities (LAs). The study involved an analysis of descriptive data on over 10% of children on child protection plans or in out-of-home care in 14 English LAs at 31 March 2012. The data demonstrate very large inequalities in rates of child welfare interventions within and between LAs, systematically related to levels of deprivation. There is evidence of a gradient in child welfare inequalities across the whole of society. There also appears to be an equivalent of the inverse care law for health: For any given level of deprivation in local neighbourhoods, LAs with lower overall levels of deprivation were intervening more often. The findings raise fundamental questions for research, policy and practice including whether the allocation of children's service resources sufficiently recognize the impact of deprivation on demand and how we judge whether a safeguarding system is effective at the population level. Publisher statement: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Bywaters, P. , Brady, G.M. , Sparks, T. and Bos, E. (2014) Child welfare inequalities: new evidence, further questions. Child & Family Social Work, volume 21, issue 3, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cfs.12154. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving'

‘It's What Gets Through People's Radars Isn't It’:relationships in social work practice and knowledge exchange

This article draws on findings from a knowledge exchange (KE) project, which involved academics working with local authority social workers around a theme of engaging with involuntary clients. The user engagement agenda is actively promoted in social work but is not straightforward, reflecting a mish-mash of client rights and managerial and consumerist agendas. Engaging with involuntary clients, in particular, those whose involvement with social work is mandated by law, rarely fits into policy agendas and requires a range of conditions and practitioner skills for it to happen effectively. A parallel aim of our project was to explore what was seen to be effective in the KE and knowledge mobilisation (KM) processes when local authorities and university academics work together. Like client engagement, KE is also seen as ‘a good thing’ but in reality it is similarly problematic. In this article, we trace the growth of both client engagement and KE agendas, particularly in relation to social work. We describe our project and discuss its findings. A number of parallel processes might be identified in ‘what works’ with hard to reach social work clients and ‘what works’ in KE/KM. Neither are linear or necessarily rational processes. What does seem to hold both together, however, is the nature of relationships built up between, in the first instance, social workers and those they work with and, in the second, between academics and local authority practitioners. These findings suggest that personal qualities that might be associated with the concept of emotional intelligence play an important part in enabling both social work practice and KE/KM to happen effectively

Modélisation de la propagation ultrasonore dans les matériaux composites obtenus par le procédé de fabrication RTM (Resin Transfer Molding)

Le procédé de fabrication des matériaux composites RTM (Resin Transfer Molding) est utilisé pour produire des pièces de géométrie complexe. Lors du contrôle ultrasonore de ces pièces, une mesure d'atténuation est effectuée pour caractériser le taux de porosité éventuel (défaut possible dans ces matériaux). Cependant, une grande variabilité d'atténuation est observée y compris pour des pièces saines de géométrie plane. L'objectif de notre travail est d'expliquer ce fait en développant un modèle de propagation et d'atténuation des ondes ultrasonores dans ces pièces dont la microstructure complexe présente un aspect multiéchelles. Un modèle original a été développé pour prédire l'atténuation à l'échelle élémentaire d'une couche unidirectionnelle de fibres de carbone dans une matrice d'époxy, couplant les phénomènes de diffusion multiple par les fibres et d'absorption par effet viscoélastique. Il a été validé expérimentalement et est applicable à tous les composites fibreux à deux phases, quelle qu'en soit la concentration de fibres. à l'échelle supérieure d'un pli constitué de plusieurs couches élémentaires de différentes orientations, une homogénéisation suffit à prédire le comportement anisotrope des ondes ultrasonores et leur atténuation. Une plaque réelle est constituée d'un ensemble de plis séparés de couches de résines pures, l'épaisseur des différents plis et couches étant fortement variable. Une étude statistique a été menée pour prédire l'influence de ces variations géométriques sur la transmission des ultrasons modélisée suivant un formalisme dérivé de la méthode de Thomson-Haskell. La variabilité d'atténuation ultrasonore observée en pratique est quantitativement reproduite et expliquée par l'irrégularité géométrique de la micro-structure.The Resin Transfer Molding process for manufacturing composite materials is used to produce parts of complex shape. During the ultrasonic examination of such parts, attenuation is measured to characterize possible porosity content (a potential defect in this material). However, strong variation of attenuation is observed including on sound plates. The present study aims at explaining this by developing a model for ultrasonic propagation and attenuation in such parts which complex micro-structure exhibits a multiple-scale aspect. An original model has been developed to predict attenuation at the elementary scale of an unidirectional layer of Carbon fibers in an epoxy matrix. It couples multiple-scattering by fibers and viscoelastic losses phenomena. It has been experimentally validated and applies to arbitrary two-phase fiber reinforced composites whatever the fiber volume fraction. At the upper scale of a ply made of several elementary layers of various orientations, the anisotropic behavior of ultrasonic waves and their attenuation are obtained by a homogenization procedure. An actual plate is made of several plies separated by pure resin layers. Plies and layers thicknesses are highly variable. A statistical study has been conducted to evaluate the influence of these geometrical variations on the ultrasonic transmission predicted by a model derived from Thomson-Haskell formalism. Ultrasonic attenuation variability practically observed is quantitatively reproduced and explained as resulting from the geometrical irregularity of the microstructure

Results of the 2016 UT Modeling Benchmark Obtained with Models Implemented in CIVA

For several years, the World Federation of NDE Centers, WFNDEC, proposes benchmark studies in which simulated results (in either ultrasonic, X-rays or eddy current NDT configurations) obtained with various models are compared to experiments. This year the proposed UT benchmark concerns inspection configurations with multi-skips echoes. This technique is commonly used to inspect thin specimen and/or in case of limited access inspection. This technique relies on the use of T45° mode in order to avoid mode conversion and to facilitate the interpretation of the echoes. To evaluate the influence of the beam divergence on the detectability after several skips, inspections were done with two probes working at 5MHz, with two different apertures. To simplify coupling conditions and probe parameters adjustment, inspections were done using full immersion technique. This communication presents the results obtained for this benchmark with the models implemented in the CIVA software. The results concern echoes from Side Drilled Holes (SDH) and vertical breaking notches after several skips of the beam on the surface and the bottom of a planar block (as displayed in Figure 1). In CIVA, the field radiated by the probe is computed by applying the so-called pencil-model, the PTD approximation (based on Kirchhoff and GTD models) is then applied to predict the response of notches and the SOV (Separation of Variables) model is used for the SDH responses. The comparison between simulated and experimental results are presented and discussed