Child welfare policy and practice on children’s exposure to domestic violence

There are emerging movements in several countries to improve policy and practice to protect children from exposure to domestic violence. These movements have resulted in the collection of new data on EDV and the design and implementation of new child welfare policies and practices. To assist with the development of child welfare practice, this article summarizes current knowledge on the prevalence of EDV, and on child welfare services policies and practices that may hold promise for reducing the frequency and impact of EDV on children. We focus on Australia, Canada, and the United States, as these countries share a similar socio-legal context, a long history of enacting and expanding legislation about reporting of maltreatment, debates regarding the application of reporting laws to EDV, and new child welfare practices that show promise for responding more effectively to EDV.

Australian children's experiences of parents' online mediation

This paper draws on the work of the ‘EU Kids Online’ network funded by the EC (DG Information Society) Safer Internet plus Programme (project code SIP-KEP-321803); see www.eukidsonline.net, and addresses Australian children’s online activities in terms of risk, harm and opportunity. In particular, it draws upon data that indicates that Australian children are more likely to encounter online risks — especially around seeing sexual images, bullying, misuse of personal data and exposure to potentially harmful user-generated content — than is the case with their EU counterparts. Rather than only comparing Australian children with their European equivalents, this paper places the risks experienced by Australian children in the context of the mediation and online protection practices adopted by their parents, and asks about the possible ways in which we might understand data that seems to indicate that Australian children’s experiences of online risk and harm differ significantly from the experiences of their Europe-based peers. In particular, and as an example, this paper sets out to investigate the apparent conundrum through which Australian children appear twice as likely as most European children to have seen sexual images in the past 12 months, but parents are more likely to filter their access to the internet than is the case with most children in the wider EU Kids Online study. Even so, one in four Australian children (25%) believes that what their parents do helps ‘a lot’ to improve their internet experience, and Australian children and their parents are a little less likely to agree about the mediation practices taking place in the family home than is the case in the EU. The AU Kids Online study was carried out as a result of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation’s funding of a small scale randomised sample (N = 400) of Australian families with at least one child, aged 9–16, who goes online. The report on Risks and safety for Australian children on the internet follows the same format and uses much of the contextual statement around these issues as the ‘county level’ reports produced by the 25 EU nations involved in EU Kids Online, first drafted by Livingstone et al. (2010). The entirely new material is the data itself, along with the analysis of that data.

Mothers of young children with special health care needs : maternal well-being and engagement in work

This thesis reports research focused on the well-being and employment experiences of mothers who have a child with special health care needs. Data are drawn from Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). This is a public access database. The thesis uses the social ecological theory of Bronfenbrenner (1984) and the work of Zubrick et al. (2000) on human and social capital to inform the conceptual framework developed for the research. Four studies are reported. LSAC has a nationally representative sample of Australian children and their families. The study is tracking the development of 10,000 children, with data collected every two years, from 2004 to 2018. This thesis uses data from the Kindergarten Cohort of LSAC. The 4,983 children in the Kindergarten Cohort were aged 4 years at recruitment into the study in 2004. The analyses in this thesis use child and family data from Wave 1 (2004) and Wave 2 (2006) for a subsample of the children who are identified as having special health needs. This identification is based on a short screening questionnaire included in the Parent 1 Interview at each wave of the data collection. It is the children who are identified as having special health care needs which can be broadly defined as chronic health conditions or developmental difficulties. However, it is the well-being and employment experiences of the mothers of these children that are the primary focus in three of the four studies reported in this thesis.

Studying Mobile Media : Cultural Technologies, Mobile Communication, and the iPhone

The iPhone represents an important moment in both the short history of mobile media and the long history of cultural technologies. Like the Walkman of the 1980s, it marks a juncture in which notions about identity, individualism, lifestyle and sociality require rearticulation. This book explores not only the iPhone’s particular characteristics, uses and "affects," but also how the "iPhone moment" functions as a barometer for broader patterns of change. In the iPhone moment, this study considers the convergent trajectories in the evolution of digital and mobile culture, and their implications for future scholarship. Through the lens of the iPhone—as a symbol, culture and a set of material practices around contemporary convergent mobile media—the essays collected here explore the most productive theoretical and methodological approaches for grasping media practice, consumer culture and networked communication in the twenty-first century.

