ORCID Profile
0000-0002-2139-0269
Current Organisation
James Cook University
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Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2015
DOI: 10.1016/J.WOMBI.2015.04.009
Abstract: Research has identified empathy as a crucial ingredient in effective practice for health professionals, including midwifery. Equally, the role of spirituality has been recognised as enhancing the quality of the birth experience through the care, compassion and presence of the midwife. Yet literature discussing birthing women's lived experiences of caregiver empathy and spiritual care appears uncommon. The aim of this article is to highlight women's stories about midwives' empathy and spiritual care or lack thereof during birth, in order to contribute to the promotion of more empathic, spiritually aware midwifery practice. Ten interviews and seven focus groups were conducted with forty-eight women, including mothers, midwives and staff from a women's service. A secondary analysis of the data was conducted examining women's descriptions and reflections on midwives' levels of empathy and spiritual care. When midwives' empathy and spiritual care were evident, women's birth experiences appeared enhanced, providing a solid foundation for confident mothering. Conversely, participants appeared to link a lack of caregiver empathy, compassion or spiritual care with more enduring consequences, birth trauma and difficulty bonding with their babies. Midwives' empathy and spiritual care can play a key role in creating positive birth and mothering experiences. More research into the role of empathy and spiritual care in enhancing midwifery practice in all birth settings is recommended, as is the increased embeddedness of empathic regard and the notion of 'birth as sacred' into midwifery curricula.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 13-06-2022
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 27-03-2023
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2013
Publisher: School of Human Services and Social Work, Griffith University
Date: 28-08-2023
DOI: 10.36251/JOSI.64
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 26-08-2012
Abstract: Empathy is a very familiar term in the helping and caring literature. What appears to link empathy in the helping literature to the aims and goals of qualitative research and, in particular, to the argument underpinning insider/outsider debates, is a discernible common quest. That quest is to be able to hear, feel, understand, and value the stories of others and to convey that felt empathy and understanding back to the client/storyteller articipant. When relevant, the quest also includes conveying that felt understanding to a broader audience. In this article, I highlight commonalities between empathy in professional practice and empathy in qualitative research processes, including the shared experiences and understanding informing research relationships that are discussed as “insider/outsider” status. I review, discuss, and critique relevant literature, and I conclude by suggesting that cultivating empathy in qualitative research training could contribute to facilitating more enriched, insightful research encounters.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 06-2012
Publisher: University of Otago Library
Date: 23-04-2019
DOI: 10.11157/ANZSWJ-VOL31ISS1ID543
Abstract: INTRODUCTION: Grandparents are increasingly involved in the care of grandchildren, including after child protection intervention.METHOD: A recent Australian qualitative research partnership explored how relationships between grandparents and their grandchildren could be optimised after child safety concerns. Interviews and focus groups were undertaken with 77 participants, including 51 grandparents, 12 parents, six foster carers and eight child and family workers. Emerging themes reported here focus on the role of grandparents and their perceptions of, and interactions with, the child protection system.FINDINGS: Overall, findings identify that grandparents wanted to help safeguard their grandchildren but many encountered an adversarial child protection system that left them feeling powerless, fearful and unimportant. Aboriginal participants reiterated that child protection workers needed to better understand how maintaining kinship networks provided a protective factor for Aboriginal children, and that grandparents were key stakeholders in their grandchildren’s lives.IMPLICATIONS: The findings from this study affirm the value and role of grandparents and highlight the need for implemented family-inclusive child protection practice within and beyond the Australian context.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 13-12-2018
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 12-02-2023
Publisher: No publisher found
Date: 2018
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 26-04-2018
DOI: 10.1111/CFS.12464
Publisher: The Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare
Date: 12-2016
DOI: 10.1017/CHA.2015.51
Abstract: Grandparents play an important role in families, contributing to the maintenance of intergenerational relationships. Recent literature has identified increased incidence of grandparents raising their grandchildren, often after family breakdown. Less evident is the literature highlighting Australian grandparents’ experiences of reduced or lost contact with their grandchildren. Lost contact can result from many factors including family disputes, separation or orce of adult children, or children being taken into State care. The primary aim of the Honours research project reported here, a component of a larger project, was to explore the lived experiences of Queensland grandparents who had reduced, lost or denied contact with their grandchildren after contact with child protection services. In recent years, almost 8000 Queensland children have reportedly been living in out-of-home care arrangements annually. In this qualitative study, in-depth interviews were conducted with a s le of seven (7) grandparents. An emerging key theme was that grandchildren were very important to grandparents, but that grandparents struggled to maintain contact with their grandchildren after families came to the attention of child protection authorities. These findings can help inform social work practice with families for the wellbeing of both grandparents and grandchildren.
