The parent center is currently the phenomenon, which is compared with the "State" schools or more today to discuss "the children's group" devoted less attention. And, in particular, in the section that deals with the care of children without parents. Although the parent centers help solve one of the social and political problems, the Czech Republic- the lack of places in nursery schools, in crèches, they lack support. Legislative support, support the child care area in MC without the participation of the parents. In the Czech Republic currently operates a total of 427 MC and in the Liberec region, on which I focused in the empirical part, has 21 maternity center. Of these 21 parent service center to care for children without parental involvement provides a total of 14 maternity center. And the MC feels the need to legislative support, which would be welcomed by, clearer rules for the operation of the parent center, especially in the environment of a child without the participation of the parents. This support is important in all activities that MC. Maternity Center is not just about "meeting", but also on the promotion of intergenerational cohabitation, create facilities for families with children, and last but not least, active participation to facilitate the return of women and men back into the...

Background: Occupational stress is a global and complex phenomenon, and workers in developing countries can be affected by it (International Labour Organisation 2001). Staff within maternity settings have been identified as being at risk of suffering from stress, resulting in adverse health outcomes (Evenden and Sharpe, 2002). However, MWAs’ perceptions of stress have not been captured and are not reflected in the literature. Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore MWAs’ perceptions of occupational stress, possible cause(s), the impact and support available and the coping methods they adopted within maternity care settings (hospital) in Nigeria. Methodology: This study adopted a qualitative methodology. Husserl’s (1962) phenomenological approach was chosen as it enabled the researcher to collect rich, in-depth, descriptive accounts of the MWAs’ perceptions of the phenomenon under study through the use of semi-structured interviews. Findings: The major sources of stress for MWAs included work overload, long working hours, staff shortages, work exploitation and intensification and lack of support from senior staff. The stress levels MWAs experienced impacted on their health and well-being and resulted in related behavioural and physical reactions. Conclusion: This study confirmed that MWAs were exposed to similar stress factors experienced by other health workers and reported in the research literature. Additionally, it demonstrated the need for more qualitative studies to explore the perceptions of occupational stress among under-represented groups of healthcare workers. Importantly, this study created an opportunity to explore the experience of dedicated women facing challenging employment practices in hospital settings in Nigeria. Equally, it gave a voice to these unrecognised, almost invisible women, who were the MWAs that played a key role within the maternity services.

No description available.