Same old 'other' mother: Neil Gaiman's Coraline

Central to Coraline’s experiences in the fantasy world beyond the walls of her flat is the ‘other’ mother, who is initially constructed as an idealised image of maternal care whose only concern is for the welfare and comfort of her child. But as the story unfolds, this belle dame rapidly transforms into the ‘beldam sans merci’, an old crone, a she-devil whose real interest lies in the power she can draw from possessing the souls of children such as Coraline. This paper explores the Gaiman’s use of archetypes and cultural stereotypes of the mother figure that feminisms have been intent on expunging, interrogating, or appropriating in positive ways.

Assessing the effectiveness of the child safety net : linkage of hospital and child protection services data on ‘maltreated’ and ‘unintentionally injured' children

-International recognition of need for public health response to child maltreatment -Need for early intervention at health system level -Important role of health professionals in identifying, reporting, documenting suspician of maltreatment -Up to 10% of all children presenting at ED’s are victims and without identification, 35% reinjured and 5% die -In Qld, mandatory reporting requirement for doctors and nurses for suspected abuse or neglect

Good secrets, bad secrets : disclosure in children’s picture books about sexual child abuse

Well over 50 picture books have been published for children on the topic of sexual child abuse (Lampert & Walsh, 2010) many with the aim of teaching their very young readers how to tell the difference between good and bad secrets. This paper looks at three recent picture books for how they focus on disclosure as an end point.

Experimental studies of wireless communication and GNSS kinematic positioning performance in high-mobility vehicle environments

In order to support intelligent transportation system (ITS) road safety applications such as collision avoidance, lane departure warnings and lane keeping, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) based vehicle positioning system has to provide lane-level (0.5 to 1 m) or even in-lane-level (0.1 to 0.3 m) accurate and reliable positioning information to vehicle users. However, current vehicle navigation systems equipped with a single frequency GPS receiver can only provide road-level accuracy at 5-10 meters. The positioning accuracy can be improved to sub-meter or higher with the augmented GNSS techniques such as Real Time Kinematic (RTK) and Precise Point Positioning (PPP) which have been traditionally used in land surveying and or in slowly moving environment. In these techniques, GNSS corrections data generated from a local or regional or global network of GNSS ground stations are broadcast to the users via various communication data links, mostly 3G cellular networks and communication satellites. This research aimed to investigate the precise positioning system performances when operating in the high mobility environments. This involves evaluation of the performances of both RTK and PPP techniques using: i) the state-of-art dual frequency GPS receiver; and ii) low-cost single frequency GNSS receiver. Additionally, this research evaluates the effectiveness of several operational strategies in reducing the load on data communication networks due to correction data transmission, which may be problematic for the future wide-area ITS services deployment. These strategies include the use of different data transmission protocols, different correction data format standards, and correction data transmission at the less-frequent interval. A series of field experiments were designed and conducted for each research task. Firstly, the performances of RTK and PPP techniques were evaluated in both static and kinematic (highway with speed exceed 80km) experiments. RTK solutions achieved the RMS precision of 0.09 to 0.2 meter accuracy in static and 0.2 to 0.3 meter in kinematic tests, while PPP reported 0.5 to 1.5 meters in static and 1 to 1.8 meter in kinematic tests by using the RTKlib software. These RMS precision values could be further improved if the better RTK and PPP algorithms are adopted. The tests results also showed that RTK may be more suitable in the lane-level accuracy vehicle positioning. The professional grade (dual frequency) and mass-market grade (single frequency) GNSS receivers were tested for their performance using RTK in static and kinematic modes. The analysis has shown that mass-market grade receivers provide the good solution continuity, although the overall positioning accuracy is worse than the professional grade receivers. In an attempt to reduce the load on data communication network, we firstly evaluate the use of different correction data format standards, namely RTCM version 2.x and RTCM version 3.0 format. A 24 hours transmission test was conducted to compare the network throughput. The results have shown that 66% of network throughput reduction can be achieved by using the newer RTCM version 3.0, comparing to the older RTCM version 2.x format. Secondly, experiments were conducted to examine the use of two data transmission protocols, TCP and UDP, for correction data transmission through the Telstra 3G cellular network. The performance of each transmission method was analysed in terms of packet transmission latency, packet dropout, packet throughput, packet retransmission rate etc. The overall network throughput and latency of UDP data transmission are 76.5% and 83.6% of TCP data transmission, while the overall accuracy of positioning solutions remains in the same level. Additionally, due to the nature of UDP transmission, it is also found that 0.17% of UDP packets were lost during the kinematic tests, but this loss doesn't lead to significant reduction of the quality of positioning results. The experimental results from the static and the kinematic field tests have also shown that the mobile network communication may be blocked for a couple of seconds, but the positioning solutions can be kept at the required accuracy level by setting of the Age of Differential. Finally, we investigate the effects of using less-frequent correction data (transmitted at 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 and 60 seconds interval) on the precise positioning system. As the time interval increasing, the percentage of ambiguity fixed solutions gradually decreases, while the positioning error increases from 0.1 to 0.5 meter. The results showed the position accuracy could still be kept at the in-lane-level (0.1 to 0.3 m) when using up to 20 seconds interval correction data transmission.

