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This paper aims to describe how a sense of normalcy for young people in foster care can be critical to their well-being.

This paper reports on policy and practice efforts in the USA to promote normalcy for youth in care. The authors review policy that promotes normalcy and report on one organization's efforts to support these goals.

COVID-19 has offered profound challenges to the goal of normalcy. Rise Above has adapted to meet the challenges.

The authors argue that COVID may also offer opportunities to build toward a more robust paradigm of normalcy within child welfare policy and practice.

In this chapter, I examine stories that foster care youth tell to legislatures, courts, policymakers, and the public to influence policy decisions. The stories told by these children are analogized to victim truth testimony, analyzed as a therapeutic, procedural, and developmental process, and examined as a catalyst for systemic accountability and change. Youth stories take different forms and appear in different media: testimony in legislatures, courts, research surveys or studies; opinion editorials and interviews in newspapers or blog posts; digital stories on YouTube; and artistic expression. Lawyers often serve as conduits for youth storytelling, translating their clients’ stories to the public. Organized advocacy by youth also informs and animates policy development. One recent example fosters youth organizing to promote “normalcy” in child welfare practices in Florida, and in related federal legislation.

Higher education notices the need to support minorities and students with dis/abilities and may have additional programs to support their student populations, but students with a history of foster care are largely invisible in higher education. Using prismatic phenomenology, this study seeks to create a platform for the voices of adults in higher education who experienced the intersection of foster placement, ethnic minority, and dis/ability as children. This chapter focuses on the life story of one young woman. The goal of identifying these formative childhood experiences is to better understand how to respond to the inequities experienced as well as develop equitable practices to support students, whether in the higher educational classroom, in the preservice teacher classroom, or in K-12 educational arena.

Poor mental health is common amongst unaccompanied refugee adolescents and may have serious negative consequences for their successful settlement. This study aims to elucidate unaccompanied adolescents’ experiences of psychosocial challenges and what they need to cope with this during their course of settlement in Denmark, particularly focussing on social support.

The study sample included six male unaccompanied refugee adolescents aged 17–18, living in two residential care facilities. Based on a triangulation of methods (i.e. participant observation, individual interviews and a focus group interview using photo-elicitation), a thematic analysis was conducted within the conceptual framework of stigma and a need for relatedness.

Several interwoven and on-going psychosocial challenges, including perceived stigma and loneliness combined with past traumatic experiences and uncertainties about the future, were experienced by the adolescents in this study. As opposed to experiencing emotional distress, stigma and loneliness, various activities of “forgetting”, which involved a sense of momentary relief or bliss, a sense of “normalcy” and acceptance and/or a sense of relatedness, helped them to cope.

For psychosocial care services to respond to adolescents’ mental health needs in an optimal way, the results suggest that activities and social support that are sufficiently adapted to individual needs should be the focal point in their daily lives.

The study offers insights into the needs of unaccompanied refugee adolescents in coping with the psychosocial challenges experienced in their daily lives.

Being resilient is often equated with the capability to return to a state of normalcy after individuals and organisations face unprecedented challenges. This chapter questions the notion of ‘normalcy’ in complex and ongoing turbulence as experienced variously in diverse cultural and sectoral contexts. In theorising organisational resilience and associated transformation, it draws on insights provided by a microfinance institution (MFI) operating in the Philippines. The chapter details its efforts to transform business in light of experience gained in frequent and overlapping emergency conditions (including COVID-19) to create a new level of resilience in its clients and itself. For clients, the goal is often to self-manage loss associated with socio-economic development and for the organisation, to stabilise and cordon the investment needed to support clients survive and move on from the relatively constant adverse impacts of disasters. Published accounts of such experience and insights provided by board members and the President illustrate the nature of transformational resiliency strategies planned, including changes to the business model around provision of micro-insurance services and strategic adaptation of digital services aligned with the organisation's mission. A model of ‘practical resiliency in emergency conditions’ details the culture of resiliency adopted, demonstrating how stakeholders gain confidence and opportunity to practice resilient behaviours in emergency contexts. It highlights the significance of cultural consistency across purpose, values and capability to create an adequate level of trust and certainty across stakeholders to support transformational resiliency behaviours in shifting and dynamic ecosystems.

Chronic health conditions can cause children extended school absences, creating significant barriers for continued education. Out‐of‐school learning environments, such as hospitals, provide opportunities to maintain children's learning identities during school absences. This paper seeks to present an example of hospital‐based teaching and learning and to explore the challenges of providing child‐centred learning opportunities in this environment.

A case study narrative describes the underpinnings of child‐centred teaching and learning within a children's hospital. The “Around the World” learning activity is used to discuss the challenges and strategies when fostering learning environments for children with diverse needs.

The paper highlights how pedagogy is apparent in a children's health setting. Reflective teacher practice translated pedagogical principles into dynamic, situated learning activities that engaged children visiting a hospital Out‐patients area. The display of learning artefacts within Out‐patients helped raise awareness of the learning identities of children within the hospital.

This case study is one example of the learning opportunities that can be fostered within a hospital. The findings have implications for educators in both traditional and alternative learning environments regarding how spaces can be used to “seize the moment” with children in their care. The learning needs of adolescents spending time in hospital also need to be met in developmentally appropriate ways.

