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• Findings highlight the importance of peer support and the possibility of participatory research approaches in catalyzing peer connectivity and agency among foster scholars in higher education. • Actions and advocacy associated with Participatory Action Research have benefits for students with foster care experience and can contribute to critical consciousness raising among those within and outside of child welfare and university systems. • Integrating youth voice and perspective to our existing body of knowledge about youth with foster care experience in higher education adds a critical, often missing perspective. • Universities, child welfare system professionals, policymakers, child welfare scholars desiring to create policy and practice more affirming of young people with foster care experience should center the voices and recommendations of youth with foster care experience in their decision making. This paper presents findings from a focus group conducted as part of a larger Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) study with a cohort of university students with experience in foster care. Six foster scholars (ages 18–21) participated in a research collective offered as a collaboration between the School of Social Welfare and the Educational Opportunities Program (EOP) at a large Northeastern public research university. Over the course of several semesters, students received an overview of research methods, evaluated existing research regarding the educational outcomes of youth with foster care experience, then designed an interview guide for a focus group that they later participated in. Focus group data was transcribed and then analyzed in two ways, first through thematic content analysis using ATLAS TI qualitative software, and simultaneously through participatory narrative analysis using an adapted version of Carol Gilligan's Listening Guide. The cluster of findings presented in this paper highlights co-researchers' experiences of a YPAR approach to research. Three themes emerged: validation of experience and peer support , connection to available resources, and YPAR as a tool of collective action and empowerment. An overview of the significant actions and change efforts associated with the YPAR process is also provided. Findings highlight the importance of peer support and the possibility of participatory research approaches in catalyzing peer connectivity and agency among foster scholars in higher education. Integrating youth voice and perspective to the existing body of knowledge about youth with foster care experience in higher education adds an important perspective needed to more holistically understand what resources and supports are most critical in ensuring their success. Recommendations are made for both universities and child welfare scholars desiring to center the voices and experiences of youth with foster care experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Black men are significantly underrepresented in family-based research. • Children experience positive outcomes when they experience male caregiver-child relationships. • Strategies to engage Black male caregivers in family-based programming are presented. • Cultural sensitivity, highlighting the value and empowerment of Black men were effective. • Implementing strategies may reduce disparities and promote a positive representation of Black men. Black men are less likely to participate in research studies due to historical abuses and mistrust, which has consequences for various health issues, including research to improve the sexual health and well-being of young girls and women. This paper aims to present strategies from research staff on how to engage Black male caregivers in family-based research. After our five Black research team members (i.e., researchers, recruiters, facilitators, and community liaisons) recruited 30 Black male caregivers into one-on-one interviews, ten into focus groups, six into theatre testing of an intervention, and 20 more into the pilot intervention, interviews explored their experiences engaging the targeted population in research. Interview questions included asking what strategies were successful, what challenges occurred, and future recommendations to engage Black male caregivers in research. Audio recordings and written response data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Themes included: 1) empowering Black communities through fatherhood initiatives, 2) utlizing culturally sensitive and respectful recruiters, 3) highlighting the value of Black men, and 4) implementing study materials enhancing positive representations of Black men. Implementing strategies to include Black men in family-based health research has the potential to reduce health disparities in the United States and increase their representation across the literature. These strategies will equip researchers to engage in research with minority and structurally-systemically disadvantaged groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Learning the lessons from serious child abuse cases can prevent harm in future. • Lack of 'professional curiosity' and 'challenge' are inadequate explanations. • More productive understandings for practice would be communication and courage. • Awareness of the ambiguous policy context is also essential. • Well supported staff and properly resourced services are vital. Learning lessons from cases where children have been killed or seriously harmed from abuse or neglect is important for child protection policy and practice around the world. In England there is a long-established system of locally based, multi-agency reviews. Three recurrent themes over the years have been the poor quality of assessments, shortcomings in inter-agency working and information sharing, and not knowing the children and understanding their experiences. The reviews often identify a lack of 'professional curiosity' and insufficient 'challenge' on the part of child protection practitioners as the cause of these problems. This paper analyses these concepts, drawing on four recent studies of child safeguarding reviews conducted by the authors and their research team. It uses qualitative data from the reports and the views of local professionals in online focus groups. The reviews tend to use the perceived lack of curiosity and challenge as the explanation for poor practice without interrogating why, when and in what circumstances it becomes more difficult for professionals to remain curious and appropriately challenging. Professional curiosity and challenge are complex, multifaceted concepts, and applying them in practice is difficult and skilled work. The paper argues for a more nuanced and grounded understanding of the concepts and their application in practice. It sets them in wider frames of communication and courage, and the ambiguous policy context of a preference for cooperative engagement with families but high expectations about protecting children. It offers recommendations for future research into the review process, authorship style, practice in local agencies and national government policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the results of a commissioned systematic map of UK child protection empirical research published between 2010 and 2014. It analyses current patterns in child protection research in relation to three variables – disciplinary background of authors, types of maltreatment examined, and focus of the research – and considers the relationship between these. It finds first authors' disciplines to be reliable indicators of both the focus and topic of the research, with the dominant fields of psychology, medicine, and social work addressing respectively the long term outcomes of sexual abuse, the short term outcomes of physical abuse, and the care system's response to child maltreatment. The proportion of research dedicated to specific types of maltreatment appears to depend on factors other than their real-world prevalence. Instead, definitional issues and ease of access to research participants appearing to be more influential in determining the topic of the research. UK child protection research appears to show narrow multidisciplinary interaction and little focus on preventative or ameliorative interventions. The development of a coordinated national strategy adopting an interdisciplinary approach in the design and commissioning of child protection research could help maximise research efforts by reducing duplication and potentially facilitating the emergence of more innovative directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Little research exists about young fostered children and their education. • Fewer fostered children attend centre based early childhood education. • Attachment theory focus may have led to 'security first' thinking by foster carers • Foster carers are often carrying out educational practices in their homes. • A large scale study of foster carers' educational roles and their impacts is needed. While the education of looked after children has attracted considerable policy attention in Europe and North America, and globally the early education of preschool aged children is the subject of substantial investment, the early education of young children in foster care is neglected in both research and policy. This paper is a cross-national think piece to stimulate research and debate about young children in foster care. We present findings from two studies, one in England and one in Sweden, exploring foster carers' views and practices with young children. We argue that there is a perceived tension, in foster care policy and practice, between education and emotional wellbeing such that young children's attachment relationships and sense of security is privileged over their engagement in educational practices. Attachment relationships are a necessary but insufficient condition for optimal development of fostered children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]