Search results

The purpose of this study was to explore children’s pathways through homelessness within the South African context, with particular attention paid to pathways out of homelessness. This study focusses on factors influencing children’s successful transitions out of homelessness.

A qualitative exploratory design was used, using interviews with nine children who had exited or were in the process of exiting homelessness. Interviews were conducted at a children’s shelter in Pietermaritzburg or in the children’s home environments. Interviews were analysed thematically.

An ecological framework was used to frame the factors influencing children’s pathways in, through and out of homelessness in the children’s narratives. These included institutions, relationships and intrapersonal strengths and resources. The study suggested that constructive relationships with shelter staff and parental figures, as well as intrapersonal strengths, were the most prominent factors in children successfully negotiating their way through their homelessness. The importance of a relationship with the paternal family within some African cultures was also a point of leverage.

Implications for policy and practise include the need for systemic change, as well as greater support for shelters and shelter staff. The issue of rivalry in the shelter context and the role of the paternal family in the reintegration process require more research attention. The research is limited to homeless children in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

This study provided feedback to the shelter regarding their strategies for assisting homeless children off the streets. It further provided evidence for the importance of the work of the shelter, to strengthen advocacy efforts. This may be useful to others in similar circumstances.

This study highlights the importance of macrosystemic interventions in the efforts to assist homeless children, while at the same time not ignoring the inter and intra, personal elements to enhancing their well-being.

This paper is singular in its exploration of factors influencing children’s successful transitions out of homelessness within the South African context.

Crisis services personnel are frequently deployed around the globe under highly demanding conditions. This raises the need to better understand the deployment process and more especially, sustainable reintegration after deployment. Despite recent research efforts, the study of the post-deployment stage, more specifically the reintegration process, remains fragmented and limited. To address these limitations, this review aims at (1) describing how reintegration is conceptualised and measured in the existing literature, (2) identifying what dimensions are associated with the reintegration process and (3) identifying what we know about the process of reintegration in terms of timing and phases.

Following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) protocol, the authors identified 5,859 documents across several scientific databases published between 1995 and 2021. Based on predefined eligibility criteria, 104 documents were yielded.

Research has primarily focused on descriptive studies of negative individual and interpersonal outcomes after deployment. However, this review indicates that reintegration is dynamic, multi-sector, multidimensional and dual. Each of its phases and dimensions is associated with distinct challenges.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research that investigates reintegration among different crisis services and provides an integrative social-ecological framework that identifies the different dimensions and challenges of this process.

This study aims to explore the legacy potential of the FIFA Women’s World Cup (FWWC) 2015, for the host communities across Canada.

The mixed-methods study included a link to an online anonymous survey being sent to all volunteers at the FWWC that explored their prior volunteering experience, motivations for volunteering, perceived skill development and future volunteering intentions. Documents were reviewed, and key stakeholders were interviewed.

The results support previous research that mega-sport event (MSE) volunteers are typically older females with prior volunteering experience. Those most likely to indicate they wanted to volunteer more are younger volunteers without prior volunteering experience. While legacy was discussed as a desired outcome, this was not operationalised through strategic human resource strategies such as being imbedded in the position descriptions for the volunteer managers.

As this study was conducted in the real-world context of a sport event, the timing of the survey was determined by the organising committee.

Mega sport events typically draw upon existing host-city social and human capital. For future event organising committees planning for and delivering a volunteer legacy may require better strategic planning and leveraging relationships with existing host-city volunteer networks. In the context of a single sport, women’s MSE, multi-venue, multi-province event, greater connection was required to proactively connect younger women for volunteers to their geographic sport and event volunteering infrastructure.

This is the first research of volunteers for the largest women’s mega single-sport event. There are three theoretical contributions of the paper to: the socio-ecological lens, motivational theory of single event MSE and the contribution of social and human capital to understandings of legacy.

The United Nations continues to identify street children as one of the most vulnerable sub-populations of children and youth globally. The purpose of this paper is to present social and contextual perspectives of 11 girls living on the streets of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Implications with respect to the development and delivery of effective sexual/reproductive and mental health interventions and services are discussed.

