UPDATE: Consistency of Home Care Personnel Under Managed Competition: A Case Study from Ontario (Shortened Version Presented at the Knowledge to Wisdom Conference)

Measuring Consistency of Personnel in Home care: Current Challenges and Findings Consistency of personnel is important to ensuring continuity of care for home care clients. It is particularly important to those clients who are at high risk for adverse effects when provider changes occur. Information about the extent to which clients experience consistency of personnel is difficult to collect in Ontario. It resides with individual provider agencies rather than with the Community Care Access Centres (CCACs) that arrange service delivery. We will present findings from the Continuity of Care in Home Care study which obtained information directly from service provider agencies on the number of providers that 500 CCAC clients saw. These clients received either nursing or homemaking services or both. Factors linked with the mean number of providers experienced by a client and with the total number of providers experienced by a client during up to a year of service delivery will be highlighted. Factors affecting the frequency of provider changes will be discussed along with the implications of our findings for clients, service providers, agencies and policy makers.home care services, adults, Ontario, health personnel, consistency of services, providers

Career Decision-Making and College and Career Access Among Recent African Immigrant Students

The number of African immigrant youth in American classrooms is on the rise. School counselors are uniquely positioned to help these students to be college and career ready. Using the Social Cognitive Career Theory framework, this article aims to address the unique career development needs, college and career access challenges faced by African immigrant students with an emphasis on high school students, and recommends strategic interventions for school counselors helping this population navigate career choice and determination. Implications for school counseling practice and research are also addressed

Cultural Identity Silencing of Native Americans in Education

This descriptive phenomenological study investigated: How is cultural identity silencing psychologically experienced by young adult Native Americans in education? Cultural identity silencing is the denial of the existence of cultural identity. Phenomenological interviewing and Giorgian analysis resulted in a descriptive structure of how cultural identity silencing is psychologically experienced by Native Americans in educational settings. These results contribute to a greater understanding of how Native Americans experience colonialist educational systems and thus has implications for survivance, identity development, and the decolonialization of education

Intentional Work Group Experiences: A Pedagogical Tool for Counselor Educators

Work groups “promote efficient and effective accomplishment of group tasks among people who are gathered to accomplish group goals” (ASGW, 2000, p. 3). Due to the prevalence of use in actual counseling settings, counselor educators frequently use work groups as a pedagogical tool in educating counselors-in-training. This article introduces a classroom intervention designed to help counseling students develop self-awareness and skills pertaining to participating in work groups. Using constructivist pedagogy as our theoretical basis we will describe the intervention and the qualitative approach we incorporated to evaluate the intervention’s impact in the classroom. Results and discussion including contextualization, limitations, implications, and suggestions for future research will follow in the remainder of this article

Effect of Preventive Primary Care Outreach on Health Related Quality of Life Among Older Adults at Risk of Functional Decline: Randomised Controlled Trial

Objective: To evaluate the impact of a provider initiated primary care outreach intervention compared with usual care among older adults at risk of functional decline. Design: Randomised controlled trial. Setting: Patients enrolled with 35 family physicians in five primary care networks in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Participants: Patients were eligible if they were 75 years of age or older and were not receiving home care services. Of 3166 potentially eligible patients, 2662 (84%) completed the validated postal questionnaire used to determine risk of functional decline. Of 1724 patients who met the risk criteria, 769 (45%) agreed to participate and 719 were randomised. Intervention: The 12 month intervention, provided by experienced home care nurses in 2004-6, consisted of a comprehensive initial assessment using the resident assessment instrument for home care; collaborative care planning with patients, their families, and family physicians; health promotion; and referral to community health and social support services. Main outcome measures: Quality adjusted life years (QALYs), use and costs of health and social services, functional status, self rated health, and mortality. Results: The mean difference in QALYs between intervention and control patients during the study period was not statistically significant (0.017, 95% confidence interval ?0.022 to 0.056; P=0.388). The mean difference in overall cost of prescription drugs and services between the intervention and control groups was not statistically significant, (-$C165 (£107; 118;$162), 95% confidence interval -$C16 545 to$$16 214; P=0.984). Changes over 12 months in functional status and self rated health were not significantly different between the intervention and control groups. Ten patients died in each group. Conclusions: The results of this study do not support adoption of this preventive primary care intervention for this target population of high risk older adults

