BACKGROUND: The employment of physician assistants (PAs) is a strategy to improve access to care. Since the new millennium, a handful of countries have turned to PAs as a means to bridge the growing gap between the supply and demand of medical services. However, little is known about this new workforce …

The objective of this study is to contribute towards understanding how welfare and justice discourses become apparent in institutional conversations where social workers involved in child protection have dual professional identities: that of helper and of gatekeeper. In this article we analyse a specific …

This thesis is on institutional communication, and focuses in particular on interactional processes between social workers and prospective adoptive parents in assessment procedures for adoptive parenthood. These assessments are conducted in the Netherlands by the Child Protection Board (hereafter CPB). …

In this study we examine how suitability for adoptive parenthood is assessed and displayed in interactions between social workers and prospective adoptive parents. In particular, we have analyzed relationship questions that are put to couples with and without an observation from the social worker. The answers …

Always a complex and demanding task, parenthood can be an extra challenge when parents have severe mental illness. Clients with children may experience extra stress, feelings of uncertainty, and a lack of energy. They may have difficulty in talking about their disabilities with their children. Often, …

Prospective adoptive parents who take part in a Dutch adoption assessment procedure are asked to write down their life stories. In this article we examine how information from the life stories is deleted, selected and transformed into a topic to talk about in an assessment interview and/or to write about …