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Legislators' accountability for issue stances:evidence from Australia's Marriage Law Postal Survey
Get PDFFor legislators to be held accountable for their stances voters need to sanction unpopular positions. However, because of strong party discipline it is difficult to identify the effects of individual MPs’ stances rather than the stance of their party, because MPs almost always have the same stance as their party. Researchers must therefore study issues which cut across parties or where parties allowed representatives to follow their conscience. Same-sex marriage is one such issue. We use data from the 2017 marriage law survey and subsequent 2019 federal election results to test whether MPs whose referendum positions were out-of-step with their district faced electoral sanction. We find that a standard deviation increase in congruence at the level of the polling place catchment area yields a statistically and substantively insignificant change in vote share of -0.1 percentage points. The results question the degree to which electors control their representatives beyond voting for a party label
Navigating Credibility and Approachability in Conflict Zones:Insights from Fieldwork in Nigerian Communities Facing Eco-violence
Get PDFThis article contributes to the literature by proposing an expanded “framework for credibility and approachability,” extending the framework’s applicability in conflict-affected societies. The credibility and approachability framework aids researchers in comprehending and evaluating their fieldwork experiences, enabling them to articulate their experiences clearly and insightfully. Drawing on the reflexive experiences of a diaspora-based researcher who used this framework to prepare for fieldwork in Nigeria, the article illustrates the framework’s components plus the added “bearability” component. The experiences were borne out of a study with 54 participants across focus groups in communities affected by eco-violence in the Nigerian Middle Belt. The researcher’s positionality of “betweenness” is also discussed, highlighting the complexities of conducting research as an academic “homecomer” in communities located in conflict-affected areas
Scalable Event-by-Event Processing of Neuromorphic Sensory Signals With Deep State-Space Models
Get PDFFoster Carers' Perceptions of the Impact of Trauma-informed Training and Consultation on their Relationships with Children and Young People in their Care
Get PDFAbstractFor many years, research has sought to understand the needs and outcomes of children and young people in care. This has often been done by evaluating the outcomes of interventions, which mainly focused on measurable behavioural aspects of the child. In attempts to explore the experiences and complexities of looking after care-experienced children, more recent research has also involved the views of those who care for them, including registered foster carers and residential care home staff. However, studies which have explored the use of trauma-informed approaches have often varied in the robustness of their methodologies, which indicates that more research in this area is warranted (Lotty et al., 2021a). The current study qualitatively explored how foster carers who accessed trauma-informed training and psychological consultation felt these experiences impacted their day-to-day parenting, connection and relationship with the children in their care as well as the impact on the foster carers’ confidence and self-reflection. This project aimed to explore these relational psychological processes to understand the foster carers’ experience beyond the focus on outcomes. A sample of 11 foster carers engaged in semi-structured interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis was adopted to interpret the data, which was conducted flexibly following Braun and Clarke’s (2021) six-step data engagement process. Three themes, with respective subthemes, emerged. The first main theme, relational and emotional challenges, reflects the complexities surrounding the role of a foster carer, outlined further in the subthemes: ‘an emotional experience of being a foster carer’, ‘navigating relationships around the foster child’ and ‘navigating complex systems’. These challenging experiences relating to the roles of foster carers highlight the value of psychological support, which is reflected in the second main theme, psychological training and consultation in a relational context. This theme described the knowledge foster carers gained from such support, captured in corresponding subthemes ‘understanding trauma and attachment’, ‘understanding self-regulation and co- regulation’ and ‘facilitating nested mentalisation’. Participants felt supported within the psychologically safe and relational space of trauma-informed training and consultation. Lastly, the third main theme therapeutic parenting demonstrated how participants felt the therapeutic parenting skills impacted them. It is comprised of four subthemes: ‘day-to-day strategies’, ‘feeling confident and empowered’, ‘the value of connection’ and ‘building trust and safe relationships’. How these findings fit with existing theories, research and practice are discussed, together with the strengths and limitations of this study.<br/
Continuing Professional Development: Exploring the lived experiences of Agency Social Workers’ engagement with Continuing Professional Development activities in North East London.