Pregnancy and childbirth are critical life events and women and their families require physical as well as emotional support and care. The concepts continuity of care, choice and a sense of control are prominent in the literature on women’s satisfaction with as well as outcomes of care. Midwives have globally been identified as important role players in women-centred care for low risk pregnant women. To be able to offer their women safe, supportive care they need not only a certain degree of autonomy, but also the support of other health care professionals such as obstetricians to whom they can refer women with risk factors or complications. Maternity care has become “medicalised” and the overuse of interventions such as caesarean section is prevalent in many countries. South African women make use of either the public or private health sector for care during pregnancy and birth. The public sector is overburdened and women do not have a high level of continuity of care. The private sector is mainly obstetrician-led and intervention-driven, even for low risk women. The estimated caesarean section rate is higher than 70%. Private midwife-led care is available in South Africa, but is concentrated in the major cities. Private midwives practise at hospitals, birth centres, “active birth units” and women’s homes. No evidence could be found on the outcomes of private midwife-led care in South Africa. The objectives of this study were to explore and describe the outcomes of births attended by private midwives in Gauteng over a two year period and to compare these outcomes with the latest Cochrane review on midwife-led care. A retrospective cohort design was chosen to audit the birth registers of private midwives in Gauteng and conduct quantitative analyses. Gauteng midwives’ patients, when compared with the Cochrane review that juxtaposes midwife-led care with other models of care, had a significantly lower percentage of interventions such as induction of labour (9.6% versus 18.6%) but caesarean sections were performed significantly more frequently (19.3% for the women in Gauteng versus 12.5% for the women in the review). Women in Gauteng also made significantly less use of medications in labour. Maternal and neonatal outcomes were reassuring. Significantly more Gauteng women had intact perineums (53.4% versus 31.4%). A higher percentage of postpartum haemorrhage was found in the Gauteng sample (7.9% versus 6.2%). The difference is significant, although, only three women were admitted to high care units as a result of postpartum haemorrhage. Overall foetal loss (4.3% versus 6.7%) and neonatal ICU admissions (0.3% versus 2.9%) occurred significantly less frequently in the Gauteng sample. The study findings indicate that private midwife-led care in Gauteng compared well with that in the rest of the world in terms of intervention rates and outcomes. / MCur, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Pregnancy and childbirth are critical life events and women and their families require physical as well as emotional support and care. The concepts continuity of care, choice and a sense of control are prominent in the literature on women’s satisfaction with as well as outcomes of care. Midwives have globally been identified as important role players in women-centred care for low risk pregnant women. To be able to offer their women safe, supportive care they need not only a certain degree of autonomy, but also the support of other health care professionals such as obstetricians to whom they can refer women with risk factors or complications. Maternity care has become “medicalised” and the overuse of interventions such as caesarean section is prevalent in many countries. South African women make use of either the public or private health sector for care during pregnancy and birth. The public sector is overburdened and women do not have a high level of continuity of care. The private sector is mainly obstetrician-led and intervention-driven, even for low risk women. The estimated caesarean section rate is higher than 70%. Private midwife-led care is available in South Africa, but is concentrated in the major cities. Private midwives practise at hospitals, birth centres, “active birth units” and women’s homes. No evidence could be found on the outcomes of private midwife-led care in South Africa. The objectives of this study were to explore and describe the outcomes of births attended by private midwives in Gauteng over a two year period and to compare these outcomes with the latest Cochrane review on midwife-led care. A retrospective cohort design was chosen to audit the birth registers of private midwives in Gauteng and conduct quantitative analyses. Gauteng midwives’ patients, when compared with the Cochrane review that juxtaposes midwife-led care with other models of care, had a significantly lower percentage of interventions such as induction of labour (9.6% versus 18.6%) but caesarean sections were performed significantly more frequently (19.3% for the women in Gauteng versus 12.5% for the women in the review). Women in Gauteng also made significantly less use of medications in labour. Maternal and neonatal outcomes were reassuring. Significantly more Gauteng women had intact perineums (53.4% versus 31.4%). A higher percentage of postpartum haemorrhage was found in the Gauteng sample (7.9% versus 6.2%). The difference is significant, although, only three women were admitted to high care units as a result of postpartum haemorrhage. Overall foetal loss (4.3% versus 6.7%) and neonatal ICU admissions (0.3% versus 2.9%) occurred significantly less frequently in the Gauteng sample. The study findings indicate that private midwife-led care in Gauteng compared well with that in the rest of the world in terms of intervention rates and outcomes. / MCur, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

This project shows how Jonson and Shakespeare represent dissatisfactions with filiation and paternity as discontents with other early modern discourses of cultural reproduction, and vice versa. Chapters on six plays analyze the father-child tie as it articulates sensitivities and hopes in remote arenas, from usury law to mourning rites, humanism to Judaism, witchcraft to visions of heaven. In every play, the father is disembodied. He is dead, invisible, physically separated from his child, or represented in consistently incorporeal terms. In its very formlessness, the vision of paternity as abstraction is what makes it such a flexible metaphor for Renaissance attitudes to so many different forms of cultural cohesion and replication. The Shakespeare plays treat the somatic gulf with ambivalence. For Shakespeare, who ultimately rejects a world beyond the impermanent material one, incorporeality is both the father's prestige and his punishment. But for Jonson, the desomatization more often indicates paternal privilege. Jonson wants filiation and fathering to counteract the progression of history, and since time destroys the concrete, abstraction and disembodiment are necessary for the process to work. His plays initially envision a paternally imagined rule of law achieving permanence for those under it. But Volpone undermines Every man in his humour's fantasy of law, and The staple of news dismantles it still more. Ultimately, in Staple's schematically represented father and son, a pair whose reunion allows them a courtroom triumph, Jonson resorts to an abstractly figured paternity itself to justify other abstractions, legal and literary. As with law in Jonson, so for religion and the supernatural in Shakespeare. Shakespeare's body of work eventually renounces the religious faith whose representation it interweaves with portraits of children and fathers. It does so first in Merchant's intimidating Judaism and hypocritical Christianity, then in Twelfth night's more subtly referenced Catholicism, mournful and aestheticized, and finally in The tempest's various abjurations. Monotheism vanishes altogether in the last play, replaced by a dead witch and multiple spirits and deities who do the bidding of a conjuror who plans to give them up. Both playwrights ultimately reduce their investment in other forms of cultural transmission in favor of more intimate parent-child structures, embodied or not. / text

