In recent years video game consoles, such as the Nintendo Wii™ and the Microsoft Kinect™, have been introduced into residential facilities. This paper presents a review of current studies documenting the benefits and detriments the Wii could have on adults aged 60 years and over in residential facilities, concentrating on the common uses of the Wii in care facilities: maintaining physical fitness, promoting mental well-being, encouraging social interaction and both physical and mental rehabilitation. Furthermore, this paper discusses the potential use of the Microsoft Kinect in care for older persons. The Wii can have a positive impact on the physical and mental health of older adults living in care facilities, but additional work should still be conducted, including assessing the use of games outside of Wii Sports and Wii Fit and possible non-gaming application of the Wii in care for older adults. Results for the Wii display potential for use of the Kinect in care facilities but further exploration is required to assess the potential physical impact and interaction viability.
Over the last decade, many (European) countries have created special committees or conducted special investigations into the occurrence of sexual abuse in residential and/or foster care. Many of these studies concluded that children and young people in care are at a greater risk of being sexually abused, compared to youth growing up at home. However, the extent and scope of sexual abuse which has historically occurred in residential and/or foster care remains contested and is highly controversial. Although a broad range of factors are involved, one issue that is of crucial importance in the prevention of sexual abuse is paying attention to the healthy sexual development of children and young people in care. This sounds easy, but it isn’t easy at all. Ideas about relationships, intimacy and healthy sexual development differ between people and countries. It’s a sensitive subject that many professionals working in care find difficult to talk about. As most professionals working in care in Europe graduate from schools of Social Work, social work education should prepare (future) professionals to address this issue. Although some authors have addressed this issue, in general, social work education does not pay sufficient attention to the subject. This project aims to help (future) professionals build competencies on this specific subject by providing the following products:1. An international summer school on the subject of sex and sexuality, for social work students.2. An online course on the subject of sex and sexuality for professionals working in residential care or working with foster parents.3. A website with materials for European lecturers who teach future social workers on the subject of sex and sexuality.4. A reflection instrument as a tool for on-the-job training on the subject.These products are based on a set of practice based core competencies that professionals should develop in order to be able to provide care and upbringing on the theme of sex and sexuality. Next to that five central themes were used to order the development of modules.
This article explores the establishment of new commons initiatives from an integrated design perspective. Such a deeper understanding of the initial phase of becoming a commons -i.e. becommoning- and its design is crucial as members embark on a laborious, time-consuming and uncertain process in which they need to make critical design choices for their future commons. The design perspective is brought forward by the collective creation through which group values are explicated, the communal resource and its governance take shape and conditions are forged for the commons to emerge. So, the study presents the ‘becommoning’ framework as a first exploration for such a designerly approach to identify the steps and activities communities need to make at the very begin to start unfolding their initiative. The framework is applied in a case study, namely, for exploring the design of housing commons and related genres like cohousing, residential communities that are recognized as microlaboratories offering general insights for pursuing alternative societal models.
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