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The purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary on “Assessing children’s swallowing: parent and professional perceptions”.

The commentary is a narrative review of the paper from a community-based SLT practitioner perspective looking at related, published practices.

A number of important themes are identified, illustrating the complexity of swallowing assessment procedures.

The paper and this commentary highlight the importance of partnership working in managing dysphagia in children, engaging parents and practitioners and providing empowerment for decision making.

For infants and children who have difficulties with eating, drinking and swallowing (dysphagia), there are significant health risks that include aspiration (food and fluid entering the lungs) and poor growth. Videofluoroscopy is often the instrumental method of assessment used to exclude or confirm aspiration. The purpose of this paper is to investigate parental and referrer perceptions of the reasons for and the outcomes of videofluoroscopy.

Data were gathered through the use of structured telephone interviews before and after videofluoroscopy.

Four key themes emerged: first, the importance of identifying specifically the problems with swallowing; second, understanding the rationale for videofluoroscopy; third, preparing a child for videofluoroscopy; and fourth, using videofluoroscopy to inform management. Referrers used videofluoroscopy to confirm their concerns about a child’s ability to swallow safely.

Parents understood that the purpose of videofluoroscopy was to identify specific swallowing difficulties. They reported anxieties with managing the child’s positioning during the procedure and whether the child would eat. They also had concerns about outcomes from the study. Some of these issues raise questions about the true value and benefits of videofluoroscopy.

This is the first study that considers parent views of an instrumental assessment. For some parents of children with learning disabilities, mealtimes are an important social occasion. Further studies that focus on decision making about children with learning disabilities who find feeding difficult are warranted as parents feel loss and disempowerment when decisions are made about non-oral feeding.

Mental toughness describes a set of attributes relating to how individuals deal with challenges, stressors, and pressure. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between mental toughness and perceived stress in police and fire officers.

The participants were 247 police officers and 130 fire fighters. Participants completed questionnaire measures of mental toughness and perceived stress, and provided information about their age, rank, and length of service within the force.

Mental toughness was found to be significantly related to perceived stress, with control of emotion, control of life, and confidence in abilities being particularly important. There was no consistent relationship of age, rank, or length of service with mental toughness and perceived stress. However, police officers reported lower levels of mental toughness and higher levels of perceived stress than fire officers.

The results suggest that assessing police and fire officers on a measure of mental toughness could provide a means of identifying individuals more likely to suffer from stress and stress-related physical and psychological illness. In addition, interventions that may enhance mental toughness could have beneficial effects within this population.

This is the first study to examine mental toughness and perceived stress within this population, and the findings have important implications for the management of stress.