How Do Practitioners Create Inclusive Environments For Children With Chronic Health Conditions? An Exploratory Case Study

The concept of inclusion within the English education system is often taken for granted. There are a number of factors that can impact on inclusive practice and this demands careful exploration. Chronic health conditions (CHCs), such as anaphylaxis, asthma, diabetes, epilepsy and eczema, pose particular challenges to inclusion for practitioners who teach, educate and care for children under the age of five years in day care settings. These conditions can have a significant effect on children’s health, especially in the minority world. However, there is a paucity of research about how the symptoms affect children’s early education. This mixed-methods study collected quantitative data by sending a postal survey to 60 settings in order to find out how many children are affected by these conditions in day care settings. Four of the surveyed settings went on to participate in the qualitative aspect of the study. Qualitative data were also collected from parents of children with CHCs and the study included observations of a child in his early childhood setting over the course of a year. The findings revealed that 11% of children attending the settings in this study had been diagnosed with one or more CHCs and that CHCs had a profound effect on children and their parents. Parents reported that knowledge of the specific conditions is important for practitioners to have in order to create inclusive relationships with them. Practitioners in this study demonstrated a collaborative approach to leadership when creating inclusive environments. However, the findings revealed tensions for practitioners regarding the inclusion of all children in the curriculum. The findings suggest that achieving inclusion may therefore be problematic for some children. However, the communication skills, knowledge of CHCs and willingness of practitioners were vital to the inclusion of children with CHCs in their early education

Research Brief: working in partnership with parents to create inclusive environments for children, aged 0-3 years, with chronic health conditions: parents’ perspectives

This research brief reports on one aspect of the findings from a doctoral research study which explored how practitioners create inclusive environments for children with chronic health conditions. The first stage of the Case Study surveyed 60 day care settings in a geographical area in the West Midlands (UK). There was a 31.5% return rate from the survey and 4 of the respondents went on to the second stage of the study. This briefing reports the findings from a small sample about parents and practitioners working in partnership to create an inclusive environment for children with on-going conditions

Measuring the Water Retention of Coating Colors

The water holding properties of coating colors are important for both finished sheet properties and proper runnability on the coater. A test cell was constructed which is capable of measuring water retention of coating slips and predicting water hold out of base papers. The study showed that enzyme conversion time of starch was inversely related to viscosity and water retention. Also the level of sizing was determined to have the greatest influence on water hold out of base stocks

Social Media Internship for Red Sky Surf and Snow

STEP Category: InternshipsMy STEP Signature Project will include an internship over the course of Summer 2019 that will help to enhance my leadership in organization and professional settings and to further my understanding of the marketing operations that need to take place within a business. The internship will expose me to the depths of outreach necessary to produce and portray a successful business. The purpose of engagement in this internship is for me to gain experience and knowledge of marketing a small business that may help to prepare me for the field I want to enter professionally. My STEP Signature Project will teach me the ins and outs that go into the successful portray of a business to a community. It was also teach me the levels of work required in owning and operating a business. A leadership component is present in my Signature Project because it helps to develop my portfolio through intensive exposure to good professional business practices. My duties will be to take pictures and craft posts that will portray what the business is attempting to in the best means possible. I will have to use creativity to create the posts and to make sure I am successfully and professionally presenting the business to the community. My project will help to influence my post-graduation plans and if I want to own my own practice or not. From my STEP Signature Project, I hope to gain organization and leadership skills, professional behavior, and a new sense of independence that will transform and transition my life into the next phase.The Ohio State University Second-year Transformational Experience Program (STEP)Academic Major: Biolog

The development of competitive advantage through sustainable event management

Purpose: Whilst the debate rages between progressive and destructive considerations of economic development, this paper aims to develop thinking around the sustainable event and its contribution to competitive advantage. Design/methodology/approach: The paper defines the sustainable event and considers different position that might be adopted by private and public sector organisations when addressing the triple bottom line of sustainable development. Findings: Cost leadership strategies are unlikely to work and the event organiser must address competitive advantage via differentiation and focus strategies. Practical implications: Event managers must gain a better understanding of the motivations of their audience in relation to sustainability and work towards clearer means to demonstrate that their event meets these sustainable development needs. Originality/value: The intention being that if event organisers can see a competitive advantage in the sustainable event, their contribution to sustainable development will be increased. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Monetary and fiscal policy should be merged, which in turn changes the role of central banks

