•Supporting foster carers is important given the role demands and expectations inherent in their daily work, however many may experience burnout and secondary traumatic stress leading to carer ...attrition and children’s placement instability.•The Mockingbird FamilyTM is a promising model involving collective foster caring. It shows potential to support foster carers, thereby strengthening and stabilizing the environment of children and young people in care.•We measured the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) of foster carers in the Mockingbird FamilyTM in Australia and compared their ProQOL with foster carers caring as usual. We showed that Mockingbird FamilyTM model may have positive associations with improvements in compassion satisfaction and reductions in compassion fatigue among carers.
Children’s behaviours and support system typology are potential predictors of foster carer compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress (i.e., Professional Quality of Life, ProQOL). Little is known about the ProQOL of Mockingbird FamilyTM foster carers compared to foster carers caregiving as usual.
This study aimed to: Examine ProQOL of Mockingbird FamilyTM carers compared to other carers; Explain associations between ProQOL, demographic characteristics, and determinants of ProQOL.
Participants and setting: Two groups were studied: Mockingbird FamilyTM carers (n = 27) and other carers (n = 89) of children < 18yrs. The sample was drawn from a single registered foster care agency following implementation of the Mockingbird FamilyTM in Australia.
Cross-sectional, comparative mixed method design. Participants completed self-report questionnaires incorporating demographic questions, ProQOL instrument developed by Stamm (2010), and qualitative questions, analysed using SPSS 28.01 and thematically.
Pearson correlation, t-test and ANOVA showed Mockingbird FamilyTM carers had a better ProQOL compared to carers caregiving as usual, with associations identified between ProQOL and socio-demographic aspects including gender, ProQOL and foster caring experience, and ProQOL and carers’ engagement of the children in community activities. Qualitative data showed that communication, relevance of training, and the quality of statutory and agency supports to members of the Mockingbird FamilyTM were key determinants of ProQOL.
Our findings showed that the Mockingbird FamilyTM model of foster care may improve the ProQOL of carers, compared to carers undertaking caregiving as usual. We recommend further research to examine associations with placement breakdown and carer attrition rates.
A myriad of nuclear reactor designs are currently being considered for next-generation power production. These designs utilize unique geometries and materials and can rely on multiphysics effects for ...safety and operation. This work develops a neutron transport tool, MOCkingbird, capable of three-dimensional (3D), full-core reactor simulation for previously intractable geometries. The solver is based on the method of characteristics, utilizing unstructured mesh for the geometric description. MOCkingbird is built using the MOOSE multiphysics framework, allowing for straightforward linking to other physics in the future. A description of the algorithms and implementation is given, and solutions are computed for two-dimensional/3D C5G7 and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology BEAVRS benchmark. The final result shows the application of MOCkingbird to a 3D, full-core simulation utilizing 1.4 billion elements and solved using 12 000 processors.
How often does a novel earn its author both the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to Harper Lee by George W. Bush in 2007, and a spot on a list of “100 best gay and lesbian novels”? Clearly, To ...Kill a Mockingbird, Lee’s Pulitzer Prize–winning tale of race relations and coming of age in Depression-era Alabama, means many different things to many different people. In Mockingbird Passing, Holly Blackford invites the reader to view Lee’s beloved novel in parallel with works by other iconic American writers—from Emerson, Whitman, Stowe, and Twain to James, Wharton, McCullers, Capote, and others. In the process, she locates the book amid contesting literary traditions while simultaneously exploring the rich ambiguities that define its characters.
Blackford finds the basis of Mockingbird’s broad appeal in its ability to embody the mainstream culture of romantics like Emerson and social reform writers like Stowe, even as alternative canons—southern gothic, deadpan humor, queer literatures, regional women’s novels—lurk in its subtexts. Central to her argument is the notion of “passing”: establishing an identity that conceals the inner self so that one can function within a closed social order. For example, the novel’s narrator, Scout, must suppress her natural tomboyishness to become a “lady.” Meanwhile, Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, must contend with competing demands of thoughtfulness, self-reliance, and masculinity that ultimately stunt his effectiveness within an unjust society. Blackford charts the identity dilemmas of other key characters—the mysterious Boo Radley, the young outsider Dill (modeled on Lee’s lifelong friend Truman Capote), the oppressed victim Tom Robinson—in similarly intriguing ways. Queer characters cannot pass unless, like the narrator, Miss Maudie, and Cal, they split into the “modest double life.”
In uncovering To Kill a Mockingbird’s lively conversation with a diversity of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers and tracing the equally diverse journeys of its characters, Blackford offers a myriad of fresh insights into why the novel has retained its appeal for so many readers for over fifty years. At once Victorian, modern, and postmodern, Mockingbird passes in many canons.
El libro de Javier de Lucas Nosotros, que quisimos tanto a Atticus Finch (De las raíces del supremacismo, al Black Lives Matter) es un excelente ejemplo de lo productivo que el cine y la literatura ...resultan para la enseñanza y también para la investigación jurídica. En la línea del análisis que se presenta en ese libro propongo completarlo con la discusión de la idea de la injusticia epistémica, uno de cuyos ejemplos ya clásicos es el juicio a Tom Robinson en Matar a un ruiseñor. En este sentido defiendo que el concepto tiene interés en el ámbito del Derecho, una relación todavía no demasiado explorada.
