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Among U.S. children, research indicates that early childhood experiences, including the child care environment, affect later educational outcomes. Yet, research on educational stratification in low-income countries rarely features the preschool years. We investigate the organization of child care among preschoolers in China. In-depth interviews reveal that grandmother care and formal care are highly desirable. Formal care, in particular, is perceived to provide educational advantage. Using China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data, and mixed random effects logit models, we explore the determinants of grandmother care and formal care. Results suggest poverty is associated with gender bias; in low-income households, boys without siblings are especially likely to receive formal care. These results call for greater attention to early childhood in research on educational stratification in China and other low-income settings.

From the late 1980s and onwards health care in Sweden has come under increasing financial pressure, forcing policy makers to consider restrictions. The purpose of this paper is to review experiences and to establish lessons of formal priority setting in four Swedish regional health authorities during the period 2003-2012.

This paper draws on a variety of sources, and evidence is organised according to three broad aspects: design and implementation of models and processes, application of evidence and decision analysis tools and decision making and implementation of decisions.

The processes accounted for here have resulted in useful experiences concerning technical arrangements as well as political and public strategies. All four sites used a particular model for priority setting that combined top-down- and bottom-up-driven elements. Although the process was authorised from the top it was clearly bottom-up driven and the template followed a professional rationale. New meeting grounds were introduced between politicians and clinical leaders. Overall a limited group of stakeholders were involved. By defusing political conflicts the likelihood that clinical leaders would regard this undertaking as important increased.

One tendency today is to unburden regional authorities of the hard decisions by introducing arrangements at national level. This study suggests that regional health authorities, in spite of being politically governed organisations, have the potential to execute a formal priority-setting process. Still, to make priority-setting processes more robust to internal as well as external threat remains a challenge.

This paper categorises different types of health‐focused safeguarding investigations and offers suggestions, particularly relevant to nurse investigators, on how an investigation can be approached. Suggestions are also offered on how to conduct an investigation, where to find information, how to conduct interviews, writing a report and giving a professional opinion. Criteria for determining whether neglect has taken place in a formal care setting are offered, alongside examples of how these have been applied in practice. The paper concludes with consideration of actions that can be taken following an investigation and some reflections on the experience of professions involved in safeguarding.

Despite widespread development in safeguarding vulnerable adults across legislation, policy, research, education and practice in recent years, some aspects of this work remain relatively ill‐defined. Neglect in formal care settings and the nursing contribution to multi‐agency safeguarding work are two such aspects. This paper offers perspectives acknowledging the current context of safeguarding. It identifies defining attributes of neglect and highlights why older people are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of neglect. The nursing contribution to multi‐agency safeguarding work, specifically health‐focused investigations, is discussed in detail, including when nurses should be involved, the knowledge and skills required and considerations for giving a professional opinion. The paper offers a model of registered nurse involvement in health safeguarding investigations and concludes with suggestions on how investigations can be approached.

This paper sets a case study of missing children in the Republic of Ireland against a review of international research to explore broader understandings and responses to the problem.

The study begins by reviewing the literature on pioneering American initiatives dating back to the 1970s and more recent literature from Great Britain where a series of high-profile scandals involving sexual exploitation of teenage girls provoked a number of controversial inquiries into the police and social work professions. The present study was prompted by an evaluation of the 116 000 Missing Children Hotline which was introduced to Ireland in 2012 under the auspices of the European Union (EU) Daphne III Programme by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC).

The central conclusion emerging from analysis of the evidence is that Missing Children Hotlines remain rooted in representations of ‘stranger danger’ and disconnected from repeat runaway children who feature prominently in police reports from formal care settings or family homes and who are actively targeted by sexual predators and criminal gangs. The implications are that systemic change requires grounding in research strategies which combine police data with anthropological studies to give legitimacy to the voices of runway and sexually exploited children.

The study offers original international perspectives on missing children to epistemological research communities in the fields of social work, criminology and policing with recommendations that Missing Children and Runaway Safe-lines are targeted systemically at keeping runaway children, homeless children and at-risk-youth safe and off the streets.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine how the paid care of children, and assisting with their development, is increasingly coming to resemble a professional activity in Australia. The commodification of child care has tended to create a profession of carers of children, not only by virtue of more formalized qualifications and role descriptions for carers, but also by establishing a potential framework within which a profession may be practiced. I examine how paid child caring in Australia increasingly conforms in many respects with various criteria commonly associated with a professional activity. This evolution within the child care field however is creating tension between the traditional nurturing role of child care and the more formal requirements of a “professional” carer. This process of professionalisation also has significant implications, not only for the care providers, but also for those who are receiving care – the children and their families. It also has important implications for society itself.