This project examines midwifery in the precolonial setting, the nature of Christian missionary activities in Southeastern Nigeria, the colonial process of erecting the maternity, and the collaborations between traditional and Western midwives. The colonial history of Nigeria can be traced to 1885 when British claims to a West African sphere of influence received international recognition. However it was not until 1900, following the British government's acquisition of the Royal Niger Company's territories, that Nigeria was officially considered a British colony. Nonetheless, the groundwork of colonial rule in Southeastern Nigeria predated these eras and is attributed to the establishment of the London-based Church Missionary Society (CMS) at Onitsha in 1857, followed by the Roman Catholic Missions (RCM) in 1885. The rivalry that ensued between them led to the development of a medical mission and the launching of the Western maternity in Southeastern Nigeria, undermining traditional childbirth practices, and providing new forms of training and facilities for a new class of midwives. / text

No description available.

The primary objective of the work presented in this thesis was to identify trends in maternal body mass index (BMI) over time, the demographic predictors of those women most at risk of being obese in pregnancy, health inequalities, and the impact of maternal obesity on maternity services. A mixed methodology utilised quantitative and qualitative research to address these objectives. Data were collated from 34 maternity units across England, including 619,323 deliveries between 1989 and 2007 inclusive. Analysis identified an increasing incidence of maternal obesity over time, regional differences in incidence, and significant inequalities with women residing in the highest levels of deprivation, and Black ethnic group. A systematic review was carried out including 49 studies investigating obesity and pregnancy outcomes with acute maternity resource implications. The meta-analysis found significantly increased odds of a number of outcomes, and concluded that maternal obesity had a considerable impact on maternity resources, and contributed towards a poorer prognosis for the mother and the baby during delivery and in the immediate post-partum period. Qualitative interviews and focus groups with 30 HCPs across eight NHS Trusts in the North East of England were carried out to identify barriers in implementing maternal obesity services, and to gain HCPs perspectives on what they felt was required in order to address maternal obesity effectively. The study identified the themes of ‘Service Development’, ‘Psychosocial Issues and Maternal Obesity Services’, ‘Information, Evidence, and Training’, and ‘Where to go From Here?’. Overall this programme of research has identified that maternal obesity is increasing over time and is significantly associated with health inequalities. The increase in maternal obesity has an impact on acute services, and HCPs feel that a holistic approach is required through partnership work in order to address maternal obesity effectively. This programme of research has primarily contributed to the knowledge of maternal obesity with the provision of the first national level statistics for trends in maternal obesity. The research has also provided a holistic view of the impact of obesity in pregnancy on maternity services, including the impact on resources and the issues relating to addressing the maternal obesity in clinical practice. The research has also identified aspects of service that need to be improved, and knowledge gaps in how to move services forward to effective address maternal obesity. The contribution of this research to the knowledge base is emphasised in the journal pre-publications, dissemination through UK and European, and international conference presentations, being an invited speaker at a number of conferences in the UK, and I received the 2007 Association for the Study of Obesity (ASO) Student Researcher Award for producing exemplary work in the study of obesity.