POSTED training manual

This manual describes POSTED - a training programme for parents, teachers and teaching assistants who are responsible for the daytime postural care needs of children with a physical disability. The training programme is intended to improve understanding and knowledge of postural care and the confidence carers. The training should be facilitated by occupational therapists and/or physiotherapists who have attended a train-the-trainer workshop. It contains background information relating to the development, structure and content of the training programme. The contents of the manual were originally designed for use in research commissioned by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) Programme (grant reference number PB‐PG‐ 0110‐21045)

A study into the effectiveness of an education programme for parents and teachers

Introduction: Parents and teachers lack knowledge and self-efficacy when providing postural care to physically disabled children. This can act as a barrier to the successful implementation of therapy. An intervention was developed to improve knowledge and confidence in providing postural care. The aim is to determine whether this intervention improves parents’ and teachers’ knowledge and confidence. Participants and Methods: The intervention includes a 2-hour interactive workshop and follow-up home/school visits delivered in three localities across the south-east of England. The UKC-PostCarD scale, which assesses levels of knowledge and confidence in providing postural care, was used to evaluate the intervention. It is completed at baseline and after the intervention is completed. Focus groups with participants will provide insight into elements that were effective/ineffective.Interviews with children will provide their perspective. Interviews with therapists will consider the feasibility and acceptability of delivery. Results: A mixed-design ANOVA 2 (Time: before vs. after) 9 3 (Area:Kent, Sussex, Surrey) will be used to determine whether knowledge and confidence improved following the intervention. Framework analysis will be used for the focus group and interview data. Qualitative findings will be fed into the overall evaluation. Results will be available by September 2013. Conclusion: If shown to improve confidence and knowledge, we will make this education programme available nationally

POSTED - general questionnaire

This questionnaire is concerned with carers experiences of daytime postural care. This questionnaire may be completed by anyone with experience of providing postural care to a child with a physical disability in a school and/or home environment. This includes parents, teachers and teaching assistants. It is likely that information, training and support needs vary considerably from one person to the next – due to the needs of the child, the type of equipment used, or the environment in which postural care is provided. This questionnaire was developed to enable parents, teachers, and teaching assistants to highlight specific aspects of postural care that they find challenging in order that information, training and support may be appropriately targeted. The questionnaire was originally designed for use in research commissioned by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) Programme (grant reference number PB‐PG‐ 0110‐21045). When using/referring to this questionnaire please acknowledge authorship as appropriate. Details of the development of the questionnaire can be found in the following publication. Hotham, S., Hutton, E. & Hamilton‐West, K. E. (2015) Development of a reliable, valid measure to assess parents' and teachers' understanding of postural care for children with physical disabilities: the (UKC‐PostCarD) questionnaire. Child: Care, Health and Development, 41, 1172– 1178

Linking Ultracold Polar Molecules

We predict that pairs of polar molecules can be weakly bound together in an ultracold environment, provided that a dc electric field is present. The field that links the molecules together also strongly influences the basic properties of the resulting dimer, such as its binding energy and predissociation lifetime. Because of their long-range character these dimers will be useful in disentangling cold collision dynamics of polar molecules. As an example, we estimate the microwave photoassociation yield for OH-OH cold collisions.Comment: 4 pages 2 figure

Understanding the support needs of disabled children and their families in East Kent

Objective: Explore the support needs of parents and carers of children with physical disabilities (< 18 years) within a therapy service in the South East of England. Method: Qualitative methods were used including focus groups and interviews with 9 parents/carers of children with a physical disability. Framework analysis approach was used to analyse the data. Results: Data was organised into the following themes. • Parent and carer experiences of using services including direct experience of therapy services • Education • Organisation of services and access to information • Impact of disability on family and carer life • Experiences and views of personalised care. Conclusions: Parents and carers had varied experiences of therapy services. Parents and carers valued close relationships established over time when therapists had knowledge and understanding of their child and family situation. Families experienced most difficulty over the provision of equipment and poor liaison between different parts of the care system added to stress and frustration. Few parents and carers had knowledge or awareness of personal health budgets and were unsure about whether a personal budget would improve their access to or experience of therapy

A study into the effectiveness of a postural care education programme aimed at improving self-efficacy in carers of children with physical disabilities

Background & Aim: Parents and teachers lack knowledge and self-efficacy when providing postural care to physically disabled children. This can act acts as a barrier to the successful implementation of therapy. An intervention was developed to improve knowledge and confidence in providing postural care. The aim is to determine whether this intervention improves parents’ & teachers’ knowledge & confidence. Methods. The intervention includes a 2-hour interactive workshop and follow-up home/school visits delivered in three localities across the South-East. The UKC-PostCarD scale assesses levels of knowledge and confidence in providing postural care was utilised to evaluate the intervention. This will be completed at baseline and after the intervention is completed. Focus groups with participants will provide insight into elements that were effective/ineffective. Interviews with children will provide an end user perspective. Interviews with therapists will consider the feasibility and acceptability of delivery. Analysis: A mixed-design ANOVA 2 (Time: before vs. after) x 3 (Area: Kent, Sussex, Surrey) will be used to determine whether knowledge and confidence improved following the intervention. Framework analysis will be used for the focus group and interview data. Qualitative findings will be fed into the overall evaluation. Findings: Analysis of data will begin in June 2013 and findings will be available in September 2013. Discussion. If shown to improve confidence and knowledge, we hope to make this education programme available regionally and nationally. As more physically disabled children attend mainstream schools this will be a timely and useful resource

Kinetic energy spectrum of horizontal motions in middle-atmosphere models

Data from several middle-atmosphere general circulation models are used to calculate kinetic energy spectra as a function of total horizontal wavenumber n. The horizontal and vertical resolution between models varies but all have upper. boundaries at heights greater than or similar to 80 km. Tropospheric spectra show power-law behavior with slopes slightly shallower than -3 for wavenumbers n greater than or similar to 10 (horizontal wavelengths less than or similar to 4000 km) and are dominated by the rotational part of the flow. These spectra agree well with those calculated using data obtained from a global assimilation model and with the results of previous observational studies. Stratospheric spectra have larger amplitudes than tropospheric ones at planetary scales and smaller amplitudes at smaller scales. Mesospheric spectra are characterized by enhanced spectral amplitudes at all wavenumbers compared to the stratosphere and spectral slopes in the wavenumber range n greater than or similar to 10 are generally shallower. Stratospheric and mesospheric spectra include approximately equal contributions from the rotational and divergent parts of the flow for n greater than or similar to 20 in all models. These features appear to be independent of model resolution. The divergent part of the flow, presumably associated with explicitly resolved inertiogravity waves in the models, increases more rapidly with height above the lower stratosphere than the rotational part. The divergent part is fairly insensitive to season, whereas the rotational part changes considerably between January and July in the middle-atmosphere region. Spectral amplitudes and vertical growth rates of both parts vary widely between models for a given season. The horizontal diffusion schemes used by the models are compared in an attempt to explain some of these differences

Holographic representation of local bulk operators

The Lorentzian AdS/CFT correspondence implies a map between local operators in supergravity and non-local operators in the CFT. By explicit computation we construct CFT operators which are dual to local bulk fields in the semiclassical limit. The computation is done for general dimension in global, Poincare and Rindler coordinates. We find that the CFT operators can be taken to have compact support in a region of the complexified boundary whose size is set by the bulk radial position. We show that at finite N the number of independent commuting operators localized within a bulk volume saturates the holographic bound.Comment: 36 pages, LaTeX, 4 eps figure