Where Would You Turn For Help? Older Adults’ Knowledge and Awareness of Community Support Services

Community support services (CSSs) enable persons coping with health or social problems to maintain the highest possible level of social functioning and quality of life. Access to these services is challenging because of the multiplicity of small agencies providing these services and the lack of a central access point. A review of the literature revealed that most service awareness studies are marred by acquiescence bias. To address this issue, service providers developed a series of 12 vignettes to describe common situations faced by older adults for which CSSs might be appropriate. In a telephone interview, 1152 older adults were presented with a series of vignettes and asked what they would do in that situation. They were also asked about their most important sources of information about CSSs. Findings show awareness of CSSs varied by the situation described and ranged from a low of 1% to 41%. The most important sources of information about CSSs included informational and referral sources, the telephone book, doctor’s offices, and through word of mouth.Community Support Services, awareness, knowledge, acquiencence bias, vignette methodology

Where Would You Turn For Help? Older Adults’ Knowledge and Awareness of Community Support Services

Community support services (CSSs) enable persons coping with health or social problems to maintain the highest possible level of social functioning and quality of life. Access to these services is challenging because of the multiplicity of small agencies providing these services and the lack of a central access point. A review of the literature revealed that most service awareness studies are marred by acquiescence bias. To address this issue, service providers developed a series of 12 vignettes to describe common situations faced by older adults for which CSSs might be appropriate. In a telephone interview, 1152 older adults were presented with a series of vignettes and asked what they would do in that situation. They were also asked about their most important sources of information about CSSs. Findings show awareness of CSSs varied by the situation described and ranged from a low of 1% to 41%. The most important sources of information about CSSs included informational and referral sources, the telephone book, doctor’s offices, and through word of mouth.Community Support Services, awareness, knowledge, acquiencence bias, vignette methodology

DETERMINATION OF DEVICE POSE USING TEXT MATCHING FROM CAPTURED IMAGES

ABSTRACT: Both server-based and client-based systems can be used for precisely detecting orientation of a user device. Existing sets of geographically referenced imagery include identifiable text, and the same text may appear within multiple images within the set where the multiple images are taken from different viewpoints and camera angles. Multiple observations of the same physical text in the world are used to triangulate measurements and create a 3-dimensional (3D) location and direction for a specific text. The 3D location for the specific text is used to create a spatially indexed 3D text database, which can be located at a server and/or downloaded onto the client device. As a client device captures an image, character recognition is performed on the image, and the recognized text is compared to the 3D text database to find database text that matches the recognized text in the image. Once one or more text pieces have been matched, a triangulation computation can derive the device\u27s orientation and location

Older Adults’ Awareness of Community Health and Support Services for Dementia Care

The article examines where older adults seek help in caring for a parent with dementia and the factors associated with their identification of community health and support services as sources of assistance. The authors conducted telephone interviews, using random digit dialing, of 1,152 adults aged 50 and over in the city of Hamilton. Respondents received a vignette that raised issues related to parental dementia. In identifying support sources, over 37 per cent of respondents identified their physician, 33 per cent identified informal support such as family and neighbors, and 31 per cent identified home health services. Only 18 per cent identified community support services. Female participants having higher levels of education were more likely to identify their physician as a source of support. Knowing where to find information about community support services was associated with an increased likelihood of mentioning physicians and home health services as sources of assistance.community support services , awareness , dementia , caregivers , vignette methodology

Older Adults’ Awareness of Community Health and Support Services for Dementia Care

The article examines where older adults seek help in caring for a parent with dementia and the factors associated with their identification of community health and support services as sources of assistance. The authors conducted telephone interviews, using random digit dialing, of 1,152 adults aged 50 and over in the city of Hamilton. Respondents received a vignette that raised issues related to parental dementia. In identifying support sources, over 37 per cent of respondents identified their physician, 33 per cent identified informal support such as family and neighbors, and 31 per cent identified home health services. Only 18 per cent identified community support services. Female participants having higher levels of education were more likely to identify their physician as a source of support. Knowing where to find information about community support services was associated with an increased likelihood of mentioning physicians and home health services as sources of assistance.community support services , awareness , dementia , caregivers , vignette methodology