Atopy, home environment and the risk of childhood-onset type 1 diabetes: a population-based case-control study

Background: The marked increases in the incidence of type 1 diabetes in recent decades strongly suggest the role of environmental influences. These environmental influences remain largely unknown.

Risks to home care workers: Professional perspectives

Care at home is fundamental to community care policy, but the simultaneous growth of health and safety regulation has implications for home care services because of the duty of employers towards home care workers. This grounded theory study set in Northern Ireland used data from 19 focus groups and nine semi-structured interviews with a range of health and social services professionals and managers to explore perspectives on planning long term care for older people. Home care workers faced a wide range of hazards in the homes of clients, who themselves were faced with adapting their living habits due to their changing health and care needs and 'risks.' Creative approaches were used to ensure the health and safety of home care workers and simultaneously to meet the choices of clients. Staff experienced feelings of conflict when they judged it necessary to impose their way of providing home care and thus impose their values on clients to create a safe working environment. There was variation between and within organizations in terms of the staff focus on client needs or on their employer responsibility towards home care workers. The planning of home care services must take account of both the choices of clients and the hazards facing home care staff.

Home is Where the Human is?:Ethics, Intervention and Hospitality in Kosovo

The human is frequently made central to the way international ethics is thought and practiced. Yet, frequently, the human can be used to close down ethical options rather than open them up. This article examines the case of British foreign policy in Kosovo. It argues that the human in this context was placed at the centre of ethical action, but was discursively constructed as a silent, biopolitial mass which could only be saved close to its territorially qualified home. It could not be protected by being brought to the UK. To remain human, the subject of ethical concern, the Kosovan refugee, had to remain near Kosovo. This construction of the human-home relationship meant that military humanitarian intervention became the only ethical policy available; hospitality, a welcoming of the Kosovan refugee into the British home, was ruled out. This article questions such a construction of the human, listening to the voices of Kosovan refugees to open up the relationship between the human and its home. The complexity that results shows that a more nuanced view of the human would not allow itself to be co-opted so easily to a simplistic logic of intervention. Rather, it could enable the possibility of hospitality as another way of practicing international ethics.

ABA-Based Programs for Children Diagnosed With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Parental and Professional Experiences at School and at Home

Having a child diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) poses a range of challenges to families, many of which can be addressed through appropriate intervention. A study of parental (n = 95) and professional (n = 67) experiences was carried out in relation to two settings: (a) schools that provided intensive interventions based on the science of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), and (b) non-intensive ABA-based home programs. Results show that parents whose children attend ABA-based schools were generally more satisfied with their child's educational provision, monitoring procedures, and level of staff training, than parents who were not offered ABA-based education in schools. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.