With the increase in survival for children with cancer, part of the focus of current research is aimed towards evaluating how these children are adapting psychosocially. Neurocognitive deficits have been well established. However, there are multiple facets encompassing quality of life, including general mental health, lifestyles and health behaviors, and academic and cognitive functioning. The relationship between neurocognitive and psychosocial functioning has yet to be thoroughly evaluated. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between neurocognitive and psychosocial functioning in survivors of brain tumors and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Data was collected from existing archival database comprised of patients of the at Cook Children's Medical Center in Texas. The sample consisted of 177 patients between the ages of 3 and 12 who were at least two years post-diagnosis. Measures used included the NEPSY and the Behavioral Assessment for Children. Statistical analyses included a several one-way analysis of variances, an independent samples t-test, a univariate analysis of variance, a hierarchical multiple regression, and odds ratio analyses. Results indicated survivors treated with neurosurgery alone appear to be less at risk for developing behavior problems than other treatment modalities. Also, brain tumor survivors demonstrate more problematic behaviors than survivors of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Visuospatial functioning, diagnosis, and type of treatment were found to be predictive variables of behavior problems. Attention, and perhaps language, deficits may predispose children to more problems in their behavior. It is concluded that there are other factors affecting behavior in this population that were not accounted for in this analysis. It is recommended for future studies to research the individual clinical scales of the Behavior Assessment System for Children, obtain information from multiple informants, study this relationship longitudinally, and research additional factors that may be influencing the relationship between neurocognitive and psychosocial functioning. This provides evidence of risk factors that should be monitored as the child returns home and to school.

No description available.

The purpose of this dissertation is to compare features of eleven Canadian provincial / territorial Child and Youth Advocates (CYAs) and identify factors that contribute to their success at influencing changes to public policies, practices and laws to improve services and programs for children and youth. This exploratory study compares and provides explanations regarding the CYAs’ evolution, institutional designs, legislated mandates, implementation, expectations and accountability structures. This study is based on reviews of publicly available documents and interviews with CYA key contacts, members of their legislative oversight committees and informed experts. The CYAs are statutory officers who assist their legislatures in protecting children’s rights and holding governments to account. They also provide a valuable source of information and advice for decision-makers and government agencies. Each CYA is uniquely designed to serve the needs and interests of their jurisdictions. They have overlapping functions and use some common approaches to systemic advocacy aimed at laying the groundwork for change. This study identifies several factors that contribute to the CYAs’ success at influencing systemic change. Comprehensive legislation and adequate resources enable some CYAs to undertake a full range of systemic advocacy functions. Raising awareness helps to build a common understanding of children’s rights and promotes a collective will for change to better serve their needs and interests. Effective use of the media is a powerful tool for raising awareness about the CYAs’ systemic concerns and recommended changes and for putting pressure on governments to take action. Educating and providing guidance to the media aids in controlling messages that are reported. Elevating the views and interests of young people who have direct experience with government systems is an effective strategy used by some CYAs to influence systemic change and increase the participation of young people in public decision-making. Building positive relationships with government agencies promotes greater cooperation with CYAs’ advice. The use of strategic plans for systemic advocacy may aid the CYAs to clarify their goals, objectives and performance measures and to monitor changes over time. / Graduate / Public Administration / thunter@uvic.ca

This thesis examines the regulatory landscape relating to private orphanages, both foreign and domestically run, in China, and the formal and informal relationships between such homes and government which structure this space of order. Part A introduces the contextual factors shaping the gradual socialisation and privatisation of charitable activity generally, and the child welfare-specific social, economic and cultural dynamics influencing the emergence of private orphanages. Parts B and C set out the ethnographic findings of field-work examining the practical operations of private orphanages, and a theoretical analysis of the various interactions occurring with government orphanages, and local and central officials. It is shown that the ostensible government monopoly on institutional care of orphans, established in law and policy and consistent with the objective of maintaining tight control over civic organisations and religious-based and foreign-led activities, is belied by a proliferation of private orphanages emerging to address gaps in state welfare provision. This has led to the emergence of a delicate balance between top-down official discourse, rhetoric and law, and bottom-up pragmatic considerations. Further, the prima facie 'missing role' of the state in law, regulation and policy-making is contradicted in practice by evidence of a complexity of highly paternalistic state-orphanage relationships occurring beyond the normative framework of official laws and policies. Such extra-legal state-society interaction is characterised by informal, flexible and paternalistic negotiations with local officials, and mediated by structures of power and capacity. 'Law beyond government' and 'government beyond law' are central features of the multidimensional maintenance of this space of order, and point to several defining points of distinction of law as a cultural notion in the Chinese context, including a marked preoccupation with legitimacy over legality and paternalistic discipline and discretion over impartial adjudication.

