Family Agenda Research Articles

High needs, low funds: the development of music therapy in a London primary school and children’s centre

Background: Katherine has set up and delivered family-centred music therapy in special and mainstream schools and children’s centres in London for six years. She has developed training programmes in music therapy techniques for school/children’s centre staff.Methods: How can we best provide therapeutic support when funding and space are limited, and communities large? This question is examined within the context of work I ran within an inner city school and children’s centre. I investigate why my role developed from working with children in the school, to focusing on early intervention with pre-school children and families in the nursery and children’s centre on the same site.Discussion: The context is the UK Government-backed “21st century school” (“Think Family Agenda”, 2008) and the necessity faced by schools to support children’s emotional well-being in order to enable learning. I’ll illustrate the work through case vignettes. I will focus on the move towards supporting pre-school children and their f...

Geriatric Renal Palliative Care

Elderly patients with advanced chronic kidney disease or who are on dialysis should be able to live as fully and comfortably as possible. Geriatric patients are most interested in outcomes that will optimize mental and physical function and limit suffering and pain. Nephrologists must help them answer the question: "How will my kidney problem affect the way I live now and in the future?" This means management must move beyond glomerular filtration rate-related targets and incorporate geriatric principles that focus on assessment of function, comorbidities, geriatric syndromes, and quality of life issues. Therapeutic decisions should be individualized and directed by patient goals of care, which must be explored and documented. Accomplishing this requires inclusion of the patient's family-support system in the shared decision-making process. There is no substitute for spending time listening to and understanding the patient and family agenda, providing timely medical and prognostic updates; discussing realistic scenarios to balance expectations; and planting the seeds of change as the quantity and quality of medical events, geriatric syndromes, and comorbidities accumulate. Synergy of the interdisciplinary renal team with geriatric and palliative medicine specialists provides the expertise to achieve these goals. This falls into the domain of geriatric renal palliative or supportive care (1) and is the subject of this practical review.

Knowing the family: Interpretations of family nursing in oncology and palliative care

Purpose Families are acknowledged as a focus of care in oncology nursing in many countries but the meaning of “family nursing” in this practice setting has received little attention from researchers and theorists. In this article, we report the findings of a study that explored family nursing practices in three adult cancer care settings: ambulatory care (medical and radiation oncology clinics), a palliative care service, and an in-patient unit. Method Data included in-depth interviews with 30 nurses and 19 families, as well as participant observations in each practice setting. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and the analyses guided by philosophical hermeneutics. Results We identified several narratives related to family nursing practices, and in this article we offer the interpretations of two of these narratives: 1) knowing the family and being known; and 2) addressing family concerns and distress. In knowing the family and being known nurses opened relational space for families to become involved in the care of their loved ones and gained an understanding of the family by “reading” non-verbal and para-verbal cues. Knowing the family created opportunities for nurses to address family concerns and distress in meaningful ways. These included guiding families by being a bridge, helping families to conserve relationships, and negotiating competing family agendas. Nurses relied on questioning practices to create relational space with, and among, family members. Conclusions Implications for the development of family nursing practice, theory, and education are discussed.

Towards professionalism: ethical perspectives of Israeli teachers

This study attempted to gain a better understanding of teachers’ perceptions about their ethical dilemmas and roles. Qualitative data were collected by interviewing 32 teachers in seven schools. Interviewees were asked to provide detailed descriptions of ethical dilemmas they had encountered. The coding process focused on critical incidents involving ethical considerations identified as conflictive. Results indicate a large number of dilemmas that can be sorted into five main categories. These include tensions between caring and adhering to formal codes; fair process and fair outcome; school and family agenda; autonomy and educational policy; own religious convictions and that of a colleague. The study may enhance our understanding of teachers’ roles and perceptions regarding these ethical dilemmas. Such understanding may help in the design of teacher education programmes focusing on ethics. More successful dealing with day‐to‐day ethical dilemmas may also help raise the status of the profession.

Ethical Dilemmas: The Experiences of Israeli Nurses

In this study I explored ethical dilemmas in nursing to gain a better understanding of nurses' work and their professional status. Qualitative data on ethical dilemmas were collected by interviewing 52 nurses in 18 hospitals and health maintenance organizations. The transcribed interviews were analyzed using a stepwise method. Results indicate a large number of dilemmas that can be divided into five main categories: caring vs. following formal codes; fair process vs. fair outcome; organizational standards vs. family agenda; autonomy vs. deference to higher authority, and guarding secrecy vs. duty to report. The study findings might enhance nurses' ability to cope with ethical dilemmas and bring about change in their professional status. In addition, the results might guide nurses and their supervisors toward developing practitioner programs for nurses that deal with ethical aspects. All these might reduce the expected shortage of nurses and improve the ability of the system to provide quality health care.

