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A Decade of Advancing Knowledge: Celebrating 10 Years of GrandFamilies: The Contemporary Journal of Research, Practice, and Policy
Get PDFIn response to a 2012 needs assessment involving 243 professionals in the kinship care field, the journal GrandFamilies was established to serve as a vital resource, enhancing knowledge and skills among researchers and practitioners. Since its launch in 2014, GrandFamilies has reached a global audience, with articles downloaded in over 166 countries. To date, the journal has achieved 79,239 total views, including 22,952 views of abstracts and 56,287 full-text downloads. While the majority of downloads (30,374) originate from the United States, there is a steadily increasing international readership. The journal\u27s diverse audience underscores its broad impact and relevance across academic, commercial, and governmental sectors. This synopsis highlights the progress made over the past decade, including trends in submissions, global reach, institutional readership, and the most popular articles
Introduction to the 10-Year Anniversary Issue: Reflecting on The Past, Present and Future of the Grandfamilies Journal as a Catalyst for Quality Innovative Research, Policy and Program Development
Get PDFThis special issue celebrates the 10-year anniversary of GrandFamilies: The Contemporary Journal of Research, Practice and Policy. The launch of this journal a decade ago marked a significant milestone in the study of kinship families, sparking a surge of scholarly work in the field. As is evident in the 12 articles included in this special issue, the journal has kept true to its original objective to be an important “forum for quality, evidence-based research with sound scholarship, knowledge, skills and best practices from the field for scholars, clinicians, policymakers, educators, program administrators and family advocates.
Supportive Programming during a Worldwide Pandemic and Beyond
Get PDFIn the United States, approximately 2.4 million grandparents are the primary caregivers of their grandchildren (Annie E. Casey Foundation Kids Count Data Center, 2024). Relative caregivers provide an important opportunity to keep families together and avoid foster home placement when children are unable to safely be cared for by parents. “Parenting again” comes with its own unique set of challenges, and the COVID-19 pandemic significantly highlighted and exacerbated these difficulties. There are many organizations nationwide that work within the field of relative caregiving, providing diverse programming designed to address the needs of this unique population. Core principles include strategies to equip caregivers to meet the needs of the children in their home, to combat loneliness and isolation, and to provide individualized services to meet the needs of each relative-caregiving family. The pandemic required organizations to make significant changes to how they delivered services, but the core program principles remain the same
Influence of a Disrupted Practice Context on Occupational Therapists\u27 Clinical Reasoning: A Qualitative Study
Get PDFBackground: Clinical reasoning in occupational therapy involves integrating client factors, professional knowledge, and practice context to guide decision-making. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted health care contexts, potentially affecting therapists\u27 reasoning. This study explored the factors that influenced occupational therapists\u27 clinical reasoning during this crisis.
Method: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted using semi-structured remote interviews with 11 occupational therapists in Quebec, Canada. The 60-min interviews, realized in 2021 and 2022, were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed inductively to identify reasoning-related themes. Deductive analysis involved coding text segments based on the 14 domains of the Theoretical Domains Framework. Transcripts were coded by two authors using QDA Miner software.
Results: The sample included mostly women with clinical experience ranging from 4 to 34 years. In addition to the 14 TDF domains identified through deductive analysis, the inductive analysis revealed 11 key themes, including “weight given to client/family,” “client safety, or “ethical reasoning.” The therapists indicated that priority was given to the client\u27s preferences. Their adaptation to the disrupted context was based on professional experience. In their view, demonstrated creativity and resilience reflected good professional adaptability. Anchoring in core occupational therapy values and ethics emerged as providing direction when evidence was limited.
Conclusion: Therapists\u27 professional values served as guides for navigating uncertainty. A client-centered approach took on greater importance in disrupted contexts. Findings indicate that using resilience and reflection can enhance context-adaptive reasoning
Examining Content Validity of Home for Life Design Home Assessment for Home Safety and Accessibility
Get PDFBackground: Older adults aging in place face daily challenges in functional mobility and increased fall risk. Home environments lack accessibility and safety features that promote safety, independence, and longevity. Quality home assessments that are reliable, valid, and efficient are necessary to help determine the safety and accessibility of the built environment for persons aging in place.
Method: A mixed-method study was conducted to determine if the Home for Life Design (HfLD) Home Assessment is a valid assessment for measuring safety and accessibility in the home. Eight experienced occupational therapists completed a Content Validity Index (CVI) and qualitative interview with a thematic analysis to determine content validity.
Results: CVI results were between.875–1.0 for all five items (*value \u3e .83 needed to be a valid assessment, (Yusoff, 2019), confirming the validity of the assessment. These scores were supported by four qualitative interview themes that emerged during the participants’ descriptions of professional use of the tool, including measures accessibility, measures safety, a preferred home assessment, and client-centric.
Conclusion: The HfLD Home Assessment appears to be a relevant and valid method to assess and measure the safety and accessibility of a person’s home environment