Through semi-structured interviews and applied qualitative thematic analysis, this paper aims to achieve in-depth understanding about the lives of 11 girls living on the street. A socio-ecological framework is utilized to interpret the experiences of the girls at the individual (micro), community (mezzo) and structural (macro) levels.

Six main themes evolved from the thematic analysis of interview transcripts: exposure to violence and abuse before and on the street, exposure to violence and sex work, risk and vulnerability to HIV, substance use and sex work, substance use and physical and reproductive health and ways of coping and future planning.

The interplay of experiences illustrates how girls navigate their lives, and along with an appreciation of intersectionality validates the need for an integrated approach to health and social care related to health and mental health services. Integrated interventions should focus on common issues such as improving access to HIV testing and contraceptives for young girls living on the street.

College support and career development are two significant challenges international students encountered during the pandemic, and these two factors have an enormous impact on the internationalization of higher education. The data for this study came from the 2020 to 2021 administrations of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) that includes over 500 international students enrolled at over 120 four-year colleges and universities in the United States. These students specifically responded to an open-ended item asking them what they think institutions should do better to assist their academic achievement and career goals. This study takes an in-depth look at international students’ qualitative responses about ways that institutions could better support their preparation for future careers. Using theories of cultural wealth and ecological systems to understand the unique experiences of international students during the pandemic offers an opportunity to help students not just in times of crisis but more holistically as they continue to pursue their higher education experiences in the United States. Ultimately, the authors provide recommendations for higher education professionals working with international students to better support their students’ career development and overall college experience.

Aligned with the United Nations 2030 agenda of leaving no one behind, a project called The Nest was initiated to create an in-house intentional learning space at two public housings in Klang Valley. In a small unit of public housing, most children in these houses sit on the floor in the living room to do their schoolwork or study with the TV switched on. Poor indoor environmental quality and lack of personal space are among the main reasons that lead to children not being able to study at home comfortably.

The research employed a quasi-experimental approach as the research field setting was not randomly assigned. Observation on the change in the quality of space and post-evaluation interviews with beneficiaries were conducted.

The findings show that besides the tangible space that the Nest project has created, it also has created in-tangible space. It has shown that even small spatial changes to existing spaces could improve children's active learning and the participation of parents in their children's learning.

This study focuses on the home learning experience and parental involvement in their children's learning, so perhaps future research can be done to measure the impact of home learning space on academic achievement.

The research outcomes show that a good quality of learning space influences the children's learning experience at home and the parents' involvement. It will also contribute to the development of the building regulation for high-rise affordable housing in Malaysia. Particularly in improving the optimum requirement to achieve better comfort quality for the learning space at the residential unit.

The Nest project will contribute to raising the awareness among all residents of public housing on the importance of in-house learning space and encourage them to build their own learning spaces through the Do-It-Yourself Guidelines.

The research outcomes show that both parental involvement and the quality of learning space influence the children's learning experience at home. It will contribute to the development of the building regulation for high-rise affordable housing in Malaysia. Particularly in improving the optimum requirement to achieve better comfort quality for the learning space at the residential unit.

This chapter aims to investigate how a range of emerging trends within the international community can be used to build a connective educational ecosystem based on an inclusive and universal process (Biggeri et al., 2017; Ziegler, 2017). The starting question is: how multidisciplinary teams in Italy could take action toward inclusive education?

Partnering is becoming a central system organization strategy for schools to adopt for successful innovative teams with creative educational ideas (Kelly et al., 2002), and here it is declined in the Italian context in which inclusive education was officially embraced in 1977 as a national policy (D'Alessio, 2011). National legislation (104/92 Law) made explicit the mandate that students with disabilities receive their education (to the maximum extent possible) with nondisabled peers in the general education classroom using appropriate supplemental aids and services in the least-restrictive environment (Anastasiou et al., 2015; Canevaro & de Anna, 2010).