Children physical activity correlates and parent physical activity do not have a strong association with physical activity amongst adolescents

Background: Physical activity is a key modifiable behavior impacting a number of important health outcomes. The path to developing chronic diseases commonly commences with lifestyle patterns developed during childhood and adolescence. This study examined whether parent physical activity and other factors correlated with physical activity amongst children are associated with self-reported physical activity in adolescents. Methods: A total of 115 adolescents (aged 12-14) and their parents completed questionnaire assessments. Self-reported physical activity was measured amongst adolescents and their parents using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire for Adolescents (IPAQ-A), and the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) respectively. Adolescents also completed the Children’s Physical Activity Correlates (CPAC), which measured factors that have previously demonstrated association with physical activity amongst children. To examine whether parent physical activity or items from the CPAC were associated with self-reported adolescent physical activity, backward step-wise regression was undertaken. One item was removed at each step in descending order of significance (until two tailed item alpha=0.05 was achieved). Results: A total of 93 (80.9%) adolescents and their parents had complete data sets and were included in the analysis. Independent variables were removed in the order: perceptions of parental role modeling; importance of exercise; perceptions of parental encouragement; peer acceptance; fun of physical exertion; perceived competence; parent physical activity; self-esteem; liking of exercise; and parental influence. The only variable remaining in the model was ‘liking of games and sport’ (p=0.003, adjusted r-squared=0.085). Discussion: These findings indicate that factors associated with self-reported physical activity in adolescents are not necessarily the same as younger children (aged 8-11). While ‘liking of games and sport’ was included in the final model, the r-squared value did not indicate a strong association. Interestingly, parent self-reported physical activity was not included in the final model. It is likely that adolescent physical activity may be influenced by a variety of direct and indirect forms of socialization. These findings do support the view that intrinsically motivated themes such as the liking of games and sport take precedence over outside influences, like those presented by parents, in determining youth physical activity behaviors. These findings do not suggest that parents have no influence on adolescent physical activity patterns, but rather, the influence is likely to be more complex than physical activity behavior modeling perceived by the adolescent. Further research in this field is warranted in order to better understand potential contributors to successful physical activity promotion interventions amongst young adolescents.

Relationships between maternal feeding and child weight in younger Australian children – Findings from the NOURISH obesity prevention trial

