This chapter looks at the complaints process - what happens when children in care are dissatisfied with the services they receive. Despite the introduction of guidelines and procedures aimed at encouraging and supporting children and young people to complain about the services they receive, children in care still face barriers to doing so in practice. Following semi-structured interviews with children in care, social workers, senior managers and independent reviewing officers from two English local authorities, the research uncovered issues of concern. Complaints by children in care are managed at the lowest possible level and senior managers have an overly optimistic view about children in care being informed of complaint procedures and being encouraged to do so. Children in care are worried about complaining and their voices are often not heard. However, when issues are clearly defined, independent reviewing officers have some degree of success in resolving complaints from children in care.
ABSTRACT The Central Asia Stunting Initiative (CASI) is a program designed to address malnutrition among women of reproductive age and children under five in Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan, a region facing significant nutritional challenges. This study used a pre‐post design to assess the impact of CASI interventions, with cross‐sectional surveys conducted at baseline and midline among non‐pregnant women of reproductive age (15–49 years) and children under five using a two‐stage stratified random sampling approach; data collection included anthropometric measurements and hemoglobin assessments. Between the baseline and midline surveys, access to safe drinking water improved from 80.9% to 90.7%, and sanitation improved from 37.4% to 88.3%, while the severe food insecurity rate dropped from 94.7% to 30.5% ( p < 0.001). Exclusive breastfeeding among children aged 0–5 months increased from 64.0% to 80.9%, and dietary diversity among children 6–24 months rose from 7.5% to 20.7% (both p < 0.05). Child under nutrition declined significantly, with underweight decreasing from 35.0% to 15.5% (Cohen's h = 0.46) and stunting from 52.3% to 37.3% (Cohen's h = 0.30). The prevalence of moderate anemia among children fell from 59.7% to 41.1%, while normal hemoglobin levels rose from 39.2% to 58.1% (both p < 0.001). Among women, underweight prevalence declined from 20.0% to 9.4% ( p < 0.001), while overweight prevalence rose from 5.4% to 10.7% ( p = 0.003). Adjusted models confirmed lower odds of stunting, underweight, and anemia at midline compared with baseline. These findings suggest that CASI was associated with substantial improvements in maternal and child nutrition indicators in Badakhshan, and policymakers should focus on scaling up effective interventions and ensuring continuous monitoring. However, given the single‐group pre‐post design without a comparison group, these findings should be interpreted as temporal associations rather than causal effects.
Imran A. Chauhadry, Aminah Jahangir, Muhammad Umer et al.
We show that sleep deprivation exerts strong negative effects on mothers' labour market performance. To isolate exogenous variations in maternal sleep, we exploit unique variations in child sleep disruption using a UK panel dataset that follows mother-child pairs through time. We find that sleeping one hour less per night on average significantly decreases maternal labour force participation, the number of hours worked, and household income. We identify one mechanism driving the effects, namely the influence of maternal sleep on selection into full-time versus part-time work. Increased schedule flexibility for mothers with sufficient tenure mitigates the negative effects of sleep deprivation.
Machine-learning techniques are suitably employed for gait-event prediction from only surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals in control subjects during walking. Nevertheless, a reference approach is not available in cerebral-palsy hemiplegic children, likely due to the large variability of foot-floor contacts. This study is designed to investigate a machine-learning-based approach, specifically developed to binary classify gait events and to predict heel-strike (HS) and toe-off (TO) timing from sEMG signals in hemiplegic-child walking. To this objective, sEMG signals are acquired from five hemiplegic-leg muscles in nearly 2500 strides from 20 hemiplegic children, acknowledged as Winters' group 1 and 2. sEMG signals, segmented in overlapping windows of 600 samples (pace = 5 samples), are used to train a multi-layer perceptron model. Intra-subject and inter-subject experimental settings are tested. The best-performing intra-subject approach is able to provide in the hemiplegic population a mean classification accuracy (±SD) of 0.97±0.01 and a suitable prediction of HS and TO events, in terms of average mean absolute error (MAE, 14.8±3.2 ms for HS and 17.6±4.2 ms for TO) and F1-score (0.95±0.03 for HS and 0.92±0.07 for TO). These results outperform previous sEMG-based attempts in cerebral-palsy populations and are comparable with outcomes achieved by reference approaches in control populations. In conclusion, the findings of the study prove the feasibility of neural networks in predicting the two main gait events using surface EMG signals, also in condition of high variability of the signal to predict as in hemiplegic cerebral palsy.
Christian Morbidoni, Alessandro Cucchiarelli, Valentina Agostini et al.