On a global level, the ageing population is increasing which will undoubtedly result in an increased demand for care facilities and more complex care requirements. Individuals living in permanent residential care facilities can often be subjected to a number of unnecessary stresses due to feelings of institutionalisation, with a change of surrounding and loss of possessions leading to confusion and exacerbation of pre-existing dementia problems. It is believed that creating environments that are as comfortable and homely as possible can help to relieve negative emotions and improve the quality of life of the individuals. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

This study brought together care home residents, interior designers and textile manufacturers to research pattern design and colour preferences for bedding for residents in a care home. Results were implemented in the design and building of a new care home in Dornbirn, Austria, with the intention that residents will feel happier in surroundings they prefer.

Following collection and analysis of results, it was seen that both residents and non-residents tended to prefer patterns that were representative of the era when they were young, perhaps because of the positive feelings they experienced during these times, and the positive memories the familiar patterns evoked of these times. Respondents preferred colour schemes that were bright and vibrant and linked these colours to feelings of happiness. Respondents did not like the muted colour schemes, which could have been related to reduced colour sensitivity with age, rendering the paler schemes dull and drab.

While the authors acknowledge that case study was carried out in Austria and reflected the thoughts and opinions of Austrian citizens, the research methodology is easily transferrable to other countries and areas of research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the terms used in the Macmillan Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary to identify the people who are paid to provide care to the elderly and check their presence in a corpus – professional home care (PHC) – of three UK-based specialised websites.

This study is based on the frameworks and methods of corpus-assisted Discourse Analysis (Baker, 2006). The terms were extracted from a corpus of British websites of companies providing PHC services.

This study highlights that in the PHC corpus, the words “caregiver” and “carer” are used as synonyms at the level of popular communication, whereas “care assistant” and “care worker” are used for intra-specialistic communication. The analysis also points out the variations in terminology observed in the corpora that are intended for different communication contexts, e.g. how professionals define themselves compared to how external actors identify them.

This paper provides insight into the terminological aspects of caregiving in the professional field through a corpus-based study on specialised terminology integrating lexicographic considerations. This methodological framework can capture the sociolinguistic attitudes of speakers.

Life story work has a relatively long tradition in the caring sciences and is recognised as an important component of dementia care and practice. However, to date, there has not been a review of accessible life story resources. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Following a systematic approach to identification and inclusion, 11 life story resources were reviewed to ascertain areas of commonality and divergence between the materials.

The authors were able to group the analysis under eight areas and at the end of this process, it was uncertain if life story work is a formal staff intervention or an informal activity that people with dementia and their families could engage in. Resources also varied in terms of whether the life story information was organised in a chronological way, or with topics of interest/discussion or with a combination of both. Life story evaluation and its impact on the life of the person with dementia is in need of development.

Across the resources the authors identified four reasons to do life story work which the authors have named as: emotional connections; interactional connections; building new connections and practical care connections.

There was limited guidance aimed at helping people with dementia to develop and compile their own life story.

This paper provides new insights into the usefulness, future directions and content of life story resources in dementia care. It will be of interest to those in health and social care as well as people living with dementia.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from one component of an empirical, mixed methods research project designed to determine the extent, nature and causes of abuse in contemporary independent sector care homes for older people.

A self-completion, postal questionnaire was used to elicit both numerical and textual data that were subsequently subjected to both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The questionnaire was distributed to newly appointed care staff in five participating care homes to determine the nature of any abuse they may have witnessed in the homes in which they had previously worked.

A significant proportion of respondents described instances of predominantly psychological and physical abuse and neglect and revealed hitherto undisclosed abusive practices.

Though the research draws upon the experiences of only 140 anonymous questionnaire respondents, of whom 94 had witnessed abuse, data suggest abuse continues to occur in some care homes for older people.

The research has revealed staffs’ recent experiences of a range of abusive acts and practices. Findings suggest that changes are required to current methods of external scrutiny and investigation of practices in care homes.