The problem with which this study is concerned is that of a descriptive analysis of counseling techniques being used by selected child welfare workers. The method determining the counseling techniques being used was a questionnaire. Seven counseling techniques were tested on the questionnaire. The questionnaire was developed through the use of various sources. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire were not tested. The findings were inconclusive, based upon the data. The workers tended to show eclectic use of techniques. Psychoanalysis and client-centered therapy did poll the greatest number of positive responses. Z-scores and probability between the counseling techniques were determined. The findings supported the responses received by psychoanalysis and client-centered therapy. No recommendations were made.

A report on a study project presented to the Department of Social Work, School of Human and Community Development, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Master of Arts by course work and research report in Occupational Social Work. September 2016. / Social work in South Africa is challenged by high caseloads, dangerous working environments and poor remuneration (Social Work Indaba, 2015). These challenges combined with high voluntary staff turnover rates (40.4% in 2006) have negative consequences for the protection of South Africa`s vulnerable children (Earle-Malleson (2009). In this context, supervision is often proposed as a potential cure-all for the tensions in social work. This study utilises an instrumental case study design to describe and explore child protection social workers’ perceptions of supervision and retention. The key aim of the study is to interrogate the role of effective social work supervision on a social worker’s decision to leave the employment of a child protection organisation in Gauteng. Twelve participants were identified through a combination of purposive and snowball sampling. Utilising a semi structured interview schedule, face to face interviews were conducted with each participant. The data obtained from the interviews was transcribed and analysed thematically. The research findings yielded concerning results on the supervision the participants had received with only 25% of the participants indicating that they found their supervision supportive and educational. High levels of organisational disengagement were noted, which created an organisational climate of neglect. This contributed indirectly to ten participant’s decision to resign as a lack of supervision heightened their frustrations with the system and their increased perceptions of child protection work as monotonous. A lack of a supportive and educational focus also closed off opportunities for participants to grow as social workers and learn adaptive coping skills. This led to some participants feeling emotionally overwhelmed. Both of these factors were cited as reasons for exiting child protection organisations. These findings reaffirm the importance of supervision as a reflexive process and provide insight into the targeting of interventions aimed at retaining child protection social workers in South Africa. Keywords: Child protection; retention; effective supervision; job embeddedness; social worker; disengagement; voluntary staff turnover / GR2017

This thesis focuses on processes of Aboriginal community-making in Redfern, an inner city suburb of Sydney, Australia. It addresses the ways in which the Australian state governs Aboriginal people by developing 'projects of legibility' (and illegibility) concerning Aboriginal community sociality. To address Redfern Aboriginal community-making requires focusing on the ambiguities arising from the contemporary policy of 'Aboriginal self-determination' and adopting an ethnohistorical approach to Aboriginal community-making that has arisen under this policy rubric. By ethnohistorical I refer to the engagement of Aboriginal people in Redfern in Aboriginal community-making policy practices and not a historiography of these policies. Attention will be paid to past and present negotiations concerning the (re)development of the Redfern Aboriginal community and their intersections in the state-led redevelopment process Aboriginal community- makers were engaged in during the course of my research in 2005-2007. These negotiations centre on attempts made to reproduce certain forms of sociality that both reveal and obscure Aboriginal social relations when inscribed in the category 'Aboriginal community'. This analysis is meant to contribute to the limited anthropological research that exists on urban Aboriginal experiences generally and research conducted on Aboriginal experiences in southeastern Australia. It addresses the complex social field of Aboriginal community-making practices that exist in Australia where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians are located within the bureaucratic structures of the state, institutional networks, as well as non-government community organisations. This research contributes to understanding 'the institutional construction of indigeneity' (Weiner 2006: 19) and how this informs the (re)development of urban Aboriginal communities.

Thesis. 1979. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 331-365. / by Janet M. Loneragan. / Ph.D.

