Background: The trajectory of recovery after sepsis varies. Survivors may have considerable ongoing limitations, requiring a caregiver for a prolonged period. Objectives: To learn about experiences, quality of life, coping, resilience, and social support of caregiver caring for survivors of sepsis. Methods: We conducted a convergent mixed-methods study, recruiting informal caregivers of patients who had survived sepsis in the past year and were readmitted to the intensive care unit with sepsis. Individual face-to-face, semistructured interviews and validated surveys on quality of life, coping, caregiver burden, resilience, and social support were administered to caregivers. Interview transcripts were analyzed using content analysis. Surveys were scored and summarized using descriptive statistics. Results: Caregivers were primarily middle-aged, White, and female. Half were spouses of their care recipient. Caregivers reported some deficits in mobility, pain, and anxiety/depression. Coping styles varied, with engaged coping being more prevalent. Most caregivers reported mild to moderate burden, all reported either normal or high resilience levels, and types of social support were similar. However, interviews and survey findings were not always consistent. Major themes that emerged from the analysis included (1) advocating for and protecting their loved one, (2) coping with caregiving, (3) uncertain future, (4) rewards of caregiving, and (5) need to optimize communication with family. Discussion: Caregivers of sepsis survivors are protective of their care recipient and use a variety of strategies to advocate for their loved one and to cope with the uncertainty involved in a new intensive care unit admission. More advocacy and support are needed for this population.

The purpose of this project was to examine and explore negotiating strategies for parents with children with disabilities. The research showed there were insufficient materials for teaching negotiating strategies to parents to assist them in obtaining critical or basic services for their special needs children. Many families lack financial resources, have English-language barriers, and have educational challenges when facing school administrators that possess these vital resources. These circumstances mean that parents may feel intimidated and disempowered when meeting with school officials. By providing a simple and easy-to-use guide of Negotiating Strategies, parents can be empowered and encouraged to use their skills for negotiation, conflict management, power, networking and mediation during an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meeting. The guide will increase awareness and understanding for parents when participating with school administrators, allowing them to capitalize on their rights for seeking appropriate and needed services for their children with disabilities.

Good communication is an important factor for a firm to think about when wanting to engage their consumers. Recently there has been an interest over the concept of consumer engagement within the context of social media by business practitioners. Social media today is used in most aspects of life and it is important to understand how to use it in order to enhance business strategies when approaching consumers. Consumer engagement has been defined through existing research in different ways, having no clear model for practitioners to follow when attempting to engage consumers. This is one of the main problems within existing research, as well as each focusing on different social media triggers. It is important to understand which triggers are more relevant when trying to attain consumer engagement. As well as bringing up the benefits that comes from utilizing such a concept. Research regarding consumer engagement within social media is required within a different context, in order to determine the triggers relevancy to the concept of engagement. Therefore, the purpose of this study is about attaining consumer engagement through the use of social media in the luxury fashion segment, which was done through the use of Brodie et al conceptual model of consumer engagement. The research that was conducted was of a quantitative nature, utilizing a cross-section research design. To gather primary data a questionnaire was created and distributed through social media, where 101 respondents out of a desired 90 were used for the analysis. The data gathered through the questionnaire was then analysed through the statistical program of SPSS, where descriptive statistics, a correlation analysis and a regression analysis were conducted. This was done in order to ensure the validity and reliability, as well as getting results to accept or rejected the presented hypotheses. The findings of this paper show that each of the five independent variables has a significant effect on the dependent variable of consumer engagement when tested on their own. However, when all the variables were tested together three out of the five hypotheses presented were rejected, these being the independent variables of co-developing, advocating and socializing. This does not mean that the variables for which hypotheses got rejected should be disregarded according to the results obtained from the regression analysis, according to the data gathered these triggers are still individually relevant to the attainment of consumer engagement within the luxury fashion segment via social media.

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The relationship between families and schools, and the importance of parents and families to a child’s academic success is well documented internationally. However, the development of frameworks, theories, policies, and programs has not resulted in an increase in parent or family engagement in public schools, nor has it remedied the historical alienation and marginalization of families of color in the United States; positive comprehensive programs in communities of color at the middle and high school levels often seem to be missing. Because of African American families’ cultural connection to countries in Africa resulting from the Atlantic Slave Trade, I used the indigenous framework Ubuntu (Metz, 2007), along with Barton et al.’s (2004) Ecologies of Parental Engagement and Epstein’s (1995) framework of Six Types of Involvement to guide this qualitative case study that examined the nature of the role of parents, families, and village members in the education of their high school students in Senegal, West Africa. Data from semi-structured interviews with parents, students, family and community members, teachers, and administrators of Dekka high school (a pseudonym), show that the people of Dekka seem to have relationships, beliefs, and ways of being that encourage parent, family, and community engagement, and empower them to advocate for resources for their high school students. The findings suggest that, ultimately, developing and fostering authentic relationships with stakeholders is important. Demonstrating that jaapal ma jaap, together everything is possible; their relationships with others, adult-adult or adult-child, are vital for not only raising but educating their children.

This study explores how Landgarten’s Family Art Assessment can provide clinicians with valuable information about families that can be used to advocate for the needs of the children in the family. A comprehensive literature review covers family assessments using art developed by Psychologists, family art assessments created by art therapists, and the benefits of using them in clinical treatment. The researcher utilized a qualitative research approach. The data gathering took the form of surveys and semi-structured interviews with clinicians at a community mental health agency following their participation/observation in a Family Art Assessment administered to a family on their caseload by a board certified art therapist. The researcher used textual analysis of the interview transcription to identify emergent themes. The emergent themes included: the impact of domestic violence, power dynamic, disconnection, and the therapist’s efforts to increase connection and communication in the family. Study findings indicate that Family Art Assessments, when used as a consultation service administered by an experienced art therapist, can serve as an invaluable tool to provide clinicians with a more complete understanding of the families they are treating quicker than verbal therapy assessment methods alone. The findings also indicate that the Family Art Assessment helped clinicians conceptualize their cases from a more systemic perspective that considers the children’s environment and relational patterns within the family as contributing to their problem behaviors and symptoms, and allowed clinicians to envision a path in treatment that included advocating for the children’s needs.