Maternity reviews have told us what is wrong – why are we still waiting for action?

Iryna Inshyna/Shutterstock Bad things have happened in maternity units. Babies have died. Women have been harmed. Families have been ignored, dismissed and left to fight for answers they should never have had to beg for. Safe maternity care must be a national priority. But after more than a decade of investigations, one question has become […]

Dementia care: how praise can help – and when it can miss the mark

Halfpoint/Shutterstock On a busy hospital ward, a nurse says “wonderful, wonderful” as a patient with dementia completes a task. It sounds simple, but moments like this can play an important role in how care gets done. Building on my doctoral research, a recent study I co-authored with colleagues examines how praise is used in the […]

Education is important when it comes to tackling domestic abuse

Frame Stock Footage/Shutterstock Harmful narratives about domestic abuse persist in our society. They can include questioning “why doesn’t the victim just leave?”. They might mean believing in a hierarchy of abuse, where physical abuse is taken more seriously than other forms. Stereotypical characterisations of how a victim should behave and what a perpetrator looks like […]

The revamped hiking trail regenerating an Italian region blighted by mafia stereotypes

Il Sentiero dell’Inglese – the Trail of the Englishman – is bringing new hope to Calabria’s Aspromonte mountains in southern Italy, one of the EU’s most marginal and economically depressed areas. The six-day trail is named after the English poet Edward Lear who walked these mountains in the 19th century. The route encourages hikers to […]