The measurement of parenting skills to promote effective education for the progress and safeguarding of children

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Master of PhilosophyThe focus of this study is the exploration of the relationship between parenting skills and young children���s developmental progress. The Government purports that good parenting makes a difference in children���s lives by preventing many social and health related problems. Although the literature supports this relationship, it lacks evaluation from the young child���s perspective. The study has 4 main aims. These are to ascertain if there is a relationship between parenting skills and young children���s developmental progress; to identify what it is within that relationship that enables the growth of resilience in the child; to find out if teaching parenting skills to parents of young children improves parenting skills, and to consider the outcome of improved parenting skills on the 0-5 year old child���s development. The overarching paradigms are both qualitative and quantitative, and triangulation of data is used to give confidence to interpretation of data. The method employed in the study is action research, comprising of 2 cycles, each containing the following elements; survey of opinion, questionnaire, semi-structured interview, collective case study and evaluation. The main tool used in cycle 1 of the study 1 was The Schedule of Growing Skills l (SOGS l), a pre-published tool. In cycle 2, the main tools used were The Schedule of Growing Skills ll (SOGS ll updated SOGS l), the Parenting Skills Scale (PSS), and a questionnaire entitled ���Questions about you and your family��� developed for use in this study. Use of a similar tool at the validity stage of PSS development was a possible weakness, although no tool the same as PSS was available. Inclusion of a larger number of respondents at the evaluation stage could have improved the robustness of the data. Ethical approval was obtained from The University of Wolverhampton, and Dudley Primary Care NHS Trust. Issues considered included confidentiality, informed consent and potential harm versus benefit. Respondents were drawn from parents living in Dudley and their 0-5 year old children, and professionals from health and social services within the area. There were 4 respondent groups involved in the evaluation of the specialist area, child protection, in cycle 1. These were child protection register children n=6, each registered child���s health visitor n=6, local comparison group n=60 and National Profile SOGS l scores. PSS development respondents included in face validity, reliability and concurrent validity stages were n=20, n=100 and n=50 respectively. Evaluation respondents in cycle 2 were parent groups n=3, 5, 3, 5 and 8, children n=3, 5, 3, 5 and 9 respectively, and health visitors involved with each group n=5, local comparison group children n=100 and National Profile SOGS ll scores The main finding in cycle 1 was a link between poor parenting skills and young children���s developmental progress. Cycle 2 results found teaching and application of improved parenting skills improved developmental progress in the child. The contribution to knowledge, resulting from this study, is that early teaching and application of improved parenting skills seems to improve the child���s developmental progress, demonstrated by the use of PSS in conjunction with SOGS ll. The PSS tool has been shown to be effective in evaluating the outcome of teaching parenting skills for both the child in the 0-5 year age range and the parent. The method used enabled professionals and parents to be actively involved in the research. This study has provided an evidence-based evaluation tool for the outcomes of teaching parenting skills. Further evaluation involving larger numbers in different areas could give more insight into the effectiveness of the tool, and identification of an optimum subtotal in each scale area

To Disclose or Not to Disclose? Self-Disclosure of Mental Health in the Workplace

When making the decision to disclose a mental illness, individuals may be met with a number of factors that impact disclosure. This study examines the relationship between self-stigma, psychological safety, social support and self-disclosure of mental illness in the workplace. The present study surveyed 756 participants and found a positive relationship between stigma and self-disclosure as well as a positive relationship between social support and self-disclosure. For work outcomes, there was a negative relationship between both job satisfaction and productivity in relation to self-disclosure. This study potentiates the antecedents and consequences of self-disclosure of mental illness and how it impacts employees and the workplace overall

The discursive climate of singleness: the consequences for women's negotiation of a single identity

The privileging of marriage and long-term partnerships contributes to the marginalization of single women. This article explores the ways in which women defined as single work with the typical constructions of their identity available in the public arena. We view 'singleness' as a discursively constructed social category. Using data from interviews with 30 women, we examine the identity that women construct for themselves through their talk. We present the four main interpretative repertoires that women draw on, and look at two patterns of identity work commonly used to deal with the highly polarized repertoires. Singleness is a troubled category, and yet the positive and idealized repertoires available seem to make other aspects of women’s lives and expectations pathological. We argue for a feminist psychology of singleness based on critical discursive psychology: the focus needs to be on the patterning of ideology rather than the supposed dysfunction of single women

The Swift BAT Survey Detects Two Optical Broad Line, X-ray Heavily Obscured Active Galaxies: NVSS 193013+341047 and IRAS 05218-1212

The Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) is discovering interesting new objects while monitoring the sky in the 14-195 keV band. Here we present the X-ray properties and spectral energy distributions for two unusual AGN sources. Both NVSS 193013+341047 and IRAS 05218-1212 are absorbed, Compton-thin, but heavily obscured (NH \sim 10^23 cm-2), X-ray sources at redshifts < 0.1. The spectral energy distributions reveal these galaxies to be very red, with high extinction in the optical and UV. A similar SED is seen for the extremely red objects (EROs) detected in the higher redshift universe. This suggests that these unusual BAT-detected sources are a low- redshift (z << 1) analog to EROs, which recent evidence suggests are a class of the elusive type II quasars. Studying the multi-wavelength properties of these sources may reveal the properties of their high redshift counterparts.Comment: 20 pages, accepted to Ap

ABA Criminal Justice Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners

or more than i O years, corrections professionals and others concerned about the treatment of prisoners have despaired over conditions in California\u27s prisons. Crowding, violence, racial segregation, abysmal medical care, an obstructionist corrections union. and a state budget crisis have combined to bring the system to the point of constitutional meltdov,n. In 2008. a state appellate court found conditions of \u27extreme peril to the safety of persons and property,\u27\u27 and a three-judge federal court confirmed the existence of a substantial risk to the health and safety of the men and women who work inside these prisons and the inmates housed in them. (See CCPOA v. Schwarzenegger, 77 Cal. Rptr. 3d 844. 854 (Cal. App. Ct. 2008); Coleman v. Schwarzenegger, 2009 WL 330960 (Feb. 9, 2009).) California\u27s situation is extreme and atypical, but its lessons have not been lost on other jurisdictions struggling to cope with greatly expanded prison populations in a time of severe budget constraints. Nor have they been lost on the legal profession