State Case Studies of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Systems: Strategies for Change

Profiles efforts to develop mental health identification and intervention systems for children up to age 5 in Colorado, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Examines hurdles, reform potentials, and lessons learned, including the role of partnerships

State Law in Federal Courts: The Implications of de Novo Review—In re McLinn, 739 F.2d 1395 (9th Cir. 1984)

In In re McLinn, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected this traditional reliance on the district court\u27s determination of state law and held that issues of state law in federal court will be reviewed under a new, de novo standard. The McLinn case reveals a dilemma in the treatment of state law in federal courts. The Erie doctrine requires federal courts to ascertain and apply state law, and gives them a broad responsibility for doing so. At the same time federal courts are unable to accurately predict and apply unresolved issues of state law. This Note discusses the doctrine governing the treatment of state law in federal courts and presents the McLinn case. It then analyzes the Erie doctrine and the problems inherent in its application, and assesses the McLinn court\u27s approach to these problems. Finally, it suggests a way to implement the McLinn decision while achieving the goal of accurate application of state law in federal court

The dialectics of playwork: A conceptual and ethnographic study of playwork using Cultural Historical Activity Theory

This study offers an original analysis of contradictions inherent in playwork practice. It is ethnographic and political, using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), and taking an interpretivist and (post-) Marxist epistemological stance. Playwork’s fundamental contradiction is that between understanding children’s play as autotelic and self-organising on the one hand, and on the other seeking and accounting for public funding that requires services to address policy agendas. In CHAT terms, this is the dialectic between playwork’s use value and exchange value. Fieldwork data comprise participant observation in an urban open access Play Centre and semi-structured interviews both with the Play Centre playworkers and playworkers practising before the introduction of the 1989 Children Act. Such services were historically funded in deprived areas to keep children off the streets and on the straight and narrow. The Children’s Fund, operational at the time of the fieldwork, was a contemporary equivalent within the totalising, future-focused ‘risk and prevention’ policy paradigm. Playwork spaces were co-produced through a dialectical triad (Lefebvre, 1991) of adult planning (assuming outcomes), spatial practices (interventions) and lived moments of playfulness that both resisted adult intentions and gave rise to a hope that temporarily made life better. Open access playwork spaces were emotionally highly charged, both because of the nature of play itself – its exuberances and tragedies – and the children. This highlighted tensions between ideals of play as inherently good and the reality of adaptation to interpersonal, structural and symbolic violence characterising the children’s lives. Play frames frequently fell apart as raw emotions seeped through, and settings operated on the edge of violence. Playwork subjectivities are performative and emotive. In particular three forms of dialectically interrelated hope were discernible: a far hope of policy projects, a revolutionary hope of emancipatory ideals, and a near, everyday hope in moments of playfulness. An ethics of playwork dispositions is proposed that moves beyond rational, universal rules or outcomes towards relational ethics, acknowledging the particularity of situations, emotions and the alterity of others (children and adults)

Interview with Wendy Russell: Sonia Livingstone and Kate Cowan interview with Wendy Russell

To understand how the culture and concept of play has evolved over time, Sonia Livingstone and Kate Cowan spoke to Wendy Russell from the University of Gloucestershire as part of our interview series on play in the digital world

Nutrient Content and Physical Properties of Scottish Hemp Oil and Oil By-products : Data to support the revalorisation of hemp by-products and promote a circular nutrition

This research was funded by the Scottish Government’s Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS) Strategic Research Programme; Theme B, Hemp: a climate resilient crop for the future of Scottish agriculture; Project Reference: RI-B1-01

A single supplement of a standardised bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus L.) extract (36 % wet weight anthocyanins) modifies glycaemic response in individuals with type 2 diabetes controlled by diet and lifestyle

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Facilitation of deliberation in the classroom: The interplay of facilitative technique and design to increase inclusiveness

Widespread global interest and adoption of deliberative democracy approaches to reinvigorate citizenship and policy making in an era of democratic crisis/decline has been mirrored by increasing interest in deliberation in schools, both as an approach to pedagogy and student empowerment, and as a training ground for deliberative citizenship. In school deliberation, as in other settings, a key and sometimes neglected element of high-quality deliberation is facilitation. Facilitation can help to establish and maintain deliberative norms, as well as assisting participants to deliberate productively and achieve collective goals. This article draws on our experience as scholar/practitioners running a Deliberation in Schools program in Australia to explore challenges and strategies for deliberative facilitation. The challenges we discuss are power, inequality, diversity and boundaries, disagreement and integration and these are discussed in the general context of inclusiveness. We highlight two facets of deliberative facilitation – technique and design – which are important for dealing with these challenges and increasing inclusion in school deliberation and in democratic deliberation more generally

What if and What More: disturbing habits of thought about playwork ‘re-search’

This short article reports on a presentation given at an International Journal of Playwork Practice seminar in 2018. It describes an approach to evaluating the work of an adventure playground using Participative Action Research and a critical cartographic method for producing documentation that shows the unique nature of playwork

Co-creating an Adventure Playground (CAP): Reading playwork stories, practices and artefacts, Gloucester: University of Gloucestershire

This report draws on findings from an action research project carried out with an adventure playground (AP) over a six-month period during summer/autumn 2013. The overall intention was to explore the ways in which playwork practitioners at the playground make sense of and give meaning to their practice in designing and maintaining an environment for play. Working collaboratively with members of the play and playwork team at the University of Gloucestershire, adventure playground workers explored current articulations of design intentions and practices drawing on a range of conceptual approaches and tools. This brought a critical and reflective lens to the production of the AP, its everyday rhythms, routines and habits, and the ways in which adults and children co-create play spaces

Impact of protein on the composition and metabolism of the human gut microbiota and health

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Pat Bain for help in preparing figure 1. Financial support: The Rowett Institute is funded by Scottish Government Rural ad Environmental Sciences and Analytical Services (SG-RESAS).Peer reviewedPostprin