Early childhood teachers' beliefs and experiences of identification and referral for early intervention services in Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Educational Psychology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

This research addresses a gap in the literature related to the role of early childhood teachers in the identification and referral of children for specialist early intervention, particularly in the Aotearoa New Zealand context. Extending on the prior work of Aspden (2003), this replicative study explored early childhood teachers’ experiences, attitudes and beliefs regarding the identification of children’s additional needs and subsequent referral for specialist early intervention. Two research questions framed this study: (1) what are early childhood teachers’ experiences related to identification and referral? and; (2) what factors, attitudes and beliefs influence early childhood teachers’ identification and referral practices? Seventy-eight early childhood teachers participated in an online survey. Key findings suggested that teachers’ identification and referral confidence was strongly influenced by a complex set of personal and external factors that included concerns around parental reaction and the adequacy of service provisions. Teachers reported low overall levels of confidence in specialist service provisions, creating a potential access barrier for children with additional needs. The findings support the ongoing need for teacher consultation in terms of current and future changes to the systems around specialist early intervention as well as enhanced professional support and development that targets teachers need for knowledge of and connection with specialist agencies

Oligopolistic competition of gencos in reactive power ancillary service provisions

The need for a market based approach for reactive power procurement has been recognized by FERC. Due to the localized characteristic of reactive power, regulatory mechanisms are necessary to mitigate the possibility of holding market power by generators. The regulator is responsible for devising the regulatory mechanisms that provide incentives to generators to supply reactive power while preventing the abuse of market power. This paper proposes a mathematical model to simulate the strategic behavior of generators supplying reactive power while considering the system operator's schedule. The proposed method can be used by the regulator to simulate the market behavior in the reactive power supply. We further study how regulatory policies affect the strategic behavior. An alternative price cap method has been proposed and tested in the numerical example to mitigate the effect of strategic behavior of generators in reactive power procurement by the system operator. The numerical examples are tested on the Nordic 32-bus system. © 2009 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Neighborhoods by Assessment: An Analysis of Non-Ad Valorem Financing In California

Non-ad valorem assessments on property are a fiscal innovation born from financial stress. Unable to raise property taxes due to limitations, many localities have turned to these charges as an alternative method to fund local services. In this paper, we seek to explain differential levels of non-ad valorem assessment financing through the analysis of property tax records of a large and diverse set of single family homes in California. We theorize that assessments, as opposed to other forms of taxation, will be used when residents hold anti-redistributive preferences. We show that assessment financing is most common in cities with high median household incomes and greater ethnic diversity. We also show that certain types of assessments, those with narrow geographic range, are frequently levied on expensive homes in poorer communities. We argue that this new form of financing exacerbates economic inequality by creating additional inequities in public service provisions

Specification and Verification of Context-dependent Services

Current approaches for the discovery, specification, and provision of services ignore the relationship between the service contract and the conditions in which the service can guarantee its contract. Moreover, they do not use formal methods for specifying services, contracts, and compositions. Without a formal basis it is not possible to justify through formal verification the correctness conditions for service compositions and the satisfaction of contractual obligations in service provisions. We remedy this situation in this paper. We present a formal definition of services with context-dependent contracts. We define a composition theory of services with context-dependent contracts taking into consideration functional, nonfunctional, legal and contextual information. Finally, we present a formal verification approach that transforms the formal specification of service composition into extended timed automata that can be verified using the model checking tool UPPAAL.Comment: In Proceedings WWV 2011, arXiv:1108.208

Volunteering for Human Service Provisions: Lessons from Italy and the U.S.A.

The increased reliance on volunteers in all industrialized democracies has been parallelled by growing fiscal crises in most states, widespread criticism of welfare, and increased demand for social services. While volunteer work is presumed to be an alternative to public services, its feasibility is not yet clear. We suggest that a cross-national comparison of two significantly different countries would provide more information about volunteerism as a partial substitute for public services. We compared the United States where volunteerism is a widespread tradition and Italy where there has been a rediscovery of volunteerism since the 1980s. Differences between the two countries in the practice of volunteerism are examined from several perspectives. They include the relationships between volunteers and the statutory sector, the professionalization of volunteer activity, the role of citizen participation in a capitalistic society, and the Lockean principle of limited government. Finally, we conclude that while there are many differences in welfare provision between the United States and Italy, they do have a common element: increased reliance on volunteers for every aspect of day-to-day life; however, this reliance is mostly ideologically-based and may prove unfounded and costly

Improvements and Future Challenges for the Research Infrastructure in Public Finance

The paper briefly surveys available data sources and discusses future developments relevant for empirical public finance in Germany. It starts from the notion that public finance deals with decisions of various agents, not only governments, but also private households and firms. Therefore, empirical research needs different types of data. Government decisions are to some extent captured in terms of the budgetary statistics, even though these statistics have shortcomings with regard to the quality of public service provisions and the revenue instruments. To study the decisions of the other agents individual level data is required. While some progress has been made, recently, the combination of various datasets at the individual level is a key priority.Empirical Research; Public Finance; Budgetary Statistics; Revenue Statistics; Micro-level Data; Taxpayer Data

Understanding low fertility in Poland

After the state socialist regime of Poland collapsed in 1989, the nation’s total fertility rate plummeted from 2.1 to 1.27 by 2007. Simultaneously, Poland severely reduced social service provisions and restricted access to family planning. A three-month mixed-methods research study was conducted in 2007 in GdaÅ„sk to investigate Polish women’s reproductive intentions and decision making. These data reveal that discriminatory practices by employers against pregnant women and women with small children are decisive in women’s decisions to postpone or forego childbearing. The case of Poland demonstrates the urgent need to redress fundamental gendered discrimination in employment before work-family reconciliation policies can be effective.childbearing, employment, employment discrimination, Europe, fertility, fertility decisions, gender equality, mixed methods, neoliberalism, Poland, postsocialism

Business services in Hungary during the transition

Examples of Western developed economies show a strict correlation between the state of services sector and the level of economic development. Services should be considered as a catalysator in a modern economy. Services play a key role in macroeconomic development, in reducing unemployment, in relieving economic crisis and a key role in knowledgebased economy. Efficiencies of service provisions enable the growth of all other sectors which rely on services as inputs, while neglecting of vital service branches doom many other sectors to failure. Starting from the above thesis a general picture of the state of services, particularly business services is given before and after the transition, in order to pinpoint the effect of the transition process from socialism to capitalism.business services