Parent/carer views on personal health budgets for disabled children who use rehabilitation therapy services

Personalised budgets are promoted as the person centred alternative to generically provided services. Nine parent/carers of children with physical disabilities ( aged 18 years or younger) who accessed at least two rehabilitation services ( physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and speech and language therapy ) were recruited from one region in England. Focus group/interviews explored their views on the proposed introduction of personalised budgets. Parents/ carers viewed a personal health budget with caution and perceived benefits were tempered by experiences of current provision. Concerns were raised about entitlement and how a personal budget would work in practice

Greater choice and control ? parent carer views on personal health budgets for disabled children who use rehabilitation therapy services.

Aim Personalised budgets have been suggested as the person-centered alternative to generically provided services, where families can exercise greater ‘choice and control’ and decide which services to buy for their disabled child and how to arrange care, taking individual circumstances, preferences and needs into account (NHS England, Patient Participation Team 2014). This poster examines the responses of parents interviewed about the prospect of using a personalised health budget for their children in relation to rehabilitation therapy at a time of significant cut backs in child health services (British Academy of Childhood Disability & British Association for Community Child Health 2014). Method We recruited nine parents and primary carers of children with physical disabilities (aged 18 years or younger) from one region in England who accessed at least two rehabilitation therapy services (physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and speech and language therapy). A focus group / interview guide was developed to explore themes that included parent/carer views on the proposed introduction of personalised budgets and how this might affect care. All focus groups and one-to-one interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The focus group and face-to-face interviews lasted for around 1 hour, telephone interviews were typically shorter (30-45 minutes). Interview data was entered into NVIVO and analysed using ‘framework analysis’ (Pope and Mays 2006). Results Parents/carers viewed the prospect of greater ‘choice and control’ with caution and perceived benefits were tempered by both positive and negative experiences of current provision, alongside concerns about how a personal budget would work in practice. Questions about entitlement and what can and cannot be purchased using a personal budget remain grey areas. Exemptions and limits on what can be included may mean that personal health budgets do not deliver on their promise of greater ‘choice and control for parents/carers. Implications for rehabilitation therapy services are explored

Visiting time: a tale of two prisons

Prison visitation remains an under-researched and under-theorised aspect of prison life. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, this article takes an in-depth look at the lived experience of the prison visit from the perspectives of prisoners and their visitors. First, this paper describes the inherently problematic nature of current visits practice reflecting on the restrictions placed on prisoners and families and the longer term implications for their lives post-release. Whilst acknowledging these fundamental flaws, the paper then, describes what can make some visiting experiences more ‘survivable’ than others by comparing visiting experiences at two ostensibly similar prisons

A hybrid 3d reconstruction/registration algorithm for correction of head motion in emission tomography

Even with head restraint, small head movements can occur during data acquisition for emission tomography, sufficiently large to result in detectable artifacts in the final reconstruction. Direct measurement of motion can be cumbersome and difficult to implement, whereas previous attempts to correct for motion based on measured projections have been limited to simple translation orthogonal to the projection. A fully 3D algorithm is proposed that estimates the patient orientation at any time based on the projection of motion-corrupted data, with incorporation of the measured motion within subsequent OSEM sub-iterations. Preliminary studies have been performed using a digital version of the Hoffman brain phantom. Movement was simulated by constructing a mixed set of projections in two discrete positions of the phantom. The algorithm determined the phantom orientation that best aligned each constructed projection with its corresponding, measured projection. In the case of simulated movement of 24 of 64 projections, all mis-positioned projections were correctly identified. The algorithm resulted in a reduction of mean square difference (MSD) between motion corrected and motion-free reconstructions compared to the MSD between uncorrected and motion-free reconstructions by a factor of 2.7

Factors Affecting Web-based Social Service Referral Technology Adoption in the Nonprofit Sector

Nonprofits play a significant role in providing social services that increase communities\u27 overall well-being (Ressler et al., 2021; Reckhow et al., 2019; Smith & Phillips, 2016), and adopting new technologies helps promote these positive outcomes (Hackler & Saxton, 2007). However, with new technologies emerging at a pace few nonprofit organizations can keep up with, how do nonprofit leaders decide which technologies to adopt given their limited resources? This study seeks to understand what factors affect nonprofit leaders\u27 technology adoption decision-making. Online referral platforms are not new in health or homeless organizations. Web-based coordinated social service referral tools are more recently integrating health organizations and the social service nonprofit sector into a coordinated network of service providers on web-based referral platforms. These platforms provide a more holistic service delivery model to families. In addition, web-based referral tools provide coordinated electronic referral (e-referral) networks that increase referral processes\u27 efficiency and effectiveness, which increases nonprofits\u27 workflows in this area of organizations\u27 operations. Nonetheless, nonprofits often lag behind other sectors in technology adoption (Zorn et al., 2011). Nonprofit leaders who make decisions to adopt web-based referral tools can positively influence mission outcomes (Boles, 2013; Goldkind, 2017; Hackler & Saxton, 2007; Laporte et al., 2018; Liao et al., 2009; McDonald, 2007; Mosely & Smith, 2018; Sherry et al., n.d.; Spelhaug & Woodman, 2017). Using Rogers\u27 Diffusion of Innovations theory as the theoretical foundation, this study seeks to understand what factors affect Santa Cruz County health and human service nonprofit organization leaders\u27 decisions to adopt a newly introduced web-based referral tool

Attentional load and sensory competition in human vision: Modulation of fMRI responses by load fixation during task-irrelevant stimulation in the peripheral visual field.

Perceptual suppression of distractors may depend on both endogenous and exogenous factors, such as attentional load of the current task and sensory competition among simultaneous stimuli, respectively. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare these two types of attentional effects and examine how they may interact in the human brain. We varied the attentional load of a visual monitoring task performed on a rapid stream at central fixation without altering the central stimuli themselves, while measuring the impact on fMRI responses to task-irrelevant peripheral checkerboards presented either unilaterally or bilaterally. Activations in visual cortex for irrelevant peripheral stimulation decreased with increasing attentional load at fixation. This relative decrease was present even in V1, but became larger for successive visual areas through to V4. Decreases in activation for contralateral peripheral checkerboards due to higher central load were more pronounced within retinotopic cortex corresponding to 'inner' peripheral locations relatively near the central targets than for more eccentric 'outer' locations, demonstrating a predominant suppression of nearby surround rather than strict 'tunnel vision' during higher task load at central fixation. Contralateral activations for peripheral stimulation in one hemifield were reduced by competition with concurrent stimulation in the other hemifield only in inferior parietal cortex, not in retinotopic areas of occipital visual cortex. In addition, central attentional load interacted with competition due to bilateral versus unilateral peripheral stimuli specifically in posterior parietal and fusiform regions. These results reveal that task-dependent attentional load, and interhemifield stimulus-competition, can produce distinct influences on the neural responses to peripheral visual stimuli within the human visual system. These distinct mechanisms in selective visual processing may be integrated within posterior parietal areas, rather than earlier occipital cortex