Publisher: The Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare
Date: 29-11-2016
DOI: 10.1017/CHA.2016.41
Abstract: Social workers face unique challenges in working with families, young people and children in rural and remote communities. Simultaneously, workers juggle dual relationships, personal boundaries and high visibility. Social work practise in rural Australia also faces high staff turnover, burnout and difficulties with recruitment, retention and available professional supervision. A lack of professional supervision has been identified as directly contributing to decreased worker retention in rural and remote areas. This paper reports on emerging themes from a qualitative research study on peer supervision in virtual teams in rural and remote Australia. Data collection consisted of pre- and post-trial in idual interviews, monthly group supervision sessions, online evaluations and focus groups. A key conclusion from the study is that peer group supervision worked in supporting rural and remote workers to perform their everyday professional roles. The ease and access afforded by the use of simple technology was noteworthy. Whilst the research was conducted with social workers in rural and remote areas, the use of peer group supervision could be applicable for other professionals who work with families and communities in rural and remote Australia.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 08-01-2019
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 07-1998
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 10-05-2013
DOI: 10.1108/14439881311314568
Abstract: Qualitative researchers embrace insider narratives and affirm an environment where stories of lived experiences are acceptable and welcomed. Equally, subjective narratives often are presented for publication with an assumption that they will reach a readership, after a rigorous but empathic review process. Such assumptions and expectations underpin Indigenous, postmodern, feminist, critical and narrative research and writing approaches, all of which seek to foreground non‐dominant stories, and expose untold lived experiences through publications. However, this paper aims to challenge the somewhat implicit narrative that “lived experiences would always be welcomed”. The authors discuss qualitative researchers and narratives, including excluded stories, and then reveal their own experiences of trying to publish less common, confronting, adoption narratives. The authors find that stories that do not meet the authorized or conventional version of a social transcript, or those beyond current comprehension, may remain silenced. They speculate that the adoption stories they presented for publication were rejected because they were too confronting. The authors contend that some stories challenge convention to such an extent that they become unacceptable. They tell different but interwoven stories of rejected, adoption‐related manuscripts, before reflecting on implications for the presentation of qualitative narratives.
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 11-10-2018
DOI: 10.1093/BJSW/BCY085
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 28-02-2018
Abstract: It is commonly understood that enrolment in higher education means inevitable financial strain. In an online national survey in 2015, a s le of 2320 current students from 29 Australian social work programs reported on their experiences of juggling life, study and work. This article details preliminary findings regarding the impact of low levels of income on the lives and study success of an Australian student cohort, and offers a considered comparison to relevant available data. Students in this study reported regularly going without necessities, and identified that a lack of finances and long hours in employment were adversely affecting their study experience. These problems became acute during compulsory field placements. The purpose of this study was to illuminate social work students’ complex study realities in order to inform future education, policy and practice. The findings identify that for these students adverse outcomes including poverty and disruption to studies may be increasingly difficult to avoid. This situation may not be confined to this cohort or the Australian experience. There appears to be an urgent need for national bodies, universities and students to join together in advocating for increased support for tertiary social work students.
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 11-03-2019
DOI: 10.1093/BJSW/BCZ015
Abstract: Current research agendas in developed countries focus on academics engaging collaboratively with communities and industry partners to achieve research outcomes that demonstrate reach and significance. Social work academics are in a prime position to undertake collaborative research that has specific project benefits and wider social impacts. This article reports on a systematic literature review of articles in social work journals that reported on academic industry partnerships. The review aimed to analyse publications documenting the engagement of social work academic researchers with industry partners, to examine the nature of the research undertaken through this engagement and to ascertain the reported impact. Findings highlight that collaborative research processes could be described in greater detail, further explicit detail on collaboration and impact is needed, and while project level impacts are described in reviewed publications, most are not presenting broader societal impacts.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 19-09-2018
Abstract: Concepts of social justice have strong historical roots, while more contemporary notions of social justice coincide with human rights, equity, fairness and facilitation of social change with lasting impact. In higher education, evident ex les of social justice include widened university access facilitating a erse student body and graduate workforce who can, in turn, contribute to a more just society. University student identity in past eras has been synonymous with social activism. Equally, social work has a mandate to uphold social justice. Yet tertiary students’ own growing material hardships appear to constitute an unacknowledged injustice. While it is understood that tertiary study may mean short-lived poverty, more recent literature suggests that many university students are suffering mounting debt, increased mental health stress and vulnerability to withdrawal. In this article, the authors ponder social justice education by calling on specific results of a 2015 survey of 2320 Australian social work students. Findings revealed that for many students a juggling act of core study requirements, paid work, family commitments and affording necessities impacted their health, wellbeing and study success. Some astute students identified a disconnect between social work’s staunch social justice agenda and its lack of acknowledgement, empathy or action regarding student hardship. The findings have implications for curricula, universities, accrediting bodies and educators who want to facilitate social justice education.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 20-09-2023
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 14-06-2019
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 09-1994
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-12-2019
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 11-07-2014
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 02-1999
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 17-11-2021
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 25-05-2016
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 12-07-2020
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 15-10-2018
Publisher: University of Otago Library
Date: 03-04-2018
DOI: 10.11157/ANZSWJ-VOL30ISS1ID470
Abstract: INTRODUCTION: Evidence is mounting that poverty and psychological stress among university students are common and the mental health of university students is a topic of increasing attention.METHODS: In late 2015, 2,320 social work students from 29 Australian universities completed an online survey on the impact of low income on students’ daily lives and study success.FINDINGS: Overall, students revealed financial hardships and a precarious balancing act of study, limited finances, paid work and family. Some students revealed the impact of these hardships on their mental health and wellbeing. Undertaking compulsory field placement increased students’ financial stresses and exacerbated mental health vulnerabilities.CONCLUSIONS: The qualitative findings reported here draw on students’ responses within the larger student survey data set where mental health impacts were reported. These findings have implications for universities, social work education, field
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 06-2003
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 10-1999
DOI: 10.1177/030857599902300306
Abstract: The topic of contact and reunion can be a complex and emotional one for birth parents, adopted people and adoptive families. While the perspectives of birth parents and adopted people regarding contact are evident in the literature, the range of possible attitudes taken up by adoptive parents are not extensively discussed. In this paper Susan Gair explores coping positions or attitudes taken by adoptive mothers in Queensland on the topic of contact. The larger research project from which these findings are drawn was concerned primarily with using qualitative research methods to explore the mothering experiences of Queensland women who have adopted children. The research findings suggest that adoptive mothers may be better understood by considering a number of factors which impact on the taking up of certain attitudes, and by recognising the transitory rather than assuming the static qualities of such positions.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 12-2011
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 06-06-2017
No related grants have been discovered for Susan Gair.