“There but Not There:” Representations, Roles, and Experiences of Children’s Embodiment in Literature and Culture

Review of: Harde, Roxanne, and Kokkola, Lydia, editors. The Embodied Child: Readings in Children’s Literature and Culture. Routledge, 2018.   DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2019.000

Helianthus maximiliani and Species Fine-Scale Spatial Pattern Affect Diversity Interactions in Reconstructed Tallgrass Prairies

1. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function analyses aim to explain how individual spe‐ cies and their interactions affect ecosystem function. With this study, we asked in what ways do species interact, are these interactions affected by species planting pattern, and are initial (planted) proportions or previous year (realized) propor‐ tions a better reference point for characterizing grassland diversity effects? 2. We addressed these questions with experimental communities compiled from a pool of 16 tallgrass prairie species. We planted all species in monocultures and mixtures that varied in their species richness, evenness, and spatial pattern. We recorded species‐specific biomass production over three growing seasons and fit‐ ted Diversity‐Interactions (DI) models to annual plot biomass yields. 3. In the establishment season, all species interacted equally to form the diversity effect. In years 2 and 3, each species contributed a unique additive coefficient to its interaction with every other species to form the diversity effect. These inter‐ actions were affected by Helianthus maximiliani and the species planting pattern. Models based on species planted proportions better‐fit annual plot yield than models based on species previous contributions to plot biomass. 4. Outcomes suggest that efforts to plant tallgrass prairies to maximize diversity ef‐ fects should focus on the specific species present and in what arrangement they are planted. Furthermore, for particularly diverse grasslands, the effort of collect‐ ing annual species biomass data may not be necessary when quantifying diversity effects with DI models

A Mixed Model for Assessing the Effect of Numerous Plant Species Interactions on Grassland Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function Relationships

In grassland ecosystems, it is well known that increasing plant species diversity can improve ecosystem functions (i.e., ecosystem responses), for example, by increasing productivity and reducing weed invasion. Diversity-Interactions models use species proportions and their interactions as predictors in a regression framework to assess biodiversity and ecosystem function relationships. However, it can be difficult to model numerous interactions if there are many species, and interactions may be temporally variable or dependent on spatial planting patterns. We developed a new Diversity-Interactions mixed model for jointly assessing many species interactions and within-plot species planting pattern over multiple years. We model pairwise interactions using a small number of fixed parameters that incorporate spatial effects and supplement this by including all pairwise interaction variables as random effects, each constrained to have the same variance within each year. The random effects are indexed by pairs of species within plots rather than a plot-level factor as is typical in mixed models, and capture remaining variation due to pairwise species interactions parsimoniously. We apply our novel methodology to three years of weed invasion data from a 16-species grassland experiment that manipulated plant species diversity and spatial planting pattern and test its statistical properties in a simulation study. Supplementary materials accompanying this paper appear online

'Whose role is it anyway?' Experiences of community nurses in the delivery and support of oral health care for older people living at home: a grounded theory study

BACKGROUND: Older people who receive care at home are likely to require support with oral health care. Community nurses, who are also referred to as district or home care nurses, have an important role with this population. This is because they are the healthcare professionals who are most likely to encounter this population, who may also not be receiving regular dental care or oral health promotion. However, few studies have explored community nursing experiences in the delivery and support of oral healthcare for older people living at home. METHODS: A grounded theory approach was used to explore experiences of community nurses in the delivery and support of oral health care for older people living at home. Fifteen practising community nurses from the United Kingdom participated in one-to-one semi-structed interviews from May 2021 to December 2021. These interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using constant comparative analysis. Ethical approval was obtained for this study prior to data collection. RESULTS: Four categories emerged from the data to support development of the core phenomena. These four categories were: (1) Education, in relation to what community nurses knew about oral health, (2) Practice, with regards to how community nurses delivered oral health care to older people in their own home, (3) Confidence, with consideration to the extent to which this supported or impeded community nurses in providing oral healthcare to older people and (4) Motivation, in terms of the extent to which community nurses thought they could or should influence future practice improvement in the area. The core category was (C) Uncertainty as it was both present and central across all four categories and related to community nursing understanding about their specific role, and the role of other professionals, with reference to oral health of their patients. CONCLUSIONS: This study reveals community nurses' uncertainty in providing oral healthcare to older adults at home. Emphasising comprehensive and continuous oral health education can boost nurses' confidence in patient support. Interprofessional collaboration and clear role definitions with oral health professionals are crucial for improving oral health outcomes in this vulnerable population

Evaluation of a co-designed educational e-resource about oral health for community nurses: study protocol

BACKGROUND: Oral health is a crucial aspect of health and wellbeing for older people. Poor oral health has been found to significantly increase the risk of chronic health conditions and poor quality of life for older people. Nurses practicing in the community are well-placed to provide oral health care to older people in their own homes, yet there has been little research in this field to develop accessible support for them to do so. Previous literature, reviewed in an earlier phase of this work, revealed that there has, historically, been a paucity of oral health care education for nurses and very few educational resources have been developed in this field. METHODS: This study will evaluate an educational e-resource which has been co-designed by service users, carers and clinicians. In the first phase of research, evidence of promise will be evaluated by analysing quantitative data on community nurses' oral health attitudes and self-efficacy for oral health assessments of older people. In the second phase of research, facilitators and barriers to community nurses' provision of oral health care to older people and the acceptability of the educational e-resource will be evaluated. DISCUSSION: This research will investigate the potential of an educational e-resource to improve community nurses' capabilities to deliver oral health care to older people in their own homes. This research will inform both future intervention design and understanding of community nurses' knowledge and attitudes about oral health care. Facilitators and barriers to provision of this care for older people will also be explored

Thrive: The AFC-Tavistock Model for CAMHS

All ideas in this paper and related to this model are independent of any organisational affiliations, committee membership or other official capacities of any of the authors, other than their roles within the Anna Freud Centre and The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. ..

THRIVE elaborated

Introduction to THRIVE Elaborated: Since we published the THRIVE framework a year ago in November 2014 it has generated a lot of interest. We are delighted by this. We want to take this opportunity to clarify and elaborate as relevant, including addressing areas of potential confusion, as well as updating the document in light of our emerging thinking and elaboration of elements of the framework. It is important to note that nothing relating to the central ideas of the framework has been changed