Illuminating gendered organization assumptions

One key to why organizations have been less successful at integrating a work–family agenda into their organizational cultures is that workplaces have failed to consider how gender assumptions influence workplace practices, policies and cultures. This paper presents a theoretical framework for considering how gender role assumptions have prevented organizational attempts to become family friendly. Further, this paper uses an organizational case study to illustrate this point. Specifically, a theory of gendered organizations is used to frame an analysis of 30 employee interviews. Data suggest that gendered organizational assumptions inherent to several workplace policies and practices contribute to employee strain associated with negotiating the demands of life on and off the job. Further, the findings show that these gendered organizational assumptions prevent organizations from developing workplace cultures responsive to employees' work, family and personal needs. A brief review of the interdisciplinary work–family field is presented, followed by a discussion of gendered organizations. Then, using interview data collected from management and ‘front‐line’ female and male workers employed at a municipal government, this paper examines how workplace practices, presumably gender neutral, affect employees and the organizational culture in which they work.

Negotiated agendas: families in science and technology museums

This paper argues for the importance of museum professionals and policy makers to understand the expectations and perceptions of family groups. Family agendas influence the way the visit is perceived and accounted for. On the other hand, the museum agenda – that is the overall aim of the museum as well as its expectations for the visitor experience – influences the agenda of the family. This paper aims to give an insight into how family groups make sense of their visit to a hands-on museum and to discuss their experience in their own terms, including their perceptions of interactive science exhibitions.

From the Life Stories of Filipino Women: Personal and Family Agendas in Migration

Drawing from the life stories of 10 women migrants who had returned from working abroad, this article examines the individual-family nexus in terms of migration decision-making processes, how women and their families cope as transnational families, and how women migrants themselves view and assess their migration experience. The life stories indicate the significance of women's agency in initiating and carrying out their decisions, with support from their families. It should be noted though that although most of them decided to work abroad for the sake of their families, women also sought and attained personal benefits from migration. Among other purposes, the use of life stories provides a window to appreciate the internal changes that women attribute to their migration experiences.

The “family friendly” workplace

The closer integration of work and family responsibilities has become an important element in the promotion of the decentralisation of the Australian industrial relations system. This article outlines the origins of the work and family agenda and discusses how it has come to be incorporated into the industrial relations reform agenda. A work and family typology is developed. Examples of family friendly workplace arrangements are outlined and discussed, and the extent to which these are incorporated into enterprise agreements is then outlined. There must be doubts as to how far family friendly workplace arrangements can be extended in an economy with high rates of casualisation, falling trade union densities and considerable differences in bargaining power. Indeed, many of the current family friendly arrangements are distinctly family unfriendly. Finally, there are important gender issues to consider in relation to the family friendly industrial relations agenda.

A consumer perspective on the family agenda.

The point of view of a mental health researcher who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when her four children were young is applied to several of the other articles in this section. She comments on various aspects of work with families in which one member has a serious mental illness, raising and discussing issues relevant to consumers, as well as to family members.

Agendas for Second Language Literacy

1. The plurality of literacies 2. Socipolitical agendas for second language literacy 3. Economic agendas for second language literacy 4. Family agendas for second language literacy 5. Educational agendas for second language literacy 6. Agendas for second language literacy References Index.

A Family Agenda for Public Policy

A Family Agenda for Public Policy

Second Guessing the Experts: Thoughts on Family Agendas for the Eighties

While reading over the prescriptions and predictions for the 1980s that Felix Berardo, Greer Litton Fox, Reuben Hill, and Jacqueline Wiseman have written for laborers in the family field, I was struck not only by their scope and judicious nature but also by the thematic overlaps. It is noteworthy when four scholars from different perspectives and temporal vantage points on the field press for similar developments. Before beginning my own reactions to their proposals, therefore, let me list these agreements. A continuing concern with family policy is something they all urge in one way or another. Also present on their agendas is an interest in the transactions and interconnections among families and the work setting, governmental agencies, schools, places of worship, and other institutional units that constitute the societal environment within which families operate. Finally, they predict that research will take two different directions. On the one hand, they see the need for consortiums and multidisciplinary research groups; on the other hand, they predict a resurgence of research initiated and implemented by individuals. Thus, they urge us either to think big, in organizational terms, or small, in personal terms.