Dealing With Radicalised Youth Offenders: The Development and Implementation of a Youth-Specific Framework

Background: In 2018 in the Australian State of New South Wales, a specialist Countering Violent Extremism Unit was established in the youth criminal justice system. This was in direct response to a number of youth below the age of 18 who have been charged for terrorism offences and identified as involved in violent extremist acts. This youth-specific framework was the first of its kind in Australia. It was designed to provide multidisciplinary practitioner-based approaches for the early-identification, diversion, and disengagement of at-risk and radicalised youth offenders.Aims: This paper will explore the experiences and lessons learned by the Youth Justice New South Wales Countering Violent Extremism Unit. It will discuss the relevance of youth radicalisation within Australia's evolving national security climate. This includes emerging trends in relation to youth radicalisation to varied violent extremist ideologies. This paper will explore the specialist approach adopted for preventing and countering violent extremism through the identification, assessment, and case management of at-risk and radicalised youth offenders.Implications: The Youth Justice New South Wales experience indicates that youth criminal justice settings can be designed to tackle the challenges posed by at-risk and radicalised youth. The practitioner experience canvassed in this paper highlights that a pluralistic and non-punitive approach to supervision, client-focused assessment and case management processes, and widespread resourcing of multidisciplinary practitioners and programs can be used to account for developmental and psychosocial vulnerabilities in addition to violent extremism risk factors amongst youth offenders. These approaches should be supplemented by youth-specific countering violent extremism practitioner expertise, and a range of violent extremism case management and risk assessment measures.

Monitoring of the Village Malaria Workers to conduct activities of Malaria Elimination Demonstration Project in Mandla, Madhya Pradesh

Background The capacity of the field staff to conduct activities related to disease surveillance, case management, and vector control has been one of the key components for successfully achieving malaria elimination. India has committed to eliminate malaria by 2030, and it has placed significance on monitoring and evaluation at the district level as one of the key strategies in its national framework. To support and guide the country’s malaria elimination objectives, the Malaria Elimination Demonstration Project was conducted in the tribal district of Mandla, Madhya Pradesh. Robust monitoring of human resources received special attention to help the national programme formulate a strategy to plug the gaps in its supply chain and monitoring and evaluation systems. Methods A monitoring tool was developed to test the capabilities of field workers to conduct activities related to malaria elimination work. Between November 2018 to February 2021, twenty-five Malaria Field Coordinators (MFCs) of the project utilized this tool everyday during the supervisory visits for their respective Village Malaria Workers (VMWs). The data was analysed and the scores were tested for variations against different blocks, educational status, duration of monitoring, and post-training scores. Results During the study period, the VMWs were monitored a total of 8974 times using the monitoring tool. Each VMW was supervised an average of 1.8 times each month. The critical monitoring indicators scored well in all seven quarters of the study as monitored by the MFCs. Monitoring by MFCs remained stable at 97.3% in all quarters. Contrary to expectations, the study observed longer diagnosis to treatment initiation time in urban areas of the district. Conclusion This study demonstrated the significance of a robust monitoring tool as an instrument to determine the capacity of the field workers in conducting surveillance, case management, and vector control related work for the malaria elimination programme. Similar tools can be replicated not only for malaria elimination, but other public health interventions as well.

Tuberculosis care quality in urban Nigeria: A cross-sectional study of adherence to screening and treatment initiation guidelines in multi-cadre networks of private health service providers

Nigeria has a high burden of tuberculosis (TB) and low case detection rates. Nigeria’s large private health sector footprint represents an untapped resource for combating the disease. To examine the quality of private sector contributions to TB, the USAID-funded Sustaining Health Outcomes through the Private Sector (SHOPS) Plus program evaluated adherence to national standards for management of presumptive and confirmed TB among the clinical facilities, laboratories, pharmacies, and drug shops it trained to deliver TB services. The study used a standardized patient (SP) survey methodology to measure case management protocol adherence among 837 private and 206 public providers in urban Lagos and Kano. It examined two different scenarios: a “textbook” case of presumptive TB and a treatment initiation case where SPs presented as referred patients with confirmed TB diagnoses. Private sector results were benchmarked against public sector results. A bottleneck analysis examined protocol adherence departures at key points along the case management sequence that providers were trained to follow. Except for laboratories, few providers met the criteria for fully correct management of presumptive TB, though more than 70% of providers correctly engaged in TB screening. In the treatment initiation case 18% of clinical providers demonstrated fully correct case management. Private and public providers’ adherence was not significantly different. Bottleneck analysis revealed that the most common deviations from correct management were failure to initiate sputum collection for presumptive patients and failure to conduct sufficiently thorough treatment initiation counseling for confirmed patients. This study found the quality of private providers’ TB case management to be comparable to public providers in Nigeria, as well as to providers in other high burden countries. Findings support continued efforts to include private providers in Nigeria’s national TB program. Though most providers fell short of desired quality, the bottleneck analysis points to specific issues that TB stakeholders can feasibly address with system- and provider-level interventions.

