Young families\u27 utilisation, self-perceived requirements, and satisfaction with child health services in the City of Belmont, Western Australia

The expectations of young families regarding care they would like to receive from community nurses working in the child health area is affected by the relationship between those expectations, utilisation and sociocultural factors such as family type, family composition and ethnicity. These factors influence family dynamics, needs, functioning and interactions with the wider community. A descriptive study with both quantitative and qualitative components was used to identify and analyse the self-identified requirements of young families utilising Child Health Services in the Belmont area, Western Australia, and their patterns of utilisation. Twenty five women who had a child or children under 5 years of age were interviewed. The study was guided by a conceptual framework provided by the Ottawa Charter (World Health Organisation-Health and Welfare Canada-Canadian Public Health Organisation, 1996). The three main themes that emerged from the data showed that the young families identified knowledge acquisition, reassurance of normal growth and development and accessibility as their key self-perceived requirements of Child Health Services. Family type, family composition and ethnicity were examined within the contexts of these themes, resulting in a greater understanding of the child health issues relating to all types of family groups. The challenge for the providers of Child Health Services is to provide culturally appropriate Child Health Services based on the principles of primary health care within an environment experiencing fiscal restraint The long term benefits to the families and the health care system are not easily evaluated but have important and wide ranging positive effects on the health and wellbeing of the community

Rainbows: A primary health care initiative for primary schools

Within the current Australian health system is the understanding of a need to change from the predominate biomedical model to incorporate a comprehensive primary health care centred approach, embracing the social contexts of health and wellbeing. Recent research investigated the benefits of the primary health care philosophy and strategies in relation to the Rainbows programme which addresses grief and loss in primary school aged students in Western Australia. A multidisciplinary collaboration between the Western Australian Departments of Health and Education enabled community school health nurse coordinators to train teacher facilitators in the implementation of Rainbows, enabling support for students and their parents. The results of this qualitative study indicate that all participants regard Rainbows as effective, with many perceived benefits to students and their families

Raman Quantum Memory with Built-In Suppression of Four-wave Mixing Noise

Quantum memories are essential for large-scale quantum information networks. Along with high efficiency, storage lifetime and optical bandwidth, it is critical that the memory add negligible noise to the recalled signal. A common source of noise in optical quantum memories is spontaneous four-wave mixing. We develop and implement a technically simple scheme to suppress this noise mechanism by means of quantum interference. Using this scheme with a Raman memory in warm atomic vapour we demonstrate over an order of magnitude improvement in noise performance. Furthermore we demonstrate a method to quantify the remaining noise contributions and present a route to enable further noise suppression. Our scheme opens the way to quantum demonstrations using a broadband memory, significantly advancing the search for scalable quantum photonic networks.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures plus Supplementary Materia

The emerging role of the urban-based Aboriginal peer support worker: A Western Australian study

Purpose: To explore the self-perceived role of the Aboriginal peer support worker working with families with young children. This study was a component of a larger participatory action research study undertaken in a Western Australian metropolitan setting to develop and evaluate the suitability, feasibility and effectiveness of an Aboriginal peer-led home visiting program. Methods: Focus group interviews were carried out with peer support workers using unstructured and semi-structured interviews within Action Learning Sets. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Results: The overarching theme on the self-perceived role of the Aboriginal peer support worker was Giving Parent Support, with subsidiary themes relating to development and ongoing sustainability of the support. Discussion: The peer support workers viewed their role as providing parent support through enabling strategies which developed client acceptance and trust, delivered culturally relevant support, advocated for families, developed therapeutic engagement and communication strategies, and created safe home visiting practices. They recognised the importance of linking families with community support such as community child health nurses which was important for improving long term physical and psychosocial health outcomes for children. Conclusion: Aboriginal Peer Support Workers identified their emerging integral role in the development of this unique culturally acceptable home visitingsupport for Aboriginal parents. Innovative approaches towards client engagement demonstrated their value in developing creative ways of working in partnership with families, community support services and child health nurses across a range of challenging psychosocial environments

Family-centered care for hospitalized children aged 0-12 years: a systematic review of qualitative studies

The foundation for a family-centered approach to pediatric health care is the belief that a child'semotional and developmental needs, and overall family wellbeing are best achieved when the service system supports the ability of the family to meet the needs of their child by involving families in their child’s care. There are a range of potential benefits and difficulties associated with the provision of family centred care, e.g. role negotiation, parental expectations in regard to participation in their child’s care, and issues relating to power and control. Currently, however, there is limited systematic information on how the principles of family-centered care are implemented in the delivery of care to the hospitalized child and their family, and the impact on the family and the health care providers

Theory of noise suppression in {\Lambda}-type quantum memories by means of a cavity

Quantum memories, capable of storing single photons or other quantum states of light, to be retrieved on-demand, offer a route to large-scale quantum information processing with light. A promising class of memories is based on far-off-resonant Raman absorption in ensembles of $\Lambda$-type atoms. However at room temperature these systems exhibit unwanted four-wave mixing, which is prohibitive for applications at the single-photon level. Here we show how this noise can be suppressed by placing the storage medium inside a moderate-finesse optical cavity, thereby removing the main roadblock hindering this approach to quantum memory.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures. This paper provides the theoretical background to our recent experimental demonstration of noise suppression in a cavity-enhanced Raman-type memory ( arXiv:1510.04625 ). See also the related paper arXiv:1511.05448, which describes numerical modelling of an atom-filled cavity. Comments welcom

Hospital admission patterns in children with CAH: admission rates and adrenal crises decline with age

Objective: To examine patterns of hospitalisation for acute medical conditions in children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). Design: A retrospective study of hospitalisation using administrative data. Setting. All hospitals in NSW, Australia. Patients: All patients admitted with CAH and a random sample of admissions in patients aged 0 to 18 years without adrenal insufficiency (AI). Main Outcome Measures: Admissions and comorbidities by age and sex. Results: Of 573 admissions for medical problems in CAH children, 286 (49.9%) were in males, and 236 (41.2%) had a principal diagnosis of CAH or had an adrenal crisis (AC). 37 (6.5%) ACs were recorded. An infection was found in 43.5% ( = 249) of the CAH patient admissions and 51.7% ( = 1613) of the non-AI group, \u3c 0.001. Children aged up to one year had the highest number of admissions ( = 149) and six ACs (four in males).There were 21 ACs recorded for children aged 1–5 years. Older CAH children had fewer admissions and fewer ACs. No in-hospital deaths were recorded. Conclusions. Admission for medical problems in CAH children declines with age. An AC was recorded in 6.5% of the admissions, with the majority of ACs occurring in the 1 to 5 years age group and there were no deaths

High-speed noise-free optical quantum memory

Quantum networks promise to revolutionise computing, simulation, and communication. Light is the ideal information carrier for quantum networks, as its properties are not degraded by noise in ambient conditions, and it can support large bandwidths enabling fast operations and a large information capacity. Quantum memories, devices that store, manipulate, and release on demand quantum light, have been identified as critical components of photonic quantum networks, because they facilitate scalability. However, any noise introduced by the memory can render the device classical by destroying the quantum character of the light. Here we introduce an intrinsically noise-free memory protocol based on two-photon off-resonant cascaded absorption (ORCA). We consequently demonstrate for the first time successful storage of GHz-bandwidth heralded single photons in a warm atomic vapour with no added noise; confirmed by the unaltered photon statistics upon recall. Our ORCA memory platform meets the stringent noise-requirements for quantum memories whilst offering technical simplicity and high-speed operation, and therefore is immediately applicable to low-latency quantum networks