Studies show that in 3-11 year-olds, parental feeding style is directly associated with child weight [1] and also moderates the association between feeding practices and weight [2]. This cross-sectional study aimed to examine these relationships in younger children. Data from 331 of 698 first-time mothers of healthy term children (151 boys, mean age 24±1 months) enrolled in the NOURISH RCT included (a) measured child weight, (b) self-reported feeding styles and controlling feeding practices, and (c) maternal and child covariates. ANCOVA compared mean child weight-for-age z-score (cWAZ) across 4 feeding styles. Regression examined the associations between cWAZ and 5 controlling feeding practices. Moderated multiple regression analysis was planned to examine effects of feeding style on relationships between feeding practices and cWAZ. Feeding style (indulgent = 38.6%, authoritarian = 35.8%, authoritative = 13.1%, uninvolved = 12.5%) was not independently associated with cWAZ. However, ’pressure to eat’ was negatively associated with cWAZ (�=-0.131, p<0.05) higher pressure associated with lower cWAZ. Given feeding style was not associated with cWAZ, moderation analysis was not performed. Contrary to findings in older children, cWAZ in 2-year-olds was not associated with maternal feeding style. However, the negative association between child weight and pressure feeding found in 6-11year-olds [2] appears to hold in toddlers. Educating mothers about potentially detrimental long-term effects of pressure feeding in early childhood, may be more practical and effective in promoting healthy weight than targeting the less concrete concept of feeding styles. References: [1] Hughes, Appetite, 2005;44:83-92. [2] Hennessy, Appetite, 2010;54:369-377.

RCA method for fault diagnosis in digital substations of power systems

The authors present a Cause-Effect fault diagnosis model, which utilises the Root Cause Analysis approach and takes into account the technical features of a digital substation. The Dempster/Shafer evidence theory is used to integrate different types of fault information in the diagnosis model so as to implement a hierarchical, systematic and comprehensive diagnosis based on the logic relationship between the parent and child nodes such as transformer/circuit-breaker/transmission-line, and between the root and child causes. A real fault scenario is investigated in the case study to demonstrate the developed approach in diagnosing malfunction of protective relays and/or circuit breakers, miss or false alarms, and other commonly encountered faults at a modern digital substation.

Victims Speak: Comparing Child Sexual Abusers and Their Victims Accounts of Offence Circumstances

This article presents findings from a longitudinal study. The research aimed to explore the effectiveness of a treatment program for offenders which lasted for three years. The research design was structured around the program with interviews and psychometric testing undertaken at key points in time with the same group of respondents. View all notes that sought to evaluate a treatment program for child sexual abusers. A triangulated methodological approach was adopted drawing upon quantitative and qualitative methodological techniques. The focus here is upon one element of this research. 2 2The quantitative element of this research will be published shortly but is referred to in the following reports Davidson 2000, 2003 [research funded by the National Probation Service]. Psychometric testing was undertaken over a four-year period with the men attending the treatment program to explore shifts in the extent of denial, blame attribution, and victim empathy over time. Offender cognitive distortions, general health, and self-esteem were also explored via psychometric testing. An interview-administered survey was undertaken with all sex offenders registered with the Probation Service (those on probation and in custody) in order to gather demographic data, and 117 of 150 offenders responded. View all notes Ninety-one in-depth interviews were conducted over a four-year period with a small, nonrandom sample of twenty-one male offenders who had been convicted of sexual offenses against children. All of the men were subject to probation orders with a psychiatric condition (Criminal Justice Act, 1991). One of the aims of this element of the research was to explore the extent to which evidence of denial could be found in offenders’ accounts of offense circumstance and also to explore the extent to which offenders minimized the nature and extent of abuse perpetrated. Offenders’ accounts of offense circumstances were compared to victim statements, and stark differences emerge. These findings have considerable implications for treatment practice with sex offenders, where victims’ perceptions could be used to directly confront offender denial and minimization.

Child Victims of Sexual Abuse: Children's Experience of the Investigative Process in the Criminal Justice System

This paper is a selected review of research on issues surrounding the investigation of intra-familial child sexual abuse for children aged eight and above, in the criminal justice system. Particular attention is paid to features of the investigative interview in relation to the child's level of understanding, ability to report and likely emotional response when the proceedings take place. Best practice by police and social care agencies involves establishing valid and reliable information from children while attending to their developmental level and emotional state. The review aims to distil principles optimising this process from both the investigative judicial perspective and the child's focus, as well as from the inter-agency perspective and information sharing. Recommendations are made for improving the interview process based on research and methods from a range of disciplines and to optimise information recording in a format easily shared between agencies. Updated and ongoing training procedures are key to successful practice with training shared across police and social work agencies. The focus of this review is informed by preliminary findings from pilot research in progress on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Child Abuse Investigation Command.