Brother, Uncle, and Patriarch: a Northern Song “Family Man”

This is a case study of Han Qi (1008–1075), one of the most influential statesmen in the Northern Song. Drawing on his funerary biographical work and other writing, it places at the forefront Han's family life and relationships, especially his role as a brother, uncle, and family head. The goal of the study is threefold: first, to establish Han as a “family man,” in contrast to his conventional image as an outstanding political figure; second, to illustrate how seemingly random occurrences shaped Han's life and fortune in significant ways. Finally, this essay aims to enrich scholarly understanding of family preservation in the Northern Song. For many years, the possibility of the Hans failing in this regard remained a source of anxiety for Han Qi. This fear shaped his interaction with members of the younger generations in tangible ways and created noticeable undertones in his writing on family matters.

MacKillop Family Services’ Family Preservation and Reunification Response for Vulnerable Families—Protocol for an Effectiveness-Implementation Study

International evidence supports the effect of intensive family preservation and reunification services in preventing children’s placement in out-of-home care (OOHC). Evidence within Australia is scarce. This protocol paper describes a hybrid effectiveness-implementation evaluation of the Victorian Family Preservation and Reunification (FPR) Response implemented by MacKillop Family Services. Participants include families engaged in the program and staff involved in program delivery. A pre-post study design will be used to assess the effectiveness of the FPR in improving family outcomes from intake to closure, including: (i) parenting knowledge, skills, and capability; (ii) family safety and home environment; (iii) child development, adolescent behaviour, education attendance and attachment; (iv) connection to services; and (v) prevention of children from entering or re-entering OOHC. Interviews and focus groups will be conducted with staff to evaluate the program’s fidelity, reach, feasibility, acceptability, and enablers and barriers to implementation. Quantitative data will be analysed using descriptive statistics and a series of paired-samples t-tests and F tests to examine changes in outcomes over time; thematic analysis will be used for qualitative data. If the FPR can yield significant improvements in families’ outcomes, this would provide strong support for its scale-up across Australia, to better support vulnerable families.

Family Stress

Serious illness creates a need for financial and legal support for individuals and their families. Nonmedical issues are often as pressing on them as their medical concerns. Clinicians must have a basic understanding of meeting those needs of advance planning, income and family maintenance, access to insurance, and family preservation within the context of culturally appropriate care. Knowledge of community and faith-based resources to meet the nonmedical needs of the palliative care patient is an essential aspect of care. Since these are often unknown to patients and their families, the clinician must know how to guide patients through the morass of cultural and legal requirements for this purpose.

Orphanage Trafficking and Child Protection in Emergencies in Nepal: A Comparative Analysis of the 2015 Earthquake and the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic

This article compares and contrasts two humanitarian emergencies and their impact on Nepal: these are the Nepal earthquake in 2015 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It explains how each emergency has impacted children without parental care or at risk of family separation, with specific reference to orphanage trafficking, voluntourism, child institutionalisation and family preservation. In relation to each emergency, the article considers the role of disaster preparedness; the roles of the Nepal government, the international community and civil society; and the significance of one emergency being localised, while the other is a global phenomenon. It also shows that while these emergencies have increased the risk of harm and exploitation for children and families, they have also driven forward innovation in child protection practices, particularly through the use of reintegration, case management and family preservation programmes.

“Je denkt altijd dat het jou niet zal overkomen…” : Het belang van biologische ouders in pleegzorg

“You always think it won’t happen to you…” The importance of biological parents in foster careEuropean societies still struggle with the question of how to deal best with, and organise care for, those children who for various reasons need to be placed out of their home. Foster care is currently preferred over institutional care when children are in the care of the state. This evolution towards a manifest choice for foster care is defended as being more in ‘the best interests of the child’. During the last decades a shift towards a child’s perspective away from a family-preservation perspective is noticeable. However, we do not know what this shift means for biological parents of foster children. We therefore examine whether the attention to the needs of children is at the expense of the rights and identity of the biological parents. Does strengthening the rights of one party entail a curtailment of rights for another party? Or can we possibly reconcile various interests?