Purpose Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is a complex lifelong disorder impacting the brain and body. Individuals with FASD may require lifelong supports and are at a higher risk of experiencing adverse outcomes, including incarceration. Individuals with FASD face stigma related to FASD that impacts disclosure of the diagnosis and access to supports. The prevalence of FASD exceeds that of other developmental disabilities, yet it remains less visible and stigmatized. Design/methodology/approach Interviews conducted with health-care and justice professionals in a Canadian province explore their experiences attending to FASD and challenges of stigma. Findings While difficult to access, diagnosis provides a pathway to supports and is crucial in the criminal justice process. Visibility and invisibility in health and justice systems highlight the lack of understanding of FASD and surrounding stigma. When unaddressed, individuals with FASD face additional challenges stemming from a lack of information and strategies by professionals involved in their lives. Originality/value Stigma represents a significant and complex issue intertwined in understandings of FASD. This research explores this relationship and the mechanisms through which FASD stigma has impacts in health-care and justice settings.
While the recommendations are both modest and essential first steps, we also suggest that collaborations and resource-sharing in FASD prevention and supports are more about doing things differently, rather than doing more.
Alcohol is legalized and used for a variety of reasons, including socially or as self-medication for trauma in the absence of accessible and safe supports. Trauma-informed approaches can help address the root causes of alcohol use, as well as the stigma around women’s alcohol use during pregnancy. However, it is unclear how these approaches are used in contexts where pregnant and/or parenting women access care. Our objective was to synthesize existing literature and identify promising trauma-informed approaches to working with pregnant and/or parenting women who use alcohol. A multidisciplinary team of scholars with complementary expertise worked collaboratively to conduct a rigorous scoping review. All screening, extraction, and analysis was independently conducted by at least two authors before any differences were discussed and resolved through team consensus. The Joanna Briggs Institute method was used to map existing evidence from peer-reviewed articles found in PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Social Work Abstracts, and Web of Science. Data were extracted to describe study demographics, articulate trauma-informed principles in practice, and gather practice recommendations. Thirty-six studies, mostly from the United States and Canada, were included for analysis. Studies reported on findings of trauma-informed practice in different models of care, including live-in treatment centers, case coordination/management, integrated and wraparound supports, and outreach—for pregnant women, mothers, or both. We report on how the following four principles of trauma-informed practices were applied and articulated in the included studies: (1) trauma awareness; (2) safety and trustworthiness; (3) choice, collaboration, and connection; and (4) strengths-based approach and skill building. This review advances and highlights the importance of understanding trauma and applying trauma-informed practice and principles to better support women who use alcohol to reduce the risk of alcohol-exposed pregnancies. Relationships and trust are central to trauma-informed care. Moreover, when applying trauma-informed practices with pregnant and parenting women who use alcohol, we must consider the unique stigma attached to alcohol use.
Review of the Field In this issue, Social & Legal Studies is pleased to publish the third of an occasional feature: Review of the Field. Our ambition in this series is to publish articles which reflect upon fields of study and which offer a critical appraisal of the key literature and concepts. The aim is to provide not only a valuable map of the scholarly terrain but, equally, we hope that the format will give authors the opportunity to set a direction of travel for their discipline. Thus, we anticipate that reviews will ask new research questions, identify gaps in the scholarship and explore connections and discontinuities between diverse bodies of knowledge. Suggestions for future reviews are welcome and should be addressed to members of the Editorial Board. We are pleased to publish this Review of Feminist Criminology by Katharine Dunbar Winsor of Concordia University. We hope that our readers agree with us that the article provides an important addition to the literature and provides an invaluable template for contributors of future reviews. Editorial Board Social & Legal Studies The emergence of the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s became a primary influence of the field of feminist criminology. Feminist criminology has evolved over the past several decades and has remained impacted by and in dialogue with feminist thought and perspectives. Within the field, researchers have focused on producing and circulating women-centred knowledge. Despite this, tensions within the field highlight diverging approaches to what and who is studied. In Canada, the maturation of feminist criminology as a field has coincided with significant changes to women’s penology. In this essay, the development and changes to feminist criminology are mapped through an examination of key events and changes in Canada’s penal strategies for women. What emerges is the argument that feminist criminology must understand itself beyond narrow and discrete terms and instead must work with the tensions and debates of the field to keep women’s voices centred and the feminist social project alive.
Introduction: Health promotion awareness activities by health agencies, such as those by the Public Health Agency of Canada, aim to increase health literacy, often using social media campaigns to reach large audiences. Objectives: The objective of this research was to explore how community peer-reviewed social media content can facilitate the reach of health promotion campaigns, with specific regard to awareness around fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), alcohol, and pregnancy in Atlantic Canada. Methods: We developed a health promotion social media campaign consisting of 16 digital posters, then implemented a community-based participatory peer-review process to request input and feedback from individuals with lived experiences, caregivers, professionals who work with individuals with FASD, and various advocates for FASD throughout Atlantic Canada. Reviewer comments were then directly applied to update poster content, which was redistributed for secondary approval before circulation on Facebook and Instagram. Results: Reviewer feedback was constructive, with various suggestions for updates being applied to images and text choices. Once posted, the health promotion campaign was well received and reached over half a million viewers across the two platforms in the first three months. Engagement and interactions were overall positive, with minimal negative responses and only one post flagged by the platform as a social issue advertisement. Discussion/Conclusion: With the inclusion of diverse voices from the FASD community in the co-creation of the content, we argue that the campaign’s style, messaging, and language more accurately reflected the intended audiences and was made accessible to a wider demographic, thus strengthening awareness and prevention messages. We explore a health promotion social media campaign development process, providing valuable examples of how to encourage and create more safe spaces that promote open conversations about health and gradually dismantle outdated ideas and systems so we can begin addressing stigma by delivering accurate, non-judgmental health information.
Carceral spaces such as prisons are designed to restrict freedoms and keep inhabitants confined and under surveillance through various mechanisms. As a result, prisons are spaces where movement is restricted through confinement, while prisoners’ ability to move is conflated with freedom. We aim to move beyond this dichotomy and consider a complex rethinking of the body in criminological theory and practice through dance in carceral space. In doing so, we explore under what conditions movement represents agentic practices. Understanding these nuances requires an interrogation of prisoner agency, including prisoners’ subtle maneuverability of power dynamics within the prison. We explore these dynamics using feminist and arts-based methods, specifically dance workshops delivered to twenty participants incarcerated in a Canadian provincial women’s prison. We find that movement and expression in prison may create moments of agentic freedom for incarcerated women under certain conditions. We argue that more nuanced understandings of incarcerated women’s agency can be found in their daily negotiations of time and space, and movement can provide numerous meanings. Our findings suggest arts-based approaches within prison environments create opportunities for women to express their identity and sexuality through movement in ways otherwise not permitted in prison. For many incarcerated women in this study, this sense of freedom may be associated with the ability to focus and take care of themselves while confined.
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