Safeguarding and promoting children in maternity services- implications for policy and practice

The article debates the issues involved in safeguarding and protecting children in maternity services and offers implications for professional practice. Midwives and other staff who work as members of the maternity team have a safeguarding role to play in the identification of babies and children who have been abused, or at risk of abuse, and in subsequent intervention and protection services. The study highlights how domestic violence increases during pregnancy and the postpartum period, and is significantly related to all types of child maltreatment up to the child's fifth year, and children under one being at the highest risk of injury, or death. Close inter-agency liaison is required with midwives who are accountable and not afraid to challeneg hiostorical working practices.

An Unkind Cut: Circumcision, Death and the Impact of Irish Health Policy on Asylum Seekers

Healthcare and the wider social determinants of health are the keystone of a number of complex progressive social justice issues that evoke complex emotions. As the demography of Ireland rapidly changes, the practices and expectations of some asylum seekers presents new opportunities for the providers of health service provision and reform. This paper looks at some of the emotions evoked in health care issues and draws on observations and interviews from empirical fieldwork carried out for the Health Research Board. The research was conducted both in the Adelaide and Meath Hospital, incorporating the National Children’s Hospital, Tallaght and in a number of refugee reception centres in Ireland. At one level honouring faith choices within a healthcare setting is a societal acknowledgement made to people at their most vulnerable, that the potent and cathartic transformative rituals they value are significant in mediating and managing their emotions - at another level, it is a practical and a symbolic communication of a statutory commitment to inter-culturalism and community cohesion..