Rethinking place and the social work office in the delivery of children's social work services

Limited attention has been given to the concept of place in social work research and practice. This paper draws on the national evaluation of social work practices (SWPs) in England undertaken between 2009 and 2012. SWPs were pilot organisations providing independent social work services for children in out-of-home care in five sites. One factor distinguishing some of these pilots was their attention to place. The evaluation employed a mixed methods approach and we use data from interviews with 121 children and young people in out-of-home care, 19 birth parents and 31 interviews with SWP staff which explored their views and experiences of the SWP offices. Children and young people were alert to the stigma which could attach to social work premises and appreciated offices which were planned and furnished to appear less institutional and more ‘normal’. Daily interactions with staff which conveyed a sense of recognition and value to service users also contributed to a view of some SWP offices as accessible and welcoming places. Both children and parents appreciated offices that provided fun activities that positioned them as active rather than passive. Staff valued opportunities for influencing planning decisions about offices and place was seen to confer a value on them as well as on service users. However, not all the SWPs were able to achieve these aspects of place, and engaging children and families in place was less likely when the service user population was widely dispersed. Recognising the importance of place and how place is constructed through relationships between people as well as through the physical environment appeared to be key to creating offices that combated the stigma attached to out-of-home care. Those leading and managing children’s services should explore ways of involving local communities in planning social work offices and turn attention to making these offices accessible, welcoming, places

Age group, location or pedagogue: factors affecting parental choice of kindergartens in Hungary

Hungary has experienced significant political, economic, demographic and social changes since the end of Soviet domination in the 1990s. The gradual move towards liberal-democracy has been accompanied by growing emphasis on individualism, choice and diversity. Universal kindergarten provision for 5-6 year olds is a long established feature of the Hungarian education system, but little is known about parental choice (Török, 2004). A case study (Yin, 2004) of factors influencing parental choice and satisfaction was undertaken in one Hungarian town. This was based on a survey of 251 parents of children attending both mixed-age and same-age groups across 12 kindergartens. Parents suggested that the most important influences were geographical location and the individual pedagogue(s). Given that traditionally each pedagogue follows ‘their’ cohort from kindergarten entry to primary school, their influence appears heightened. Although generally satisfied with their chosen arrangement, parents from same-age groups expressed significantly more confidence and satisfaction, particularly in relation to cognitive development and preparation for school. Parents appear less convinced about the trend towards mixed-age groups and questions are raised about sufficiency of evidence of their benefits in a Hungarian context and the driving factors behind change

The quality of different types of child care at 10 and 18 months. A comparison between types and factors related to quality.

The quality of care offered in four different types of non-parental child care to 307 infants at 10 months old and 331 infants at 18 months old was compared and factors associated with higher quality were identified. Observed quality was lowest in nurseries at each age point, except that at 18 months they offered more learning activities. There were few differences in the observed quality of care by child-minders, grandparents and nannies, although grandparents had somewhat lower safety and health scores and offered children fewer activities. Cost was largely unrelated to quality of care except in child-minding, where higher cost was associated with higher quality. Observed ratios of children to adults had a significant impact on quality of nursery care; the more infants or toddlers each adult had to care for, the lower the quality of the care she gave them. Mothers' overall satisfaction with their child's care was positively associated with its quality for home-based care but not for nursery settings

Scaling On-Chip Entangled Photon States to Higher Dimensions

Considerable efforts have recently focused on advancing quantum information pro- cessing by increasing the number of qubits (the simplest unit of quantum information) in nonclassical systems such as ultracold atoms and superconducting circuits. A complementary approach to scale up infor- mation content is to move from two-level (qubit) to multilevel (quDit) systems

