Sure Start Mellow Valley Baseline User Satisfaction Survey

Sure Start Mellow Valley is a 6 th wave Sure Start programme, currently in its second year. The Children’s Society is the lead partner and accountable body. The programme was approved in April 2003. Since then the team has grown – for a full list of current Sure Start staff, please Appendix A. Sure Start Mellow Valley has established links with many other local initiatives that aim to improve the lives of families and children aged 04 years and promotes an inclusive approach to the development of working with local agencies, organisations and funders. Sure Start Mellow Valley is characterised by high levels of parental involvement. Indeed, parents in Little London & Woodhouse and in Meanwood were closely involved in forums/groups lobbying for a Sure Start programme. The Parents Forum groups are always well attended and parents are also represented on the management board. It is a requirement for all local Sure Start programmes to undergo a process of evaluation to determine whether the programme is meeting the needs and expressed wishes of the population it serves. The Centre for Health Promotion Research at Leeds Metropolitan University has been commissioned to evaluate Sure Start Mellow Valley. An initial Baseline User Satisfaction Survey formed the first stage of the evaluation. It was conducted in Summer 2004. This report details the methods used and findings from the survey

Sure Start Harehills Evaluation Report Year One

The evaluation will try to reflect the particular issues arising at the various stages of programme implementation. For example, in the early stages we will focus on the way activities are being developed as well as identifying any early successes. As the programme matures there can be a gradual transition to assessing the achievement of objectives. In year 3, there is a requirement that we will formally report on progress towards meeting national targets

Evaluation of Sure Start Mellow Valley: Findings from the stakeholder survey

Sure Start is a government programme which aims to make a difference to children 0-4 years and their families through supporting parents, increasing childcare availability and improving the health and social development of young children. Local Sure Start programmes seek to involve parents and other partners in their work. Sure Start principles are listed below. Sure Starts will be changing with the government’s commitment to build Children’s Centres in every community by 2010

Building Firm Foundations Sure Start Mellow Valley Evaluation Report 2005/ 2006

This report forms the Year 3 annual report. Alongside documenting findings from Year 2 evaluation activities, this report also brings together findings from previous evaluation activities and gives wider consideration to the overall progress and outcomes of the programme so far. Section two explains the evaluation approach that has been adopted and details the activities that have been conducted and the methods used. Section 3 highlights the key themes and findings to emerge from the workshops undertaken with the Sure Start teams and provides a summary of the indepth evaluation conducted of the Family Support Team. Section 4 is entitled ‘Pulling it all together’ and considers the work and achievements of Sure Start Mellow Valley with particular regard to the five outcomes of Every Child Matters. A conclusion and brief summary of findings is found in Section 5 followed by a range of further information within the Section 6 Appendices

The Sure Start Mellow Valley area Through the lens of a camera

This report gives an account of a participatory evaluation conducted using photography within the Sure Start Mellow Valley area. Information about the current status of the Sure Start programme and the plans for the future are first provided. The report then describes the research that was undertaken and presents and discusses the findings

Hamara Healthy Living Centre - an evaluation

Hamara is a Healthy Living Centre which aims to improve health and well-being through providing a range of culturally appropriate activities and services. Hamara has a vision of 'bringing communities together' and since it was established in 2004, the Centre has provided a valuable community resource in South Leeds. Partnership work between Hamara and Leeds Met goes back to 2002. In 2007, the Centre for Health Promotion Research carried out an evaluation of Hamara in partnership with Hamara staff and Leeds Met Community Partnerships and Volunteering. This was followed by a highly successful community cohesion conference 'One Community' which was held at Hamara on 10th October 2008, and was supported through a Leeds Met public engagement grant. The event attracted over a hundred people from diverse communities and organisations across Leeds. A packed audience heard Hilary Benn, local MP and Patron of Hamara, talk about the importance of working in collaboration around community cohesion. Jane South, Centre for Health Promotion Research, presented the main evaluation results and set out the some challenges for the future. The proceedings concluded with the presentation of awards to a number of for local community champions who work to bring people together and make a real difference in the city of Leeds

Finite time collapse of N classical fields described by coupled nonlinear Schrodinger equations

We prove the finite-time collapse of a system of N classical fields, which are described by N coupled nonlinear Schrodinger equations. We derive the conditions under which all of the fields experiences this finite-time collapse. Finally, for two-dimensional systems, we derive constraints on the number of particles associated with each field that are necessary to prevent collapse.Comment: v2: corrected typo on equation

Systematic derivation of a rotationally covariant extension of the 2-dimensional Newell-Whitehead-Segel equation

An extension of the Newell-Whitehead-Segel amplitude equation covariant under abritrary rotations is derived systematically by the renormalization group method.Comment: 8 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev. Letters, March 18, 199

Exact numerical simulation of power-law noises

Many simulations of stochastic processes require colored noises: I describe here an exact numerical method to simulate power-law noises: the method can be extended to more general colored noises, and is exact for all time steps, even when they are unevenly spaced (as may often happen for astronomical data, see e.g. N. R. Lomb, Astrophys. Space Sci. {\bf 39}, 447 (1976)). The algorithm has a well-behaved computational complexity, it produces a nearly perfect Gaussian noise, and its computational efficiency depends on the required degree of noise Gaussianity.Comment: 14 postscript figures, accepted for publication on Phys. Rev.

Square Patterns and Quasi-patterns in Weakly Damped Faraday Waves

Pattern formation in parametric surface waves is studied in the limit of weak viscous dissipation. A set of quasi-potential equations (QPEs) is introduced that admits a closed representation in terms of surface variables alone. A multiscale expansion of the QPEs reveals the importance of triad resonant interactions, and the saturating effect of the driving force leading to a gradient amplitude equation. Minimization of the associated Lyapunov function yields standing wave patterns of square symmetry for capillary waves, and hexagonal patterns and a sequence of quasi-patterns for mixed capillary-gravity waves. Numerical integration of the QPEs reveals a quasi-pattern of eight-fold symmetry in the range of parameters predicted by the multiscale expansion.Comment: RevTeX, 11 pages, 8 figure