The Ecology and Sociology of the Mission-Aransas Estuary : An Estuarine and Watershed Profile

watershed profileThe Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) is one of 28 national estuarine reserves created to promote the responsible use and management of the nation's estuaries through a program combining scientific research, education, and stewardship. The purpose of this document is to provide researchers and resource managers with an adequate basis of knowledge to further development of scientific studies and applied management investigations. This document describes the different physical ecosystem components, ecological processes, habitats, and watersheds of the Reserve. The Mission-Aransas NERR is a complex of wetland, terrestrial, and marine environments. The land is primarily coastal prairie with unique oak motte habitats. The wetlands include riparian habitat, and freshwater and salt water marshes. Within the water areas, the bays are large, open, and include extensive wind tidal flats, seagrass meadows, mangroves, and oyster reefs. This site profile describes each habitat by their location, type, distribution, abundance, current status and trends, issues of concerns, and future research plans. Research within the Mission-Aransas NERR seeks to improve the understanding of the Texas coastal zone ecosystems structure and function. Current research includes: nutrient loading and transformation, estimates of community metabolism, water quality monitoring, freshwater inflow, climate change and fishery habitat. Harmful algal blooms, zooplankton, coliform bacteria, submerged aquatic vegetation, and marsh grass are monitored through the System- Wide Monitoring Program (SWMP). This document also describes the climate, hydrography and oceanography, geology, water quality, and endangered species within the Mission-AransasUniversity of Texas Marine Science InstituteMarine Scienc

Invisible Lives: The Experiences of Parents Receiving Child Protective Services (FULL REPORT)

Involvement with child protective services (CPS) may be expected to be a stressful experience for parents. Usually their involvement is involuntary, initiated because someone believes they are not caring adequately for their children: this tells them that the community, or someone in the community, does not approve of them as parents. As families who become involved with CPS tend to be economically deprived and socially marginalized, they may view agency intervention as one more sign that they are not accepted by their community. Moreover it brings the fear of losing their children, perhaps forever. In this context, it is especially important to understand parents’ perspectives, so that service providers can respond sensitively to them through the crisis of CPS entering their lives. A sensitive response contributes to a good working relationship, and to the parents’ sense of being respected and valued, conditions that are essential in helping them to improve their family situations. This research report explores the experiences of sixty-one parents who have had substantial involvement with CPS, with a focus on their own perceptions of this involvement. To better understand the context of parents’ experiences, we asked them to discuss freely their histories, their daily lives, their relationships with family, friends, neighbours, and more formal sources of support. We did not interview CPS workers or foster carers. Other team members in the Partnerships for Children and Families Project did include workers in their interviews; for our part, it was a massive task to organize the 5 data from lengthy interviews with 61 parents, thus the inclusion of other viewpoints was beyond our capacity

Service Participant Voices in Child Welfare, Children\u27s Mental Health, and Psychotherapy

Service providers are becoming increasingly interested in hearing the views of service participants regarding issues of service delivery. This trend is viewed as progressive and sensitive to the many complex issues facing a diverse service participant population. In order to understand what is known related to this trend, the paper reviews the literature in child welfare, children’s mental health, and psychotherapy where service participant feedback regarding aspects of service delivery has been studied. The findings from the three areas of service delivery are organized into a number of tangible themes. Suggestions for future research in the area of participant voice are noted

Students as co-researchers

Student engagement in researching aspects of their own course to enhance learning and teaching and the student experience. Students in different roles as co-researchers on projects, peer teachers and peer mentors, and in co-research with the ECS Course Leader, impacting positively on ECS course design and content

Experiences of adults abused as children after discharge from inpatient treatment: Informal social support and self-care practices related to trauma recovery

This qualitative study explored adults’ perceptions of experiences that were helpful and unhelpful to their recovery from the traumatic effects of childhood physical and sexual abuse. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 30 participants approximately 6 months after discharge from an inpatient trauma treatment program. Participants reported that barriers to recovery postdischarge were lack of follow-up support immediately after discharge, social isolation, lack of friends, problems with partners, and lack of emotional support from family members. Facilitating factors were concrete support from family and friends; emotional support, particularly from friends; developing a social network unrelated to the abuse history; and continuing self-care strategies learned in the inpatient program. Implications for community-based mental health professionals are discussed

Adventure-based education: a quantitative evaluation of the impact of program participation in high school on youth development

2015 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Adventure-based physical-education (ABPE) classes have become a more prevalent class offering in many middle and high schools throughout the United States. Several studies have researched the outcomes and benefits of adventure-based programs (e.g., Cason & Gillis, 1994; Gillis & Speelman, 2008; Hans, 2000; Hattie, Marsh, Neill, & Richards, 1997), and links have been made between youth-development constructs and adventure programming (e.g., Henderson, Powell, & Scanlin, 2005; Sibthorp & Morgan, 2011). To date, limited research has focused on the progression of positive-youth development (PYD) constructs in high-school students participating in a semester-long ABPE course. This research study examined the progression of PYD of students throughout the course of a semester who were enrolled in an ABPE class compared to that progress for those who were not enrolled in any adventure classes at all. Results suggested that there were no significant differences in PYD throughout the semester for students who were enrolled in adventure classes compared to the PYD of those students who were not in any adventure classes at all. There were, however, significant differences in connection for students who were in the Adventure Leader class compared to connection for those who were not in any adventure classes at all. The findings of this research study highlight the need for more studies that examine different types of adventure classes or activities, as opposed to adventure classes or activities as a whole

Positive Possibilities for Child and Family Welfare: Options for Expanding the Anglo-American Child Protection Paradigm

The creation of the ‘problem of child maltreatment’ and how we deal with it are best understood as particular discourses which grow out of specific histories and social configurations. The Anglo-American child protection paradigm can be viewed as a particular configuration rooted in our vision for children, families, community, and society. However, other settings have constructed quite different responses reflecting their own priorities and desired outcomes. This paper is an effort to understand the choices made in Ontario’s child protection system by examining its history and the underlying beliefs and values which have fostered its development. In addition, the paper is an attempt to counteract the sense of inevitability of this child protection approach. By discussing the many different ways in which other countries and settings work with, and think about, families and children, we will uncover a spectrum of positive possibilities which exist outside our current conceptions of child and family welfare systems

Mitosis and the Life Cycle: A Metaphor for the Transformation of the Research Librarian

Purpose: This poster describes how established and traditional library tools and services at an academic health sciences library served as the “nucleus” for new services and collaborations with university researchers. Setting: Research and Scholarly Communication Services Department, Lamar Soutter Library, University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) Description: The Department is charged with overseeing four major areas: Scholarly Communications Library Services to the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS), as well as the larger research community eScholarship@UMMS, the University’s institutional repository eScience Initiative of the Library Outcome: Leveraging existing relationships with GSBS faculty and administration, a popular institutional repository, and the NIH Public Access Policy, the department successfully integrated itself into the research community of the University, producing a number of expanded and new services. Presented at the Medical Library Association Annual Meeting, May 15, 2011, Minneapolis, MN