Demand for community-based Case Management in Austria - a qualitative analysis

Background The number of people with complex nursing and care needs living in their own homes is increasing. The implementation of Case and Care Management has shown to have a positive effect on unmet care needs. Research on and implementation of Case and Care Management in the community setting in Austria is limited. This study aimed to understand the changes and challenges of changing care needs by mobile nurses and to evaluate the need for Case Management in mobile care organizations by investigating the evolution of mobile care nurses‘task profiles and the challenges in working in a dynamic field with changing target groups and complexifying care needs. Methods A qualitative study with reductive-interpretative data analysis consisting of semi-structured focus groups was conducted. Community care nurses, head nurses, and managers of community mobile care units as well as discharge managers of a community hospital (n = 24) participated in nine qualitative, semi-structured focus groups. The recorded focus groups were transcribed and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results The analysis revealed three main categories: the complexity of the case, innerinstitutional frameworks, and interinstitutional collaboration, which influence the perception of need for further development in the direction of Case and Care Management. Feelings of overwhelmedness among nurses were predominantly tied to cases that presented with issues beyond healthcare such as legal, financial, or social that necessitated communication and collaboration across multiple care providers. Conclusions Care institutions need to adapt to changing and increasingly complex care needs that necessitate cooperation between organizations within and across the health and social sectors. A key facilitator for care coordination and the adequate service provision for complex care needs are multidisciplinary institutional networks, which often remain informal, leaving nurses in the role of petitioner without equal footing. Embedding Case and Care Management in the community has the potential to fill this gap and facilitate flexible, timely, and coordinated care across multiple care providers.

Transformasi Teknologi Elektronik melalui Aplikasi Sistem e-Syariah dan i-Syariah dalam Sistem Pengurusan Mahkamah Syariah di Malaysia

Implimentasi teknologi maklumat dalam institusi kehakiman syariah disambut baik oleh semua mahkamah syariah negeri di Malaysia melalui aplikasi sistem e-Syariah. Inovasi dan transformasi teknologi elektronik ini diteruskan oleh sebahagian mahkamah syariah termasuk mahkamah syariah di Sarawak yang membangunkan sistem baharu yang dinamakan i-Syariah, iaitu Sistem Pengurusan Pintar Syariah. Artikel ini bertujuan menganalisis pembangunan sistem Pengurusan Mahkamah Syariah melalui sistem e-Syariah pada peringkat Persekutuan dan i-Syariah yang diaplikasikan di Sarawak. Penelitian juga dilakukan terhadap modul yang dibangunkan dalam sistem e-Syariah dan i-Syariah bagi dapatan maklumat penyelidikan yang menyeluruh. Metodologi penyelidikan dilakukan secara kualitatif terhadap perkembangan pembangunan sistem e-Syariah dan sistem i-Syariah serta melaksanakan metode komparatif dengan membandingkan sistem yang diguna pakai di mahkamah sivil dengan kandungan sistem yang diaplikasikan di institusi kehakiman syariah. Penyelidikan ini mendapati bahawa transformasi teknologi elektronik mahkamah syariah kurang menunjukkan perkembangan berbanding mahkamah sivil yang telah mengaplikasi e-Filing system (EFS), Case Management System (CMS), Queue Management System (QMS), Court Recording and Transcribing (CRT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) dan Community and Advocate Portal System (CAP). Walau bagaimanapun berdasarkan pelan pembangunan i-Syariah maka sistem-sistem yang diguna pakai pada peringkat mahkamah sivil ini akan diimplimentasikan di mahkamah syariah Sarawak untuk memastikan transformasi informasi teknologi maklumat seiring dengan perkembangan teknologi digital di Sarawak.