Me, myself and I: identity and meaning in the lives of vulnerable young people

Questions relating to identity and meaning are fundamental questions of life. As such, they have been the subject of study by scholars across a diverse range of disciplines, including psychology, theology, sociology and philosophy, throughout history. Despite this diversity, scholars agree that identity and meaning are inter-related issues which are central to the lives of human beings.It is widely accepted within the literature that adolescence is a critical period for the development of identity and meaning, and that these concepts may become even more pertinent to young people when they are confronted with persistent challenges or periods of uncertainty. However, our knowledge of how vulnerable young people perceive and experience ‘identity and meaning’ in their lives remains less clear.This research study, funded by the Institute for Catholic Identity and Mission, Australian Catholic University (ACU ), and conducted by the Institute of Child Protection Studies (ICPS) aimed to further our understanding of this area by exploring the following questions: What is the role and potency of identity and meaning in the lives of vulnerable young people? What are the implications of this for the way that we support vulnerable young people? The study adopted a participatory and qualitative approach and was conducted throughout 2012. Twenty four young people participated in in-depth one-on-one interviews about their lives

Engaging children in research on sensitive issues: a literature review

It is now widely accepted that children should be actively involved in any research project that seeks to understand and respond appropriately to children's unique perspectives and experiences. The challenge that lies ahead for those researchers committed to hearing children's voices, is how to do this in a way that is both effective and ethical..

"Nowhere to go" : Investigating homelessness experiences of 12-15 year-olds in the Australian Capital Territory

[Executive Summary] Youth homelessness has been recognised as being a significant issue in Australia. Despite this, there has been little attention given to understanding how young people, especially those under 16 years of age, experience and navigate unaccompanied homelessness. A recent report on unaccompanied homeless people aged 10-17 in Tasmania highlights that, in addition to experiencing complex adversity, young people in this age group may be particularly vulnerable to policy and service provision gaps (Robinson, 2017). With an aim to better understand the issue of youth homelessness for 12-15 year olds in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), the ACT Government’s Community Services Directorate (CSD) commissioned the Institute of Child Protection Studies (the Institute) to conduct a qualitative study. The study interviewed ten 16-19 year olds who were asked to reflect on their experience of homelessness when aged 12-15 years. The study aimed to answer the following research questions: 1. What were the factors that contributed to young people aged 12-15 years becoming homeless in Canberra, ACT? 2. What were the lived experiences of these homeless young people? 3. What were the informal and formal support and service experiences of these young people? 4. What were the needs of these young people? 5. What would help prevent young people (aged 12-15yrs) from becoming homeless? 6. How might we best provide support to young people who experience homelessness when aged between 12-15 years in Canberra? 7. Who or what helped these young people transition out of homelessness? The findings of this study highlight some common precursors and pathways into homelessness. Almost all participants in this study experienced significant adversity throughout their childhoods, often living in family homes characterised by violence, abuse and/or neglect. Half had been removed by child protection authorities into the out-of-home care system – but the young people felt this had not led to safe, stable or secure housing. As such, the majority of young people we interviewed felt like they had never had a home – a place of safety, security and happiness. Family conflict, with parents or carers, was a significant issue for the young people in this study. Alongside conflict at home, the young people we spoke to were facing a range of other challenges including: declining mental health, problems at school and feeling that no-one really understood the significance of the problems they were experiencing, or could do anything to help. With these challenges compounding, and with limited resources and minimal supports to turn to, young people felt they were left with little choice but to leave their unsafe or uncaring homes and enter into unaccompanied homelessness. Once homeless, young people felt scared and alone and had nowhere to go that could offer safe or secure housing. Young people largely relied on family or friends for short term offers of housing and other basic needs such as money and food. For over half of the participants, spending nights on the street became inevitable. Young people were connected to many formal services. However, none of these were able to meet the full range of their practical and emotional needs. Beyond access to housing or income support, which was particularly difficult for young people aged under 16yrs, young people required support with their physical and mental health and support to engage in meaningful activities (such as education or employment). Young people felt that more effective practical and emotional support could be provided if formal supporters listen carefully, take young people’s concerns seriously and use their power to advocate for young people’s needs. Effective advocacy to help young people navigate complex service systems and successfully access income and housing was particularly critical. The desire and determination for a better life had led most of the young people to leave their family homes and enter into homelessness. This determination had sustained and motivated young people whilst they experienced the many challenges associated with being homeless. At the time of their interview, some young people had achieved stable housing and were making significant caring contributions to others and/or were meaningfully engaged in work or study. Half of the young people who participated in this study, however, remained homeless. As the young people noted, there is much work to be done to help prevent and better respond to youth homelessness in the ACT. The young people who participated in this study hope their views and experiences can assist in this important work

