Parents’ and young people’s involvement in designing a trial of ventilator weaning

Consulting with users is considered best practice and is highly recommended in designing new trials. As part of our feasibility work, we undertook a consultation exercise with parents, ex-patients and young people prior to designing a trial of protocol-based ventilator weaning. Our aims were to (1) ascertain views on the relevance and importance of the trial; (2) determine the important parent/patient outcome measures; and (3) ascertain views on informed consent in a cluster randomized controlled trial. We conducted audio-recorded face-to-face, telephone and focus group interviews with parents and young people. Data were content analysed to generate information to address our specific consultation objectives. The setting was the north-western region of England. A total of 16 participants were interviewed: 2 parents of paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) survivors; 1 PICU survivor; and 13 young people from the former Medicines for Children Research Network. The trial objectives were deemed important and relevant, and participants considered the most important outcome measure to be the length of time on ventilation. Parents and young people did not consider written informed consent to be a necessary requirement in the context of this trial, rather awareness of unit participation in the trial was important with the opportunity of opting out of data collection. This consultation provided useful, pragmatic insights to inform trial design. We encountered significant challenges in recruiting parents and young people for this consultation exercise, and novel recruitment methods need to be considered for future work in this field. Patient and public involvement is essential to ensure that future trials answer parent-relevant questions and have meaningful outcome measures, as well as involving parents and young people in the general development of health care services.

Young People’s Offending Careers and Criminal Justice Contact: A Case for Social Justice

This article draws on an analysis of young people’s offending careers. The research was initiated against a backdrop of changing discourse around youth justice in Ireland with a shift towards prevention of offending and diversion from the criminal justice system. Locating crime and criminal justice contact within a biographical context indicated that participants’ offending, and lives generally, was bound up in marginalized transitions to adulthood, and embedded within social and economic environments characterized by high deprivation. The findings support a further shift in focus towards addressing social injustice as a necessary prerequisite to tackle the origins of youth offending.

Young People’s Early Offending: The Context of Strained Leisure Careers

Criminology has witnessed a growth of interest in the later stages of criminal careers with less attention given to providing an understanding of the onset of offending which goes beyond identifying the precipitative or ‘risk’ factors. Drawing on findings from a study of young people’s offending careers in Ireland, this article provides a contextualized understanding of the onset of crime located in young people’s biographical experiences and transition through youth more specifically. It focuses on one particular dimension of this process, suggesting that early offending can be understood as emerging in the context of strained leisure careers. The findings also highlight the close interaction between the development of young people’s leisure careers and their experiences of the local neighbourhood and social networks. It argues that responses to the early stages of youth offending must widen their focus from the individual to incorporate an understanding of broader socio-economic and cultural contexts.

Understanding Young People’s Transitions from State Care: the need for connections,

Over the last decade in a growing number of countries there has emerged an interest in the experiences of young people leaving state care. This has included a limited amount of cross national comparison. This paper reports the bleak descriptive picture of poor outcomes and lack of support that has emerged
but cautions that this be recognised as primarily expressing an Anglo-American descriptive empirical engagement with the issue. It then goes on to argue for using Esping-Anderson’s three types of welfare regime and the European Union policy goal of social inclusion as starting points to develop a more dynamic, systemic international picture of care leaving.

An Irish eclipse prediction of AD 754: the earliest in the Latin West

This note announces the discovery of a tract on eclipse prediction in Paris, BnF, lat. 6400b, composed by an Irish scholar in ad 754. It is the earliest such text in the early middle ages and it is here placed in its scientific context.

