The views of parents who experience intergenerational poverty on parenting and play: a qualitative analysis.

BACKGROUND: There is minimal literature on how parents experiencing intergenerational poverty view their role as parents and the value they place on children's play. The objective of this study was to examine how these parents view their parenting role and their beliefs about children's play. METHODS: Thirteen mothers of preschool-aged children who experienced intergenerational poverty were recruited to the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis. RESULTS: Parents described their role as guiding their children to become 'good' people, to teach them skills and provide a routine within the home. There were two disconnections in the data including the view that whilst parenting was hard and lonely, it was also a private matter and participants preferred not to seek support. A second disconnection was in terms of their beliefs about play. Parents believed that whilst play was valuable to their child's development, it was not their role to play with children. However, if parents did play with their child, they noticed positive changes in their child's behaviour. CONCLUSION: The views of parents who experienced intergenerational poverty were similar to other reported findings in parenting studies. However, the current sample differed on not seeking help for support as well as not seeing their role as playing with their children, even though occasions of joining their child in play were associated with a positive change in their relationship with their child. This has implications for communicating about parenting issues with parents who have experienced intergenerational poverty.

Clinical placement and rurality of career commencement: a pilot study.

This article reports on a project that aimed to discover whether rural placement can influence new graduates to take up rural positions, and what factors play a role in the decision-making. This pilot study reports the findings from a pre-survey of students (n = 110) who completed a questionnaire at the end of their rural placement in the Greater Green Triangle region, Australia. Findings are compared with matched questionnaire responses for students who subsequently completed a post-survey after graduation and who commenced work (n = 28). Rural placement appears to be associated with commencing rural practice after graduation. More graduates with an urban home address commenced rural practice than graduates with a rural home address who started their careers in the city. Longer placements may sway those with a city background to start work in a rural area.

Development of an assessment to identify play behaviours that discriminate between the play of typical preschoolers and preschoolers with pre-academic problems.

Occupational therapists regard play as the primary occupation of childhood. However, many authors of play assessments have viewed play either as a functional outcome of other skills or as an indication of the child's developmental level. While such views of play are valid, these approaches to play are broad and do not fully consider the cognitive value of play. A study was undertaken with 82 preschoolers to see if a new play assessment which considers cognitive play skills, called the Child-initiated Pretend Play Assessment, (ChiPPA), possessed acceptable inter-rater reliability, and could discriminate between the play of typically developing preschoolers and preschoolers with pre-academic problems. This assessment evaluates preschoolers' elaborate imaginative actions, number of imitative actions, and number of object substitutions. The ChiPPA was found to have excellent inter-rater reliability and did discriminate between children who were typically developing and children who experienced pre-academic problems. In particular, the elaborateness of a child's play actions and the child's ability to substitute objects were strong discriminators of preschoolers with and without pre-academic problems. Three play profiles which emerged from the research are discussed.