Democratic experimentation in early childhood education

Qualifications of the early years workforce are a salient predictors of quality and therefore of children’s outcomes. International reports advise that a majority of staff is trained at Bachelor’s levels and rank countries according to this criterion. There is fewer consensus on what this professionalism should be. In a majority of countries, large numbers of professionals are untrained, unqualified and sometimes invisible in the official reports. Many of these unqualified “assistants” take up crucial “care” tasks, while the teacher’s tasks are defined as “education”. The separation between care and education occurs in split systems as well as in systems where education and care are supposed to be integrated. In addition, the growing diversity of families challenges our preconceived ideas about “the good life” for children. These observations urge us to rethink professionalism in terms of reflexivity and the capacity of co-constructing pedagogy with parents and children. A case study in Ghent shows how low qualified professionals develop research capacities. The analysis of their experience suggests that “learning” may be less a quality of the individual than a quality of the systemic relationships that are build in the teams as well as in the interaction between teams and their social contexts

The type and frequency of interactions that occur between staff and children outside in Early Years Foundation Stage settings during a fixed playtime period when there are tricycles available

This study reports on an investigation into adult and child interactions observed in the outdoor play environment in four Local Authority early years foundation stage settings in England. In this instance the common two features across the settings were the presence of tricycles and a timetabled outdoor play period. In total, across the four schools, there were 204 children. The study aimed to gain an understanding of the nature of the dialogues between staff and children, that is, the types of exchange that occurred when either the child approached an adult or the adult approached a child. The most frequent type of utterance was also analysed. The study concludes that adults in these settings spoke more than children and the greatest type of utterance was that of the adult about domestic matters. When the child initiated the conversation there were more extended child utterances than domestic utterances. This may suggest that children wish to be involved in conversations of depth and meaning and that staff need to become aware of how to develop this conversational language with children

A Prospective Study of the Association of Metacognitive Beliefs and Processes with Persistent Emotional Distress After Diagnosis of Cancer

Two hundred and six patients, diagnosed with primary breast or prostate cancer completed self-report questionnaires on two occasions: before treatment (T1) and 12 months later (T2). The questionnaires included: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale; Impact of Events Scale; the Metacognitions Questionnaire-30 (MCQ-30) and the Illness Perceptions Questionnaire-revised. A series of regression analyses indicated that metacognitive beliefs at T1 predicted between 14 and 19 % of the variance in symptoms of anxiety, depression and trauma at T2 after controlling for age and gender. For all three outcomes, the MCQ-30 subscale ‘negative beliefs about worry’ made the largest individual contribution with ‘cognitive confidence’ also contributing in each case. For anxiety, a third metacognitive variable, ‘positive beliefs about worry’ also predicted variance in T2 symptoms. In addition, hierarchical analyses indicated that metacognitive beliefs explained a small but significant amount of variance in T2 anxiety (2 %) and T2 depression (4 %) over and above that explained by demographic variables, T1 symptoms and T1 illness perceptions. The findings suggest that modifying metacognitive beliefs and processes has the potential to alleviate distress associated with cancer

Being a graduate professional in the field of Early Childhood Education and Care: silence, submission and subversion

Recent workforce reform in England has sought to increase opportunities for practitioners who work outside the maintained (school) sector to gain graduate status. Whilst these opportunities have generally been welcomed within the sector, this has created dichotomous tensions for the ECEC workforce. The traditional construction of the ECEC practitioner assumes a lack of educational and social capital [Osgood, J. 2009. “Childcare Workforce Reform in England and ‘the Early Years Professional’: A Critical Discourse Analysis.” Journal of Education Policy 24 (6): 733–751. doi:10.1080/02680930903244557]. Its associated dispositions do not necessarily fit with the alternative construct of the Early Years Professional or Teacher who, through gaining educational capital in the form of a university degree, will be sufficiently equipped to enact the normative and performative discourses which dominate educational and social policy. These tensions serve as the focus for this study, which was concerned with examining how a group of graduate practitioners were endeavouring to broker their competing professional constructs within their own workplace. The research argues for the necessity to establish professional, relational spaces within and across the field of Early Years Education and Care in order to have a greater understanding of the value that all early years professionals can contribute to pedagogical practice