Reading, writing and responsibility :young carers and education

The aims of this research were to: Identify the major issues and concerns of young carers in the education system, including the barriers to them achieving satisfactory outcomes in education and receiving appropriate supports and services (including external referrals); Identify the information needs of teachers and other school staff in appropriately supporting young carers within the school environment; Identify strategies to meet the information needs of teachers and the support needs of young carers within educational settings

Ultrarelativistic Bondi--Hoyle Accretion I: Axisymmetry

An ultrarelativistic relativistic study of axisymmetric Bondi--Hoyle accretion onto a moving Kerr black hole is presented. The equations of general relativistic hydrodynamics are solved using high resolution shock capturing methods. In this treatment we consider the ultrarelativistic limit wherein one may neglect the baryon rest mass density. This approximation is valid in the regime where the internal energy of the system dominates over the rest mass energy contribution from the baryons. The parameters of interest in this study are the adiabatic constant $\Gamma$, and the asymptotic speed of the fluid, $v_\infty$. We perform our simulations in three different regimes, subsonic, marginally supersonic, and supersonic, but the primary focus of this study is the parameter regime in which the flow is supersonic, that is when $v_\infty \ge c_{s}^{\infty}$. As expected from previous studies the supersonic regimes reveal interesting dynamics, but even more interesting is the presence of a bow shock in marginally supersonic systems. A range of parameter values were investigated to attempt to capture possible deviations from steady state solutions, none were found. To show the steady state behaviour of each of the flows studied we calculate the energy accretion rates on the Schwarzschild radius. Additionally, we also find that the accretion flows are dependent on the location of the computational boundary, that if the computational boundary is located too close to the black hole the calculated flow profiles are marred with numerical artifacts. This is a problem not found in previous relativistic models for ultrarelativistic hydrodynamic systems.Comment: 16 pages, 15 figures, Typos correcte

More a marathon than a hurdle: towards children’s informed consent in a study on safety

Informed consent is critical in research with children. Although much has been written about the need to see consent as an ongoing process, less has considered how to do it in practice. This article reflects on the authors’ experiences of conducting a piece of research focusing on children’s experiences of safety from abuse within institutional contexts. It draws on feedback provided by participants and the guidance of three Children’s Reference Groups. The importance of presenting information in accessible and appropriate ways, of providing opportunities for participants to negotiate their participation and for in-the-moment challenges be dealt with collaboratively and reflexively are stressed. To illustrate our approach, we provide a number of consent tools and describe how they were utilised

The "Lactation After Infant Death (AID) Framework": A Guide for Online Health Information Provision About Lactation After Stillbirth and Infant Death

