Collaboration is essential to inclusive practice, ensuring that children with disabilities, developmental differences and neurodivergence receive holistic, coordinated and high-quality support. A collaborative, team-based approach allows children to experience inclusive, responsive learning environments where interventions are seamlessly integrated into their everyday experiences. Research has demonstrated that when educators, allied health professionals, and families work together, children’s learning and development are enhanced, leading to greater participation, engagement and wellbeing.

The voyages of Columbus and his successors linked the two hemispheres, and this chapter surveys the positive and negative biological, cultural, and social consequences of this “Columbian Exchange.” Among these were the spread of disease and the transfer of plants, animals, and consumer goods, along with economic changes that led to social protests, revolts, warfare, and forced migrations in an increasingly interdependent world. Religious transformations, including the Protestant and Catholic Reformations and the creation of Sikhism, were interwoven with all of these developments, as religions, too, migrated and morphed. New urban social settings and cultural institutions, such as coffee and tea houses, theatres, and salons, offered men—and sometimes women—opportunities for entertainment, sociability, consumption, and the exchange of ideas, but the increasing contacts among peoples also resulted in more rigid notions of human difference.

The introduction presents the background to the writing of the book. The author is an experienced Guantanamo lawyer who represented many detainees, including the last two Kuwaiti detainees, and was asked by Kuwaiti colleagues and friends to tell the stories of the twelve Kuwaiti detainees their lives before Guantanamo, how they were captured, their torture and treatment at Guantanamo, how they came to be released, and how they have tried to rebuild their lives after their long ordeals. The Core Team is introduced, a Kuwaiti lawyer, Abdul Rahaman Al Haroun, an American lawyer, William Brown, both based in Kuwait, and their colleague in Washington, Marcia Newell. These three strategized and fought every day for fourteen years until the last of the Kuwaitis was released.

In this chapter, we will look at how children play in families, and the diversity of roles that parents may take in children’s play. We begin this chapter with details of the play practices of two families living in the same community. We argue that play is learned in families, and in early childhood centres and classrooms, rather than being something that arises naturally within the child. Through reading this chapter on families at play, you will gain insights into how some families play and how play is learned in families, and an understanding that play practices learned at home lay the foundation of children’s play and learning, and that as teachers we should consider how to build upon these early experiences in our early childhood centres and classrooms.

This chapter proposes new readings of the poems of Whym Chow: Flame of Love based on ideas of unconventional domesticity, alternative divinity, and queer, chosen families. The chapter explores the ways in which animal characteristics disrupt and subvert conventional poetic form and religious teachings in the volume, specifically elegy and Catholicism. It also focuses on connections between Michael Field’s writing and animal poetry found in the work of other fin-de-siècle and modernist writers. The chapter proposes that these poems can and should be celebrated for their eccentricity, oddity, and queerness rather than overlooked and marginalised within Michael Field’s oeuvre.

This chapter considers the experiences of those emigrants who did not respond to the call to arms and thus became draft evaders. With few exceptions, evading the Italian draft was actually quite easy for emigrants and brought no immediate consequences. Draft evasion simply meant that a man would decline to present himself at the consulate to arrange the trip home. The chapter explores the factors that influenced men to evade the draft, including the impact of family members, economic concerns and political beliefs. Socialists and anarchists, in particular, were militant draft evaders: some even left the United States for Mexico in order to avoid call-up to either the Italian or American armies. Treaties were signed between Italy and Britain and France for the reciprocal exchange of draft evaders although Italians were the primary target of the policy, while in Australia Italian draft evaders were rounded up and deported so that they could be enlisted into the Italian Army.

This chapter traces the emigrant soldiers’ experiences after their arrival in Italy. For some, it was their first encounter with a country they had heard so much about and many had the opportunity to engage in sightseeing before enlistment. Others were devastated to be swept off to the front without having the chance to see their parents and families. Returning from abroad to comply with a mobilisation order did not confer any special status on the emigrant soldiers. Once at the front lines, the mobilised emigrants suffered the same privations, injuries and hardship as all other Italian soldiers and officers. One of the major issues for those from South America and North Africa was the unfamiliar cold and snowy conditions they experienced. Others were disappointed to be stationed away from the front and that their service was not as exciting as they had expected. However, depending on their place of residence abroad and, in some cases, their pre-war occupations and language skills, the fact of their emigration did impact on their physical experience of combat and warfare. The chapter details the emigrant soldiers’ combat experiences, including gas attacks, the rout at Caporetto in 1917 and internment as prisoners of war.

Across Australia and beyond, early childhood education (ECE) services play a significant role in the everyday lives of infants, toddlers and their families. For some decades, the enrolment of infants and toddlers has increased to the extent that, in today’s Australian society, around 40% of birth to 24-month-olds and nearly 60% of two-year-olds spend at least part of their week in an early childhood service. More still balance ECE service attendance with informal care arrangements with family members and friends. With these figures echoed across many countries worldwide, the widespread uptake of infant and toddler early childhood programs has meant that this generation of infants and toddlers and their families are experiencing a markedly different start to life than previous generations. It is now the norm for infant–toddler care to be spread across multiple contexts both within and outside of the walls of the family home, and for the responsibility for early learning to be shared between family and non-familial adults.

This chapter reflects on the future of family law in an era of longer lives. Our analysis leads us to conclude that the 100-year life is indeed likely to have an impact on the nature, scope, and definition of family law, but that families will continue to function as the primary setting for intimacy and for caregiving and caretaking, whatever form those families take. Further, the importance to both individual and social welfare of family support throughout life points to a need for reform of current family law doctrine. The impact of longer life on doctrines regulating the relationship of parents and minor children is likely to be modest, but doctrinal and policy reforms will be needed to support individuals in following their preferences for intimacy and security in old age -- as will reforms to the minimal role of the state in promoting security for individuals in different family forms and of differing socioeconomic status. We suggest general goals for law reform and offer specific proposals.

The health and well-being of families is an important consideration for federal, state, and/or local levels of government. Family health policies based on recent knowledge of early childhood development have evolved to emphasise the importance of providing every child with the best possible start to life. Childhood sets the foundation for future health and well-being and is recognised by the 1979 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. To impact health inequalities, government policies and services must address the social determinants of early child health, development and well-being.

Anaesthetists working in paediatric settings may care for patients ranging in age from preterm neonates to teenagers, some of whom will be undergoing relatively simple procedures for isolated conditions whereas others will have extremely complex needs and will be undergoing complicated, high-risk procedures. What all of these patients will have in common, however, is the need for developmentally appropriate communication from and with the professionals caring for them. Alongside an understanding and knowledge of the anatomical, physiological and pharmacological issues relevant to the care of the paediatric patient, anaesthetists also need an understanding of the developmental, communication, emotional and behavioural issues relevant to their paediatric patient. This chapter summarises some of the key theories of cognitive and psychosocial development, including beliefs about illness, and how these are relevant to the child undergoing anaesthesia. Effective communication with children and their families is central to the delivery of high-quality care, and this is discussed alongside the role of preparation and behavioural and psychological techniques in optimising experiences and outcomes for the child, family and anaesthetist.