Biologising parenting:neuroscience discourse, English social and public health policy and understandings of the child

In recent years, claims about children's developing brains have become central to the formation of child health and welfare policies in England. While these policies assert that they are based on neuro-scientific discoveries, their relationship to neuroscience itself has been debated. However, what is clear is that they portray a particular understanding of children and childhood, one that is marked by a lack of acknowledgment of child personhood. Using an analysis of key government-commissioned reports and additional advocacy documents, this article illustrates the ways that the mind of the child is reduced to the brain, and this brain comes to represent the child. It is argued that a highly reductionist and limiting construction of the child is produced, alongside the idea that parenting is the main factor in child development. It is concluded that this focus on children's brains, with its accompanying deterministic perspective on parenting, overlooks children's embodied lives and this has implications for the design of children's health and welfare services.

Biologising parenting:neuroscience discourse, English social and public health policy and understandings of the child

In recent years, claims about children's developing brains have become central to the formation of child health and welfare policies in England. While these policies assert that they are based on neuro-scientific discoveries, their relationship to neuroscience itself has been debated. However what is clear is that they portray a particular understanding of children and childhood, one that is marked by a lack of acknowledgment of child personhood. Using an analysis of key government-commissioned reports and additional advocacy documents, this chapter illustrates the ways that the mind of the child is reduced to the brain, and this brain comes to represent the child. It is argued that a highly reductionist and limiting construction of the child is produced, alongside the idea that parenting is the main factor in child development. It is concluded that this focus on children's brains, with its accompanying deterministic perspective on parenting, overlooks children's embodied lives and this has implications for the design of children's health and welfare services.

The public health role of community pharmacies

This article describes the experience of developing an enhanced public health role for a community pharmacy in the Castle Vale estate in Birmingham. It shows that the neighbourhood-based regeneration context of Castle Vale has created a stimulating setting for an ambitious and innovative pharmacy company to demonstrate what might be possible on a much wider scale in the UK. A core ethos of the Castle Vale regeneration initiative has been public-private partnership and this project reveals some 'critical success factors' for on-the-ground achievement.