Negotiating Territoriality and Diversity: Young People’s Encounters in Northern Ireland Divided Communities

Neighborhoods across the globe are becoming increasingly ‘divers’, yet we still find their urban encounters reproduced through negotiating differences that escalates moods of social inequality and spatial imbalances. Research on ethnic division also stresses the spatial aspects of their production as shared urban spaces are mostly signified in the literature as ethnic ‘enclaves’. Territoriality and place attachment, in this sense, has a wide impact on the people’s everyday encounters while experiencing segregation. These historical narratives have produced communities that exhibit high levels of intracommunity relations and localized networking. This article investigates how youngster generations in Northern Ireland perceive, accept and respond to their differences, or perhaps how they act against it, to push the boundaries towards more diversity. In fact, the spatial and temporal encounters that occur among one community and the ‘Other’ signify a sort of negotiations and being more constructive about the future. The argument maintains that territoriality and place attachment has a wide impact on the young people’s everyday experiences. The empirical study shows how individuals and community groups position and identify themselves under the impact of social segregation. Building on social identity theories, I explain how people in Derry have established their own sense of belonging, of who they are, based on their group memberships which eventually became an important source of pride and self-esteem.

Systematically retrieving research in the digital age: Case study on the topic of social networking sites and young people’s mental health

Online information seeking has become normative practice among both academics and the general population. This study appraised the performance of eight databases to retrieve research pertaining to the influence of social networking sites on the mental health of young people. A total of 43 empirical studies on young people’s use of social networking sites and the mental health implications were retrieved. Scopus and SSCI had the highest sensitivity with PsycINFO having the highest precision. Effective searching requires large
generic databases, supplemented by subject-specific catalogues. The methodology developed here may provide inexperienced searchers, such as undergraduate students, with a framework to define a realistic scale of searching to undertake for a particular literature review or similar project.

Dissenting Exhibitions by Artists (1968-1998). Reframing Marxist Exhibition Legacy.

The goal of this thesis is to look at the critical and dissenting value of exhibitions through the examination of four cases studies, based on six exhibitions taking place between 1968 and 1998 in Latin and North America. The exhibitions belong to the history of modern and contemporary exhibitions and curating, a field of research and study that has only started to be written about in the last two decades. This investigation contributes to it, in its creation of new genealogies by connecting previously overlooked antecedents, or by proposing new relations within established lineages, at the intersection of a specific historiography; to address exhibitions, a tradition of artists acting as curators and an emerging history of curating. The examined exhibitions were put together by artists or artist collectives and were placed in a liminal position between artistic and curatorial practice. All the cases presented a distinct proposal in relation to art and social change, a fact that connects them, in their aims and modus operandi, to a Marxist and neo-Marxist critical and transformative legacy. The cases address the following connections: exhibition as political site (Tucumán Arde, 1968); exhibition as social space (The People’s Choice (Arroz con Mango), 1981); exhibition as encounter (Rooms with a view, We the People, Art/Artifact, 1987-88); and exhibition as an exchange situation (El Museo de la Calle, 1998-2001). Key to their analysis is the concept of dissensus, as put forward by Jacques Rancière. Within this theoretical framework, these exhibitions put into practice particular cases of dissensus in a given distribution of the sensible. All of them tried to deal with their thematic concerns by performing them as a praxis. They dissent with the way in which reality was formatted in their historical moment and challenge the exhibition medium itself opening new ways of doing and making in the exhibition field. Therefore, in this thesis the dissenting value of exhibitions is closely related to its main features as a medium, namely their temporality, heterogeneity and flexibility, which contribute to their potential for creative analysis and propositioning. In the case of these exhibitions, this capability is brought into play for institutional interrogation, for offering alternative cultural narratives and also for inspiring new imaginary realms.

Land grabbing, investors, and indigenous peoples: new legal strategies for an old practice?

This article examines how new legal strategies need to be adopted by indigenous peoples to react to the increasing phenomenon of ‘land grabbing’ taking place across the globe. In examining the specificity of the ‘land grab’ and how it particularly affects indigenous peoples, it analyses how new legal strategies targeting the investors need to be adopted by communities to mitigate some of the negative aspects of land grabbing. It argues that since the current ‘land grab’ is driven by investors it is important that indigenous peoples, and their supportive organisations, target investors and lending institutions which are behind the massive investments in land acquisitions.

Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia (Book Review)

Animism is a form of traditional spiritual belief that receives welcome treatment here. The observations of Victorian ethnologist travellers on the local peoples they regarded as primitive was analysed by Sir Edward (E. B.) Tylor, in Primitive Culture (1871) which established the working definition of animism followed by later generations of scholars. This came from the observation that non-scientific people did not always draw sharp distinctions between human persons and other entities such as animals, trees and even rocks but imbued these with soul. The latin anima, ‘soul, spirit’ provided the title of what was assumed to be a primitive religion, animism. The study being reviewed recognizes apparent connections within deep history between Siberia and the Amazon, and uses contemporary social anthropology to clarify assumptions about animism. This book on animism in two shamanic cultures explores personhood and the relations in pre-scientific human thought between humans and non-humans, in contexts where non-humans can be regarded as social persons (p.2).

A Community Hub Approach to Older People’s Housing

Purpose. This paper explores the potential of housing with care schemes to act as community hubs. The analysis highlights a range of benefits, barriers and facilitators. Design/methodology/approach. Data is presented from the ASSET project (Adult Social Services Environments and Settings) which used a mixed methods approach including a review of the literature, surveys and in-depth case study interviews. Findings. Most housing with care schemes have a restaurant or café, communal lounge, garden, hairdresser, activity room and laundrette, while many also have a library, gym, computer access and a shop. Many of these facilities are open not just to residents but also to the wider community, reflecting a more integrated approach to community health and adult social care, by sharing access to primary health care and social services between people living in the scheme and those living nearby. Potential benefits of this approach include the integration of older people’s housing, reduced isolation and increased cost effectiveness of local services through economies of scale and by maximising preventative approaches to health and wellbeing. Successful implementation of the model depends on a range of criteria including being located within or close to a residential area and having on-site facilities that are accessible to the public. Originality and Value. This paper is part of a very new literature on community hub models of housing with care in the UK. In the light of new requirements under the Care Act to better coordinate community services, it provides insights into how this approach can work and offers an analysis of the benefits and challenges that will be of interest to commissioners and providers as well as planners. This was a small scale research project based on four case studies. Caution should be taken when considering the findings in different settings.

An Old World Yet to Discover? European Studies in the Latin American Southern Cone

In spite of the strong historical links that connect Europe with South America, EU studies are underdeveloped in the latter region. This article takes stock of how European politics in general, and European integration in particular, are studied and taught in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay in order to assess such paradox and evaluate its prospects.

Has Regionalism Peaked? The Latin American Quagmire and its Lessons

Since 1960, Latin American attempts at regionalism have undergone distinct phases. More notably, they have tended to diverge across space, gradually giving birth to separate blocs that seem to be tearing South, Central and North America apart. Additionally, within and across these regions several overlapping projects coexist. This article focuses on the dynamics of segmented and overlapping regionalism in order to describe what they look like, analyse how they articulate with one another, and explain why member states have pushed for such a messy outcome. This situation, linked to the evolution of the global context, might be indicating that regionalism in Latin America has reached its peak, beyond which it may be difficult to achieve further progress. Two conclusions are elicited: first, economic integration is becoming a geographically diffused phenomenon rather than a regional one; second, regionalism is still a compelling foreign policy but its causes, goals and outcomes are no longer what they used to be.

Has Regionalism Peaked? The Latin American Quagmire and its Lessons

The chapters in this book were originally published in the The International Spectator, volume 47, issue 1 (February 2012).

The Wilderness Expedition: An effective life course intervention to improve young peoples well-being and connectedness to nature

It is well understood that wilderness expeditions improve well-being; however, there is little supporting quantitative data. The aim of this study was to measure the impact of wilderness expeditions on self-esteem (SE) and connectedness to nature (CN) and assess whether benefits varied according to participant and expedition characteristics. SE and CN were assessed pre– and post–wilderness expeditions in 130 adolescents using Rosenberg’s SE scale and the state CN scale. Two-way ANOVA revealed significant increases in SE and CN (p < .001) as a result of single expeditions. There was also an interaction effect of expedition and gender on SE (p < .05). Males had a higher SE at the start but female SE increased most. Linear regression revealed that living environment, gender, and the length and location of the expedition did not contribute to changes in SE and CN. Regular contact with natural environments will improve adolescent well-being, with the largest improvements in females.