Most parents who give birth to a stillborn infant, or who give birth then endure the death of their young infant, will encounter the onset of lactation (McGuinness et al., 2014). For breastfeeding parents who experience the death of their older infant, many will have established lactation or frozen stores of expressed human milk ([EHM] McGuinness et al., 2014). Despite this, lactation and EHM are rarely discussed with bereaved parents in healthcare settings (Britz & Henry, 2013; Carroll, Lenne, McEgan et al., 2014; Redshaw et al., 2014). As a result, many bereaved parents who have recently given birth are unprepared when they begin to lactate, and few are aware of the range of suppression, expression, or donation options that may be available to them (Carroll & Lenne, 2019; McGuinness et al., 2014; Welborn, 2012b). The lack of anticipatory guidance regarding lactation after infant death can be a significant source of distress for parents, exacerbating the emotional pain of their child’s death (Carroll & Lenne, 2019; McGuinness et al., 2014; Welborn, 2012b). This lack may also inadvertently compound the invisibility and ambiguity of parenthood experienced by many bereaved parents (Cacciatore et al., 2008; Layne, 2003; Oreg, 2019). Furthermore, parents bereaved as a result of giving birth to a stillborn infant or enduring their infant’s death are likely to experience breast engorgement, pain, and milk leakage (McGuinness et al., 2014) and, in the absence of reliable information, they may follow lactation management methods that prove ineffective or lead to mastitis or abscess. To prevent adverse outcomes, bereaved parents require anticipatory guidance or lactation support from qualified health professionals.This research is funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP180100517)

Chemical complexity in protoplanetary disks in the era of ALMA and Rosetta

Comets provide a unique insight into the molecular composition and complexity of the material in the primordial solar nebula. Recent results from the Rosetta mission, currently monitoring comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in situ, and ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) have demonstrated a tantalising link between the chemical complexity now confirmed in disks (via the detection of gas-phase cf.CH3CN Öberg et al. [13]) and that confirmed on the surface of 67P (Goesmann et al. [3]), raising questions concerning the chemical origin of such species (cloud or inheritance versus disk synthesis). Results from an astrochemical model of a protoplanetary disk are presented in which complex chemistry is included and in which it is assumed that simple ices only are inherited from the parent molecular cloud. The model results show good agreement with the abundances of several COMs observed on the surface of 67P with Philae/COSAC. Cosmic-ray and X-ray-induced photoprocessing of predominantly simple ices inherited by the protoplanetary disk is sufficient to generate a chemical complexity similar to that observed in comets. This indicates that the icy COMs detected on the surface of 67P may have a disk origin. The results also show that gas-phase cf.CH3CN is abundant in the inner warm disk atmosphere where hot gas-phase chemistry dominates and potentially erases the ice chemical signature. Hence, cf.CH3CN may not be an unambiguous tracer of the complex organic ice reservoir. However, a better understanding of the hot gas-phase chemistry of cf.CH3CN is needed to confirm this preliminary conclusion

Disempowered, passive and isolated: how teenage mothers’ postnatal inpatient experiences in the UK impact on the initiation and continuation of breastfeeding

Teenage mothers in the UK and other developed, English-speaking nations are among those least likely to breastfeed. Evidence suggests more young mothers intend to breastfeed than actually start, indicating that their post-birth experiences militate against initiating breastfeeding. We aimed to explore how the inpatient experiences of a group of young women who gave birth as teenagers influenced their feeding decisions and experiences, and ascertain their ideals for breastfeeding support. Six focus groups or interviews were conducted with 15 women aged 16-20 who had intended to breastfeed or breastfed. Women were recruited from teenage parent groups in Oxfordshire, UK. Ethical approval was obtained from the relevant authorities. Data was analysed inductively using a thematic approach. Three overriding themes of ‘postbirth experience on Labour Ward: disempowered and passive’; ‘the postnatal ward: alien, alone and exposed’; and ‘being there: a need for relational support’ were identified. Sub-themes on Labour Ward were ‘feelings at birth: ’so tired and so dazed’; ‘deliver, stitch, dress’ and ‘initiating feeding’. Participants described care that followed set routines, discouraging their initiating breastfeeding by compounding feelings of dependance and encouraging a passive role as midwives took control, often deciding when and how babies should be fed. Sub-themes on the postnatal ward were ‘an alien environment’; ‘feeling exposed and judged’ and ‘miscommunications’. The young mothers’ breastfeeding support requirements reflected those known to be desired by older women, but they particularly wanted guidance and esteem support to be provided by a health professional, while looking to their peers for emotional support