This dissertation explores historical processes and daily practices of indigenization within the context of British Columbia's model for delegating Aboriginal agencies for child and family services. This research draws from historical data, examining the ways in which contemporary indigenization within Aboriginal child welfare is shaped by Canada's colonial past- most notably, the historical relationship between the Indian Residential School System and Aboriginal child welfare in Canada. Grounded in indigenous methodologies, research practice, and critical theory, this dissertation queries indigenization within the Pacific Aboriginal Child Welfare Association (PACWA). This dissertation explores the complexity of the urban setting in which PACWA operates, providing case studies of daily practices of indigenization within the association, considering the roles of Aboriginal Elders and Knowledge Keepers throughout this process, and arguing for the need to reframe urban Aboriginal child welfare in Canada. This dissertation asserts that Indigenization at PACWA is making significant differences in the lives of children and families involved in Aboriginal child welfare and that Aboriginal families continue to have their children removed at alarming rates most often because they are living in the aftermath of colonization, amidst contemporary conditions that continue to marginalize Aboriginal peoples. Indigenization is a process that can and is being achieved within the context of child welfare in British Columbia today. It is a process connected to Aboriginal sovereignty, self-government, identity and mainstream-Aboriginal relations. It is also a process that is making significant impacts in the lives of those connected to Aboriginal child welfare (Aboriginal and otherwise), while simultaneously being challenged by the structural inequalities and political eddies that continue to marginalize urban Aboriginal peoples. This research demonstrates that successful indigenization practice, at the level of large organizations such as PACWA, requires that various levels of Canadian government view them as true partners in a project of decolonization and indigenization. This requires a recognition and honouring of history and diversity of Aboriginal peoples in Canada, validated by means of mutual respect and sharing power.

This thesis focuses on the use of a child welfare principle in human assisted reproduction in the UK, as contained in section 13 (5) of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 (as amended). Given the principle is applied prior to conception, I argue that it should be distinguished from the familiarly known child welfare principle in child law and thus my focus is on the pre-conception welfare principle (PCWP). The aim of this thesis is to provide an argument for abolition of the PCWP from UK regulation. This thesis aims to add to the debate and complement the existing body of legal and philosophical literature which has critically analysed the function of the PCWP from various perspectives. It does so by highlighting the importance of terminology throughout the work and focusing on the broader implications of the PCWP in practice. I argue that the implications of the PCWP go far beyond its position in the legislation and in order to substantiate that central argument, I separate the function of the PCWP assessment into distinct categories of harm based regulation. Before doing so, however, I critically analyse the development of the PCWP; I consider its function as a regulatory method and I challenge whether it has a defendable ethical position in the current framework. Overall, I argue against the PCWP and the harm threshold rationale underpinning it in practice. In Part I, I first set out the background to this type of research and explain why this work is important for challenging unjustified state intervention on reproductive choice. Second, I set the scene by outlining the development of the welfare principle in child law; the legislative chronology of the PCWP and the function of Principles Based Regulation (PBR) in the current regulatory framework. This entails setting out a number of assumptions, arguments and debates surrounding the concepts of welfare and harm and how these have been framed in regulation; in addition to setting out a central theme of this thesis, which is an argument that the regulation of the PCWP does not meet requisite standards of consistent, transparent, objective, proportionate and contextually-sensitive regulation. These assumptions and vii arguments are vital for understanding the basis on which this work challenges the suitability of the PCWP in the current regulatory framework. Part II of the thesis contains the papers and delivers the arguments against the PCWP in sequence. The overall aim of Part II is to present the central argument of the thesis and answer the research questions set out in the introduction. To accomplish this, the thesis first explores how the borders of child welfare have been defined by child law and judge-made law in wrongful life cases or cases involving the withdrawal or withholding of treatment from sick children. This is followed by a chronological and comparative legislative assessment of the development of the regulation of child welfare in the context of the PCWP. This develops into the main argument of the thesis which demonstrates the application of PCWP in practice departs from benchmark standards of better regulation. The thesis moves on to provoke a fresh debate on the relationship between pre-conception child welfare and the familial and genetic harm thresholds which are mandated by the PCWP assessment. The concept of harm is explored in a philosophical sense and the arguments culminate in a contention that no single philosophy underpins the PCWP, and that there is therefore no good reason to retain a principle which is problematic in both a functional and substantive sense. The thesis concludes with an overview of the progression of the main themes in this thesis, as well as identifying some promising opportunities for future research which have arisen as a result of this work.