High growth maritime industries: Recent successes and major opportunities for Western Australia

There are indications that the maritime industry in Western Australia is currently insufficiently serviced by the tertiary sector in terms of its educational needs. Thus, in May 1995 a Maritime Industry Taskforce was formed to investigate opportunities for further development of maritime industries in Western Australia and around the Indian Ocean Rim. Following months of discussion with government agencies, industry and tertiary education providers, it was considered opportune to conduct a seminar to bring these areas together to openly explore key issues in building upon successes already achieved. The seminar included speakers from each of the areas of government, industry and education in Western Australia as well as the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University, Newfoundland, Canada, and the Australian Maritime College, Launceston, who identified some international and national maritime industry successes

Trans-adaption of successful cigarette smoking intervention to randomised school-based cannabis intervention trial

Despite the emergence of cannabis use as a public health issue of significance in the 21st Century, no school-based interventions specifically addressing cannabis use have been reported in the literature. The prevalence of adolescent cannabis use has risen during the 1990s while the age of onset has decreased. This three-year trial seeks to trans-adapt a successful school-based cigarette smoking program underpinned by harm minimisation (HM) theory (including abstinence messages), into a school-based cannabis intervention trial. This innovative intervention will be compared to the largely abstinence-based drug use prevention activities currently used in W A. The first and second years of the project have been successful in establishing and conducting this school-based cluster randomised control trial. In summary, under the direction of an experienced management team, the project has recruited 24 Perth metropolitan high schools - the required number to provide sufficient power to detect hypothesised differences between intervention and comparison students. Within these schools, active parental consent to participate in data collection for the project was obtained from over 3,300 students after the initial letter and two reminders to parents (69% consent rate). Baseline data were collected from nearly 3,100 students (93% of those eligible), 2953 students at post-test 1 and 2701 students at the end of the second year of intervention (Post-test 2). In addition, data were collected at each of these time points from English and Health Education teachers, and school principals

2005 survey report on the wellbeing of the professions: policing, nursing and teaching

This report assesses the wellbeing of the professions of policing, nursing and teaching in Western Australia. The findings are derived from surveys of how individuals think about their occupations, their colleagues and employers. The level of wellbeing affects the ease of attracting and retaining staff and the quality of delivered services. We present and discuss summary results of responses to questionnaires sent in 2005 to 5,180 police, 6,000 nurses and 9,000 teachers. Each of the professions is here regarded as a single group. The number of respondents is sufficient to allow many more detailed analyses to be performed and reported at a later date. A separate document will contain fuller details of the technical aspects of the research

Child-centred environments to limit early aggression (Childhood Aggression Prevention (CAP) Project) progress report: presented to the Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation

A growing body of evidence indicates that early intervention may be most effective in preventing the high health and social costs of violence, victimisation, and other outcomes of aggression. The Childhood Aggression Prevention (CAP) Project is a trial of a new classroom-based intervention designed to prevent problems associated with aggression and other problem behaviours in early-primary years students. The intervention was developed through a review of established and previously-evaluated programs with similar aims and through a formative study conducted previously by the Child Health Promotion Research Centre. The CAP Project aims to reduce overt physical and verbal aggression, but also to reduce social (or relational) aggression, to promote prosocial behaviours and empathy. The intervention targets five primary areas: (1) explicit learning opportunities to support emotion regulation and social competence amongst children; (2) preventive strategies to promote pro-social goals amongst children and to limit peer exclusion and rejection, which can lead to increases in aggressive behaviour; (3) strategies to enable school staff to self diagnose and address relational problems with difficult students, which can entrench behaviour problems; (4) strategies for how schools can support parents of children with problem behaviours; and (5) effective proactive and reactive responses to incidents of anger and/or aggression