Get PDFAbstractThe literature on Agency Social workers (ASWs)' Continuing Professional Development (CPD) focuses primarily on the barriers and impediments they face in accessing this crucial element of their professional standards. However, there is a notable lack of research on how ASWs overcome these challenges and successfully engage in CPD activities. CPD is widely recognized as a means of enhancing practitioners' capacity in line with job requirements and building a knowledge base that supports professionalism. It reflects an altruistic commitment to improving service user outcomes and upholding professional integrity. The existing literature highlights the critical role of CPD in ensuring professional competence, but there is a dearth of research specifically addressing ASWs, who face unique obstacles in accessing CPD due to the nature of their employment. This research aims to address this gap in the literature.In the UK, employment agencies hire social workers and sell their services to local authorities or other social care institutions where they are expected to work. However, the contractual arrangements between ASWs and their host employers often limit their access to training and learning activities. This pose concerns for their CPD and raises serious questions about the quality of outcomes for service users, particularly as the number of ASWs continues to increase.This study employs a conceptual framework encompassing professionalism, neoliberalism, and social constructivism to explore the lived experiences of ASWs engaging in CPD. The focus is specifically on how they overcome challenges and other factors that impede their engagement with CPD activities in their host employer settings. The research follows a qualitative approach, with in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with 26 ASWs selected through purposeful sampling in North East London boroughs. The collected data was thematically analysed using NVivo, identifying codes that were collapsed and combined to form categories or focused codes. These categories then emerged as themes that shed light on the complexities of ASWs' lived experiences.The findings of the study indicate that ASWs still face discrimination in accessing certain CPD activities due to their employment status. This has led to a situation where ASWs have come to accept the existence of limitations and have developed strategies to mitigate these challenges. These strategies include networking outside their employment settings, utilizing social media to form support groups, maximizing employment viability, and managing the stressors associated with agency work. Some ASWs also resort to intermittent permanent employment to gain access to specialist trainings that are typically exclusive to permanent staff. Additionally, practitioners tend to perceive CPD activities as regulatory requirements rather than opportunities for knowledge progression and professional advancement. Consequently, CPD is often viewed as a burdensome task, leading to practitioners being late or failing to record their CPD activities.To maximize the benefits of CPD for practitioners, it is essential for stakeholders to recognize and articulate the collective responsibility involved. This includes policy makers, host employers, employment agencies, regulatory bodies, and CPD providers. These stakeholders should take into account factors that are beyond the control of ASWs, such as supervision and appraisal, which significantly impact their engagement in CPD. Social Work England plays a crucial role in ensuring that the CPD of social workers is effectively monitored by management and accounted for during quality assurance processes. Moreover, it is important to ensure that practitioners understand the importance and purpose of recording CPD activities.<br/
Exploring professionals’ experiences of working with parents with learning disabilities from the global majority
Get PDFTheoretical, practical, and engineering aspects of lattice cryptanalysis and TLS attestation:Or learning, with errors.
Get PDFDeveloping a self from the inside out: Investigating multisensory body awareness across human infancy and early toddlerhood
Get PDFThe processing and integration of sensory information originating from inside and outside the body provides a basis for our sense of self. Yet, how infants begin to navigate this interplay to perceive the body and its sentient experience in the world is unknown. Across four studies, this thesis aimed to examine the trajectory of interoceptive and exteroceptive body awareness across human infancy and early toddlerhood. Studies 1 and 2 tested theoretical proposals that parents’ own interoceptive abilities may be related to qualities of their caregiving interactions with their infant. According to the findings of these online studies, parents’ self-reported ability to regulate their own bodily states related to their reported engagement in specific caregiving behaviours. Studies 3 and 4 adopted a novel longitudinal approach, using a range of psychophysiological and behavioural methods, to elucidate the construction of bodily self-awareness across infancy and early toddlerhood. Specifically, in a sample of infants at 13- and 21-months-old, Study 3 traced the development of exteroceptive and interoceptive (cardiac) bodily self-awareness to test the theoretical account in adults that individuals differ in the extent to which their model of the self is biased towards interoceptive or exteroceptive sensations. The findings provide the first evidence that these individual differences exist in human infancy. In the same sample of participants, Study 4 built on the findings of the previous studies to examine whether caregiving interactions and parental self-reported interoception shape infants’ own developing interoceptive sensitivity. The findings extended those of Studies 1 and 2 to show that cardiac sensitivity at 21 months was predicted by the interaction between parental interoceptive self-regulation and interactional synchrony during a parent-infant interaction at 13 months. Taken together, the findings of this thesis have important theoretical implications for understanding the developmental pathways to self-awareness. Beyond this, the developmental approach taken here sheds light on the mechanisms supporting interoceptive body awareness that have otherwise been unobtainable from studies conducted with adults
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