Sibling placement and contact in out-of-home care

Many children and young people do not live with all of their siblings in out-of-home care, and contact with the siblings who are not placed with them is not always regular or easily accessed, according to this report. Summary Children and young people in out-of-home care across Australia have told CREATE that living with their brothers and sisters in care is very important and that they are the people they most want to contact when they are not living together. Our latest research shows that many children and young people do not live with all of their siblings in out-of-home care, and contact with the siblings who are not placed with them is not always regular or easily accessed. This report sheds light on the experiences of children young people and caseworkers in each state and territory and what they think about this important issue

Using an Open Educational Resources Platform to Support Underserved Groups

The Open University (OU) United Kingdom manages two platforms for hosting Open Educational Resources (OER): OpenLearn, delivering the OU’s OER, reaching over10 million learners a year, attracting a mostly UK audience, and OpenLearn Create, reaching 3 million learners a year, where anyone can create and share OER, attracting a mostly international – non-UK – audience. Both platforms release OER using a Creative Commons license and afford accessibility to learning materials specifically catering to the needs of underserved groups, in other words, individuals or groups who may have limited access to education or continuing professional development (CPD) either as recipient or as educator. Using case studies, research data analytics and survey data, this chapter reveals how the approach to delivering OER on OpenLearn Create fosters community engagement and outreach across a broad spectrum of projects in a range of languages and format often to those with restricted access to professional development within organizations. The chapter discusses weaknesses in the platform’s usability for delivering online courses, but strengths and recommendations for its use as an adaptable project-based tool. Research data also reveal that where an institution is prepared to minimally support the provision of such a platform, the contribution to humanizing education for OER projects globally is great

Towards a Developmental Framework of Consumer and Carer Participation in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services

Objective: This paper examines the concept of consumer participation in the context of developmental changes in parent/child relationships and associated differences in the utilization of child and adolescent mental health services. Method: Existing definitions and characteristics of mental health service delivery for children and young people are examined to answer the question,"Who is the consumer in the context of clinical services for young clients and their parents, and does this change with the child or young person's developmental stage?". Results: As children, young people and parents utilize services in this area of mental health, the roles of consumer and carer need redefinition to accommodate both young clients and parents as consumers, and parents also as carers. Conclusion: The proposed framework addresses the changing roles of parents and young clients from infancy to early adulthood to guide consumer and carer participation strategies. If child and adolescent mental health services are to apply a developmental perspective and engage both young clients and parents as 'consumers', they need to address challenges related to the differences in expectations and capacities of young clients and parents, to the complexity associated with dual roles, and to promoting meaningful participation

Genome-wide analyses identify KIF5A as a novel ALS gene

To identify novel genes associated with ALS, we undertook two lines of investigation. We carried out a genome-wide association study comparing 20,806 ALS cases and 59,804 controls. Independently, we performed a rare variant burden analysis comparing 1,138 index familial ALS cases and 19,494 controls. Through both approaches, we identified kinesin family member 5A (KIF5A) as a novel gene associated with ALS. Interestingly, mutations predominantly in the N-terminal motor domain of KIF5A are causative for two neurodegenerative diseases: hereditary spastic paraplegia (SPG10) and Charcot-Marie-Tooth type 2 (CMT2). In contrast, ALS-associated mutations are primarily located at the C-terminal cargo-binding tail domain and patients harboring loss-of-function mutations displayed an extended survival relative to typical ALS cases. Taken together, these results broaden the phenotype spectrum resulting from mutations in KIF5A and strengthen the role of cytoskeletal defects in the pathogenesis of ALS