The song of the northern mockingbird,
, is notable for its extensive length and inclusion of numerous imitations of several common North American bird species. Because of its complexity, it is not ...widely studied by birdsong scientists. When they do study it, the specific imitations are often noted, and the total number of varying phrases. What is rarely noted is the systematic way the bird changes from one syllable to the next, often with a subtle transition where one sound is gradually transformed into a related sound, revealing an audible and specific compositional mode. It resembles a common strategy in human composing, which can be described as variation of a theme. In this paper, we present our initial attempts to describe the specific compositional rules behind the mockingbird song, focusing on the way the bird transitions from one syllable type to the next. We find that more often than chance, syllables before and after the transition are spectrally related, i.e., transitions are gradual, which we describe as morphing. In our paper, we categorize four common modes of morphing: timbre change, pitch change, squeeze (shortening in time), and stretch (lengthening in time). This is the first time such transition rules in any complex birdsong have been specifically articulated.
This article explores the relationship between superhero comics and myth. It argues that traditional approaches to myth see it as a deeply conservative form, and applying it to the superhero genre ...makes the comics seem more conservative than they are. This also is inadequate if we are to understand the politics of superhero comics, which is currently focussed on issues of representation and diversity, something that is in turn being contested by reactionary forces collected under the name 'Comicsgate'. To understand what is happening we need to challenge the conservative view of myth seen in the writing of Eco and Reynolds, and supplement this with a generative view of myth found in the work of Cassirer, Castoriardis, and Bloch. Here, myth is actually integral to the creation of a world. It is what enables us to make sense of the things around us and find our place. If these myths are no longer circulated or our challenged our place in the world is also threatened. To understand how this is worked out today I finally apply Barthes work on myth to Chelsea Cain's run on Mockingbird to show how the comic challenged the myth and the ideology of patriarchy.
Against the background of the Cold War, this article rethinks the novel (1960) and film (1962) To Kill a Mockingbird, more specifically Atticus Finch’s characterization as the courageous, unblemished ...defender of an unjustly accused black man in the American South. Because of Atticus’s unrelenting efforts to exonerate Tom Robinson, he has been proclaimed the 20th century’s greatest American movie hero. At a closer look, however, it turns out that, while Atticus fights hard for Tom, he nevertheless, and as a matter of course, abandons the investigation into the stabbing death of Bob Ewell, a poor white man and Tom’s accuser. The New Yorker magazine noted this conflict in the movie. So, it begs the question: from what social attitudes does this broad-spectrum admiration for Atticus emerge? This article proposes an answer: it originates in identity-centrism, an attitude that underlies United States ideology during the Cold War era and results, specifically, in a total disregard for the poor. In other words, To Kill a Mockingbird is not a closed-ended novel of good versus evil, but an open-ended work that raises a troubling question about diversity.
Abstract Given that the number of children and young people needing care keeps rising and fewer people are becoming foster carers, efforts to support carers and workers in foster caring are ...essential. This paper considers the experiences of carers and foster care agency workers involved in Australia's piloting of the Mockingbird Family. With a view understanding experience, data were collected via focus groups with carers and agency workers ( n = 20) involved in piloting, implementation and evaluation. Deductive analysis applied the theory of experience to generate understanding of experience, as both intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions to capture strengths in the Mockingbird Family's foster caring networks. These dimensions of experience included collective passions of carers and workers; experiential change over time; collective experiences as a moving force; and experiences as transformational. Understanding of experience associated with the perceived strengths of the Mockingbird Family, including strategies to promote strong professional relationships between carers and workers, is an important element in strengthening environments of children and young people in care. Safe and stable environments are crucial for wellbeing.
In recent years, social network analysis has had its own distinctive theoretical and methodological underpinnings. This article proposes a novel method for the application of a fused mixed-methods ...approach and social network analyses that incorporates the critical aspects of numerous characteristics of children’s social development in a statutory care setting. We collected data from children involved in the Mockingbird Family out-of-home care model, following its implementation in Australia. Our approach involves three steps: social-developmental network indicators, relational dynamics, and social-developmental network narrative. We contend that this approach has the potential to provide powerful data representation that facilitates the understanding of the complexities of children’s social development, the links between different positions and roles of children, and their social network in the Mockingbird family. Using exemplars, we show the potential of the research method to unearth rich data for seeking to understand the system change important for strengthening children’s safe and protective environments.
In their care of children and young people, foster carers report experiencing social isolation and a lack of support. This study examines the social network experiences of Australian foster carers ...who are members of Mockingbird Family. While well established in the United States and United Kingdom, Mockingbird Family was introduced to Australia offering a new approach to address the unique challenges of foster caring for vulnerable children and young people. The model geographically networks 6–10 foster care households in a ‘constellation’ with a central ‘hub home provider’ tasked with providing information, support, and respite care. This study employed a cross-sectional explanatory sequential mixed methods approach to investigate social connections and supports in the first four Australian Mockingbird Family constellations. A social network tool was used to survey participants (n = 27) and two focus groups (n = 20) to gather their experiences. Analysis found the highest mean social network connections with people from within their own Mockingbird Family constellations. Three measures of centrality were used indegree, betweenness and closeness, to report the connections and role of members within each constellation. Comparing constellations at different stages of maturity, the hub home provider was consistently ranked with high betweenness centrality as the bridge. In the longer-running constellations, the hub home provider was ranked with high indegree centrality or the primary source of advice or expert support. This indicated micro-network evolution that may potentially result in reduced reliance on statutory and other formal system supports over time. Changes to micro-dynamics in social support within constellations were explained qualitatively through three themes: leadership and expertise, information diffusion and communication, and trust and familiarity. Mockingbird Family was found to provide social connections and support networks amongst foster carers, indicating the model’s capacity to strengthen supports to carers thereby strengthening the immediate environment of children and young people in care.
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