Ensuring the right to education for Roma children : an Anglo-Swedish perspective

Access to public education systems has tended to be below normative levels where Roma children are concerned. Various long-standing social, cultural, and institutional factors lie behind the lower levels of engagement and achievement of Roma children in education, relative to many others, which is reflective of the general lack of integration of their families in mainstream society. The risks to Roma children’s educational interests are well recognized internationally, particularly at the European level. They have prompted a range of policy initiatives and legal instruments to protect rights and promote equality and inclusion, on top of the framework of international human rights and minority protections. Nevertheless, states’ autonomy in tailoring educational arrangements to their budgets and national policy agendas has contributed to considerable international variation in specific provision for Roma children. As this article discusses, even between two socially liberal countries, the UK and Sweden, with their well-advanced welfare states and public systems of social support, there is a divergence in protection, one which underlines the need for a more consistent and positive approach to upholding the education rights and interests of children in this most marginalized and often discriminated against minority group

Engaging older people to explore the age-friendliness of a rural community in Northern England: A photo-elicitation study.

From PubMed via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: received 2020-02-20, revised 2021-04-13, accepted 2021-04-20Publication status: ppublishAn ageing society brings with it increased health costs due to the prevalence of long term conditions increasing with age. It is therefore vital to support good health in older people, both to improve their quality of life and to reduce the financial implications of an ageing society. Isolation and loneliness can put people at risk of dying early, and increasing opportunities for social interaction and engagement could mitigate some of the health effects of ageing. However, this requires society to create the conditions that enable older people to participate fully. The World Health Organization's Age-Friendly Cities programme has identified factors that make urban areas Age-Friendly, but research shows that older rural dwellers have unique unmet needs preventing full engagement in their communities. This article describes a pilot project which adapted photo-elicitation to explore the age-friendliness of a rural area in Calderdale, Northern England. It shows that photo-elicitation is a successful method for identifying what older people think is important in making their community age-friendly and it reveals differences between ageing in a city and in a rural setting. This rich data can be used to inform the development of policy in rural areas which is more closely aligned to the needs, preferences and interests of the growing population of older residents. The project also demonstrates the engagement potential of this methodology. Participants continued as co-researchers, learning new skills and taking responsibility for a variety of dissemination activities such as photographic exhibitions, a public report and presentations. This suggests that adapted photo-elicitation is a useful tool for engaging older people in research. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.