It is crucial to encourage new forms of practice which require collaboration capabilities (Hattie, 2015; Vangrieken et al., 2015) between multidisciplinary teams that comprised general teachers, special education teachers, health professionals, school psychologists, school leaders, and the students' family (Meirink et al., 2010). These resources could be distributed across inclusive ecosystems to support all students by enabling them to prosper in an increasingly diversified and complex environment in which creativity, ability to innovate, entrepreneurship, and a commitment to continuous learning are joint and connective (EU, 2008). This creates a state of positive multiagency collaboration that promotes the well-being of students and the system.

The author tests the hypothesis that the effects of evening and night employment on working parents’ work-to-family conflict and life satisfaction depend on the reasons that individuals name for their schedules. Regression models are fitted to data from an original sample of 589 employed US parents. Partnered (married and cohabiting) fathers who work partially in the evening or night experience less work-to-family conflict if they report personal motives, but schedule motivation does not affect work-to-family conflict among partnered or single mothers. Partnered mothers who work primarily in the evening or at night report higher life satisfaction if they do so for personal reasons, but this effect is not found for single mothers or partnered fathers. Specifically seeing their schedules as facilitating family care matters for partnered mothers, but not fathers. Although nonstandard employment schedules have been linked to poor well-being among working parents, this is the first quantitative study to assess the role of worker motivation to the author’s knowledge. The results are suggestive because they are based on a nonprobability sample of modest size. However, they demonstrate the need for future studies of employment scheduling to collect information on worker motivations. Most night workers in the United States do not select their shifts for personal reasons, putting them at risk for work-to-family conflict and reduced life satisfaction. They deserve extra support in exchange for laboring while others sleep or spend time with family.

Purpose – To synthesize the literature on coping among adolescents of color in the U.S., we examine normative and circumstantial stressors, describe coping strategies, and summarize the literature on coping for the promotion of well-being among adolescents of color, including descriptive and intervention studies.

Methods/approach – We conducted an extensive review of the literature in four scientific databases (medline, CINAHL, ERIC, and PyschInfo) between July 2010 and June 2011 (key words: (minority) adolescent(s) (of color), cope/coping, stress (ors), and adaptation/psychological). Studies included in our review were peer-reviewed articles published between 2000 and June 2011 that presented original data on the coping strategies and outcomes of adolescents of color (e.g., studies including a majority from underrepresented racial/ethnic communities) between the ages of 12 and 18.

Findings – We identified a total of 91 articles for inclusion, including 83 descriptive and 8 intervention studies. We use a matrix approach to compare descriptive studies by their purpose, study design, sample, targeted stressors, and outcomes. We then discuss the eight interventions we identified, highlighting the targeted population, intervention protocol/adaptation, feasibility/acceptability, and study outcomes.

Implications – The breadth and depth of research on coping among adolescents of color has improved significantly over the past decade, yet our review reveals several areas where further exploration is needed, including research on intra-group differences, validation of coping measures in diverse groups, measurement of the effectiveness of coping strategies over time, and most importantly, the translation of available knowledge on effective coping into culturally relevant, multifaceted interventions for adolescents and their families.

The Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) project identified the different models of primary care that exist for children, examined the particular attributes that might be different from those directed at adults and considered how these models might be appraised. The project took the multiple and interrelated dimensions of primary care and simplified them into a conceptual framework for appraisal. A general description of the models in existence in all 30 countries of the EU and EEA countries, focusing on lead practitioner, financial and regulatory and service provision classifications, was created. We then used the WHO ‘building blocks’ for high-performing health systems as a starting point for identifying a good system for children. The building blocks encompass safe and good quality services from an educated and empowered workforce, providing good data systems, access to all necessary medical products, prevention and treatments, and a service that is adequately financed and well led. An extensive search of the literature failed to identify a suitable appraisal framework for MOCHA, because none of the frameworks focused on child primary care in its own right. This led the research team to devise an alternative conceptualisation, at the heart of which is the core theme of child centricity and ecology, and the need to focus on delivery to the child through the life course. The MOCHA model also focuses on the primary care team and the societal and environmental context of the primary care system.