BACKGROUND: Executive functions (EFs) are critical in school and closely linked to academic achievement and learning-related behaviours (LRBs). LRBs encompass the ability to adapt to school demands, including concentration, adherence to rules, and autonomy. AIMS: This correlational study aimed to examine the mediating role of LRB in the association between EF and academic achievement in the first year of primary school. SAMPLE AND METHOD: Ninety-five first graders underwent a performance-based EF assessment, involving tasks related to working memory and inhibition. Concurrently, they completed literacy and math tasks, while their teacher provided reports on their LRBs. RESULTS: The results indicate that depending on the specific EF component or learning domain considered, diverse patterns emerge. Nevertheless, the findings consistently show that EFs are directly and indirectly associated with learning outcomes, with the mediating influence of LRBs. CONCLUSIONS: These results emphasize the importance of supporting EF development into early education curricula.
Learning through play has emerged as an important strategy to promote student engagement, inclusion, and holistic skills development beyond the preschool years. Policy makers, researchers and educators have promoted the notion that learning though play is developmentally appropriate—as it leverages school-age children’s innate curiosity while easing the often difficult transition from preschool to school. However, there is a dearth of evidence and practical guidance on how learning through play can be employed effectively in the formal school context, and the conditions that support success. This paper addresses the disconnect between policy, research and practice by presenting a range of empirical studies across a number of well-known pedagogies. These studies describe how children can foster cognitive, social, emotional, creative and physical skills through active engagement in learning that is experienced as joyful, meaningful, socially interactive, actively engaging and iterative. The authors propose an expanded definition for learning through play at school based on the science of learning, and summarize key findings from international studies on the impact of children’s learning through play. They identify four key challenges that underpin the considerable gap between education policy and practice, and propose a useful framework that addresses these challengesviaa common language and structure to implement learning through play.
Every level of education includes mathematics as one of its disciplines. However, due to ineffective teaching, children find mathematics less interesting in elementary school. Therefore, teachers must be able to choose the best teaching strategy for their students. By utilizing the classic congklak game, researchers hope to deliver learning media that teachers can use using a literature review study approach from various sources and related media. The analysis findings show that, in addition to helping children learn to count and recognize numbers, the classic congklak game also helps children develop moral principles and good behavior, such as the ability to act honorably, wisely, and obediently. The traditional congklak game can increase students' interest in learning. The traditional Congklak game is also considered one of the most effective ways of improving students' mathematical abilities. So, this game can be used as a reference for teaching mathematics methods. Thus, the traditional congklak game changes mathematics into something exciting and fun to learn.
Fatimatuszahro Fatimatuszahro, Heni Hanifah, Lily Hermawanti et al.
Background Screens have become an integral part of the daily lives of children and young people and play a crucial role in both educational and leisure activities. The aim of this scoping review was to explore and map the existing evidence on the potential influence of recreational screen use on concentration ability and learning in individuals aged 6–25 years. Methods A search of the literature published between 2013 and 2023 was performed in three databases (PsycINFO, CINAHL, and Web of Science). The search was conducted using relevant search terms related to screen use, concentration and learning, and children, adolescents, and young adults. Inclusion criteria included reviews, meta-analyses, cohort studies, cross-sectional studies, and experimental studies. Data was synthesized using thematic analysis Results A total of 33 original studies and reviews were included and encompassed a close to equal distribution in terms of age groups. Of these studies and reviews, 33 % examined screen time, 58 % media multitasking, 27 % gaming, and 6 % television viewing. The results of the studies indicated that excessive screen time was associated with concentration difficulties, which suggests that the associations are bidirectional. Some studies identified poor sleep quality, influenced by pre-bedtime screen use, as a mediating factor. Recreational media multitasking in school settings was consistently correlated with inferior learning outcomes, whereas studies on television use and gaming showed inconsistent results. Conclusion Findings from this scoping review suggest a small yet consistent correlation between screen use and concentration difficulties among children and young people. Further research is needed to establish causal relations and to examine how different aspects and uses of screens affect concentration.
Any mainstream school’s trajectory of ‘Inclusive Education’ is dependent on the key factors playing out their roles for the actualisation of the proposed concept. The concept of ‘Inclusive Education’ envisions an environment where key factors: educators, administrators, and educational policies cater to diverse learners in an all-inclusive learning environment. ‘Mainstreaming’ of Children with Learning Difficulties (LD) in a system of ‘Inclusive Education’(IE) enhance the quality of learning of students with Learning Difficulties as well as those without. In this context, the paper examines classroom teachers’ attitude regarding ‘Inclusive Education’ in selected mainstream schools of Kolkata, West Bengal, India. A study was conducted with the help of a questionnaire schedule administered on 100 teachers. Responses to crucial questions were statistically computed by Chi-Square Test, interpreted and analysed. Of the two hypotheses drawn for study, the first states that mainstream school teachers ‘attitude towards Children with LD will be positive. The second hypothesis states that teachers will show a positive attitude toward providing additional guidance to children with LD in mainstream classrooms. The majority of responses supported the first hypothesis but rejected the second. Interviews of the respondents were recorded for a qualitative analysis, as well. Emerging traits from quantitative and qualitative analyses are discussed in the manuscript. This study may have implications for an expansive and in-depth research into the apprehensions of teachers of Secondary schools and lacunae in the education system to make ‘Inclusive Education’s success.