This paper illustrates how a hospital, as a traditionally held “health” space, can be reconceptualised as a learning space to accommodate the multiple identities of children and build a shared understanding between education and health professionals of the value of integrating learning into a holistic and child‐centred model of care.

This is a troubled age for democracy, but the nature of that trouble and why it is a problem for democracy is an open question, not easy to answer. Widespread wishing for responsible leaders who respect democratic norms and pursue policies to benefit people and protect the vulnerable don’t help much. The issue goes well beyond library contexts, but it is important that those in libraries think through our role in democracy as well. Micro-targeting library-centric problems won’t be effective and don’t address the key issue of this volume. The author can only address the future if we recover an understanding of the present by building up an understanding of actually-existing democracy: (1) the scope must be narrowed to accomplish the task; (2) the characteristics of the retreat from democracy should be established; (3) core working assumptions and values – what libraries are about in this context – must be established; (4) actually-existing democracy should then be characterized; (5) the role of libraries in actually-existing democracy is then explored; (6) the source and character of the threat that is driving the retreat from democracy and cutting away at the core of library assumptions and values is analyzed; (7) the chapter concludes by forming a basis of supporting libraries by unpacking their contribution to building and rebuilding democratic culture: libraries are simultaneously less and more important than is understood.

Caring for older adults is an increasingly complex and multi-dimensional global concern. This article provides a comprehensive definition of the older adult care experience and discusses its key components to help practitioners deliver older adult-centered care to maximize well-being outcomes for older adults.

Based on prior research on service operations, service experience, person-centered care and the unique, evolving needs of older adults regarding their care, this paper develops a conceptual framework in which the older adult care experience is the central construct, and key dimensions of well-being are the outcomes.

The older adult care experience is shaped by older adults' perceptions and evaluations of the care that they receive. Older adult-centered care has autonomy, dignity, unique needs and social environment as its core dimensions and results in those older adults feel empowered, respected, engaged and connected as part of their experience. The article also discusses how such experience can be evaluated by using quality dimensions from service operations, hospitality and healthcare contexts, and challenges that service firms may face in creating older adult care experience.

Given the changing demographics and unique needs of older adults, it is an imperative for academics and practitioners to have an understanding of what determines older adult care experience to better serve them. Such understanding is important as by creating and fostering older adult care experience, service organizations can contribute to individual and societal well-being.

To the authors' best knowledge, this is the first paper to provide a comprehensive conceptualization of the older adult care experience.

This study aims to examine the relationship between public knowledge, awareness and attitudes towards post-COVID-19 infection prevention in Sarawak. At present, Sarawak is in the post-pandemic stage, marked by a gradual return to normalcy, albeit with some persistent changes caused by the pandemic.

Data were collected from various geographic areas in Sarawak through a Google Form link and QR code during a cross-sectional study, resulting in the acquisition of 1,128 responses. Data analysis was performed using SPSS 28.0 and WarpPLS 8.0.

The result revealed that out of five hypotheses, four were found to be supported, indicating a positive relationship between public knowledge, awareness and attitudes towards COVID-19 infection prevention. However, an unsupported relationship was found between public awareness and infection prevention practices.

This study is limited to the Malaysian population and has a cross-sectional design, affecting generalizability. It is recommended that future research complete an in-depth study of the knowledge, awareness and practices of COVID-19 using other data collection techniques.

Public health and policymakers can use the study to implement effective communication strategies and prioritize digitalization for economic recovery. It highlights the importance of preventive measures and the public’s role in managing future pandemics.

The originality of this research can be drawn from key findings that indicate that people overall gained knowledge on the prevention measures during the post-COVID-19 pandemic, and the accuracy of the information significantly impacts public knowledge, awareness and practices of COVID-19 infection prevention.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic started and intensified over two years ago, constant lockdowns and social distancing measures have left many people feeling disconnected and disoriented. To recapture and sustain a semblance of normalcy and connected co-existence, online platforms, and various communication media have become indispensable. However, this mode of social connectedness while being physically separated is nothing new to Filipino transnational families who have persevered and kept their familial bonds alive and well across time and space.

Based on findings from an ongoing ethnographic study that started in 2016, in this chapter, the author engages with critical issues regarding how communication technologies shape the exchange of familial care and intimacy within contexts of geographical dispersion. Through a discussion of the ways in which new forms of communication reconstruct the temporal and spatial aspects of Filipino transnational family life, the author explains how families preserve and nurture their collective commitments to the maintenance of kinship by using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to (re)enact and (re)create mundane existences but also to recognize, celebrate, and display significant milestones along the family life course. One of the key questions raised is how effective technology-mediated exchanges are in substituting for physical co-presence, which is widely accepted as the foundation of strong and healthy family relationships. By interrogating these issues, the author builds on a valuable body of research which theorizes how ICTs facilitate new forms of intimacy and virtual togetherness; but also contentious relations and emotional burdens that test the Filipino family’s resilience in turbulent times.

This chapter is a potent elaboration of how Filipino transnational family members adopt creative strategies to integrate their fragmented existences and (re)embed themselves into each other’s temporalities and subjectivities.