Teachers' and education students' perceptions of and reactions to children with and without the diagnostic label 'ADHD'

Thirty-four elementary school teachers and 32 education students from Canada rated their reactions towards vignettes describing children who met attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptom criteria that included or did not include the label “ADHD.” “ADHD”-labeled vignettes elicited greater perceptions of the child's impairment as well as more negative emotions and less confidence in the participants, although it also increased participants' willingness to implement treatment interventions. Ratings were similar to vignettes of boys versus girls; however, important differences in ratings between teachers and education students emerged and are discussed. Finally, we investigated the degree to which teachers' professional backgrounds influenced bias based on the label “ADHD.” Training specific to ADHD consistently predicted label bias, whereas teachers' experience working with children with ADHD did not.

Assessing the concordance of health and child protection data for 'maltreated' and 'unintentionally injured' children

Objectives: To quantify the concordance of hospital child maltreatment data with child protection service (CPS) records and identify factors associated with linkage. Methods: Multivariable logistic regression analysis was conducted following retrospective medical record review and database linkage of 884 child records from 20 hospitals and the CPS in Queensland, Australia. Results: Nearly all children with hospital assigned maltreatment codes (93.1%) had a CPS record. Of these, 85.1% had a recent notification. 29% of the linked maltreatment group (n=113) were not known to CPS prior to the hospital presentation. Almost 1/3 of children with unintentional injury hospital codes were known to CPS. Just over 24% of the linked unintentional injury group (n=34) were not known to CPS prior to the hospital presentation but became known during or after discharge from hospital. These estimates are higher than the 2006/07 annual rate of 2.39% of children being notified to CPS. Rural children were more likely to link to CPS, and children were over 3 times more likely to link if the index injury documentation included additional diagnoses or factors affecting their health. Conclusions: The system for referring maltreatment cases to CPS is generally efficient, although up to 1 in 15 children had codes for maltreatment but could not be linked to CPS data. The high proportion of children with unintentional injury codes who linked to CPS suggests clinicians and hospital-based child protection staff should be supported by further education and training to ensure children at risk are being detected by the child protection system.

Young children as regenerative tissue donors : considering the need for legal reform in light of divergent ethical approaches

In Australia, young children who lack decision-making capacity can have regenerative tissue removed to treat another person suffering from a severe or life-threatening disease. While great good can potentially result from this as the recipient’s life may be saved, ethical unease remains over the ‘use’ of young children in this way. This paper examines the ethical approaches that have featured in the debate over the acceptability and limits of this practice, and how these are reflected in Australia’s legal regime governing removal of tissue from young children. This analysis demonstrates a troubling dichotomy within the Australia’s laws that requires decision-makers to adopt inconsistent ethical approaches depending on where a donor child is situated. It is argued that this inconsistency in approach warrants legal reform of this ethically sensitive issue.

Early childhood education : the natural starting point for environmental education

Young children are most vulnerable to, and most at risk from, environmental and sustainability challenges. Early education investments aimed at addressing such issues, until recently however, have been neglected or under-rated. Fortunately, this is changing. A groundswell of practitioner interest in early childhood environmental education/ education for sustainability is emerging, in contrast to the ‘patches of green’ that have characterised previous decades. Indeed, an international coalition for early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) is beginning to develop, evidenced by The Gothenburg Recommendations on Education for Sustainable Development (2008) that identifies early childhood, within a framework of lifelong learning, as a ‘natural starting point’ for all ongoing education for sustainability. This document is important as it is the first international statement to explicitly identify ECEfS as contributing to education for sustainability. The next challenge for ECEfS is for practitioner mobilisation to be matched by research activity aimed at broadening and deepening practice-based responses. This is the next exciting frontier in the legitimisation of ECEfS.