Autism and Church: A reflection

This is a reflective piece on the experience of an autistic child and their family in churches over a period of years. It considers a variety of church practices in terms of their encouragement or inhibition of the child’s journey of faith and their experience of welcome, safety, and love. It also draws a contrast between the church practice of welcoming and the experience the autistic child and family have had at one of the centres of the Riding for the Disabled Association, and its very different approaches and ethos held in relation to those who are disabled

Evaluating sport club board performance : a customer perspective

Customers are overlooked often as a stakeholder group when it comes to assessing board performance. To gain insight into the factors that affect customer perceptions of non-profit board performance, over 20,000 members from 14 different professional, non-profit sporting clubs were surveyed. The results suggest that sporting club boards are evaluated primarily in line with perceptions specifically related to their administrative effectiveness, although the on-field performance of the team is a contributing and correlated factor. Board performance and on -field performance perceptions were both direct contributors to overall member satisfaction, with board performance being the stronger. Perceptions of board performance are clearly worth managing in a holistic manner.<br /

Qualitative investigation of the role of collaborative football and walking football groups in mental health recovery

Efforts to increase physical activity levels in people with serious mental health conditions are viewed as desirable but little is known about how best to support this group to engage in exercise over extended periods. From a personal recovery perspective, the dominant paradigm in current mental health service delivery, one promising route involves participation with, rather than administration to or supervision of, mental health service users in team sports, usually football, in order to foster sharing of common interests and experiences. We aimed to explore the factors underlying the success of four collaborative mental health football (soccer) projects and the role played by football in mental health care delivery and in personal recovery. We held semi-structured focus groups with service user (n = 18) and staff (n = 7) participants from four football groups (two 'walking' football and two regular football) in two geographical National Health Service Boards in Scotland. Thematic analysis revealed that, central to success, were perceived relational, and personal and physical recovery-related benefits; competition and collaboration-related aspects were important drivers of interest in and commitment to the groups. Further, participants identified barriers to and concerns for continued success; specifically, they expressed that they need more explicit support from senior management. The clear emerging message was that collaborative football groups were perceived by participants as a conduit for recovery and an important aspect of mental healthcare delivery. Playing football was associated with a sense of wellbeing, and enhanced relationships between service users and staff

A study of the professional values and perceptions of social workers, by Coetta Lou Berry, Emma McDonald Dawson, Moragh Lesslie Shepherd and Sally Hall Wood

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Draft Genome Sequence of Clostridium sp. strain W14A isolated from a cellulose-degrading biofilm in a landfill leachate microcosm

Here, we report the draft genome of Clostridium sp. strain W14A, isolated from the anaerobic, cellulolytic biofilm of a cotton string sample incubated in a landfill leachate microcosm. The draft genome comprises 131 contigs, 3,823,510 bp, 51.5% G+C content, and 4,119 predicted coding domain sequences

Short term memory in high-functioning adult dyslexics : isolating the deficit

The overall aim of this thesis was to provide a detailed characterisation of impaired and unimpaired performance in dyslexia. One of the core areas of Interest in dyslexia research has been short term memory (STM). Typically, attempts to understand the nature of dyslexic's STM deficits have attempted to localise impairments in dyslexics to one or more components of working memory model (e.g. Smith-Spark, Fisk, Fawcett &amp; Nicolson 2003). However, inconsistent results have led to the conclusion that dyslexics have general STM deficits as they have not been localised to an area of the working memory model (Everatt, Weeks &amp; Brooks 2007). Three subsections of the thesis looked at performance in different areas of STM. The first chapter established that performance on verbal STM tasks by dyslexics' showed a typical pattern of recall. The findings consistently demonstrated that dyslexics had quantitatively deficited performance, however qualitatively performance was equivalent to that of the control groups. The findings also suggest that dyslexics were not able to adapt strategies (e.g. passive, serial) for encoding information which would allow optimal recall on basic verbal STM tasks. The second chapter looked at memory for items with similar and different semantic characteristics, to establish the stability and use of these characteristics when encoding. Findings showed dyslexic and control groups demonstrated use of semantic encoding strategies. Dyslexic participants performed comparably to controls on those verbal STM tasks that promoted semantic encoding. The third chapter demonstrated that dyslexics did not have a deficit on a non-verbal serial recall task designed to minimize the possibility of verbal re-coding (Parmentier et al., 2006). The results again establishing that the pattern of recall interference was the same across groups. To conclude, the experiments reported in this thesis have provided convincing evidence that dyslexics' short term memory deficit is isolated to verbal short term memory which is not supported by semantic strategies.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Prospectus, November 29, 2018

Parkland Volleyball places second in the National Tournament; Humans of Parkland, Parkland band Prevalence release their new EP, Panic Button, International Observations: America through the eyes of a visiting Honduran Student; Parkland Safe Zone signs getting a makeover; The Parkland Softball Team gives backhttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2018/1028/thumbnail.jp

Short term memory in high-functioning adult dyslexics: isolating the deficit

The overall aim of this thesis was to provide a detailed characterisation of impaired and unimpaired performance in dyslexia. One of the core areas of Interest in dyslexia research has been short term memory (STM). Typically, attempts to understand the nature of dyslexic's STM deficits have attempted to localise impairments in dyslexics to one or more components of working memory model (e.g. Smith-Spark, Fisk, Fawcett &amp; Nicolson 2003). However, inconsistent results have led to the conclusion that dyslexics have general STM deficits as they have not been localised to an area of the working memory model (Everatt, Weeks &amp; Brooks 2007). Three subsections of the thesis looked at performance in different areas of STM. The first chapter established that performance on verbal STM tasks by dyslexics' showed a typical pattern of recall. The findings consistently demonstrated that dyslexics had quantitatively deficited performance, however qualitatively performance was equivalent to that of the control groups. The findings also suggest that dyslexics were not able to adapt strategies (e.g. passive, serial) for encoding information which would allow optimal recall on basic verbal STM tasks. The second chapter looked at memory for items with similar and different semantic characteristics, to establish the stability and use of these characteristics when encoding. Findings showed dyslexic and control groups demonstrated use of semantic encoding strategies. Dyslexic participants performed comparably to controls on those verbal STM tasks that promoted semantic encoding. The third chapter demonstrated that dyslexics did not have a deficit on a non-verbal serial recall task designed to minimize the possibility of verbal re-coding (Parmentier et al., 2006). The results again establishing that the pattern of recall interference was the same across groups. To conclude, the experiments reported in this thesis have provided convincing evidence that dyslexics' short term memory deficit is isolated to verbal short term memory which is not supported by semantic strategies

Communication skills of people with severe traumatic brain injury can be improved by training everyday communication partners: Findings from a single-blind multi-centre clinical trial

This controlled group comparison study examined the effectiveness of everyday communication partner (ECP) training for people with TBI. 44 participants with severe TBI and their ECPs were allocated to a) TBI SOLO group where the person with TBI was trained; b) JOINT group where the communication partner was also trained; or c) a delayed CONTROL. Conversations were videotaped pre and post training and rated by two blind assessors on conversational skills. Training ECPs was more efficacious than training the person with TBI alone. Involving communication partners in treatment appears crucial for improved communication interactions for people with severe TBI