Keeping monetary and fiscal policy separate causes economic distortions, thus the two should be merged. That is, in a recession for example, the government and central bank should simply spend more (and/or collect less tax), and fund the latter from new or “printed” money. Merging monetary and fiscal policy necessitates a different relationship or split of responsibilities as between governments and central banks, but this is not a big problem. Plus the new relationship dispenses with an illogical element in the current typical relationship, namely that both central bank and government influence aggregate demand.fiscal policy: monetary policy: distortions: Abba Lerner: central banks: national debt: modern monetary theory: functional finance

Consolidation causes little austerity

There is a widespread view that reducing national debts and deficits, or “consolidating” them, causes austerity or would hinder the recovery. The reality is that reducing structural debts and deficits and “stimulus debts” is easily done without any significant deflationary effects. In contrast, stimulus deficits cannot be reduced in that they are required to deal with recessions, thought they can perfectly well accumulate as extra monetary base rather than as extra debt. Money for the above debt and deficit reduction can be obtained from raised taxes and/or public spending cuts, while making good the deflationary effect of the latter with quantitative easing. As long as the deflationary effect of the former equals the stimulatory effect of the latter, there is little net effect on GDP, aggregate employment and so on. Meanwhile debts or deficits are reduced.consolidation; debt; deficit; austerity; stimulus

The Infrastructure and Other Costs of Immigration

Since 2002, the British Government department responsible for immigration, the Home Office, has claimed immigrants pay £2-5bn more in tax than they withdraw from the public purse. The workings behind this figure omit the cost of the additional infrastructure investments that immigrants necessitate (no small omission). The conventional wisdom is that funding government owned assets is a burden on the community at large, whereas funding private sector business assets is not. However the distinction between public and private sectors is artificial. Thus funding the private sector investments is just as much a burden on the community as funding the public sector. Thus it is the community at large funds the additional private sector business assets that immigrants necessitate. The important distinction is not between public and private sector assets, but between what might be called “communally used” assets (public and private) and assets which only one person or family benefits from, of which housing is much the most important. That is, the community at large does not pay for immigrants’ housing: immigrants themselves do. Assets other than housing in the UK amount to about £30,000 per head. The investment burden on the community is around double this because the typical immigrant has one child shortly after arriving. Immigrants do eventually pay this back – after about a generation. But by that time interest on the debt (which is not paid back) resembles the debt itself. Having arrived at a figure for the investment burden that immigrants impose, there is then the question as to what effect this has on the overall contribution that immigrants make, or burden that they impose. Answering this question involves answering a number of subsidiary questions about what can and cannot be debited to immigration. The four main subsidiary questions are thus. 1. Should the cost of educating immigrants’ children (£7.6bn a year) be attributed to immigration? The Home Office, Migrationwatch and others have disagreed on this for some time. It is shown that Migrationwatch is right: these educational costs should be attributed to immigration. 2. In past years, some Government current spending (as opposed to capital spending) was financed by increasing the national debt. Are immigrants (who have not benefited from this spending) effectively paying interest on this part of the national debt? If so, this would be unfair. It is shown that immigrants are not in fact paying for this past current spending. 3. Several studies have recently claimed that immigrants reduce interest rates. These studies all make the same mistake: they assume that interest rate reductions are the only weapon that governments have to raise demand with a view to employing extra workers (immigrants). In fact it is an expansion of the monetary base over the decades and centuries which has created the extra demand that immigrants necessitate. Moreover, interest rates have to rise a finite amount in reaction to immigration because someone somewhere has to forgo consumption to fund the additional investments that immigrants necessitate. 4. Do remittances reduce real incomes for natives? It is concluded that they do. The final figure for the cost imposed on UK natives by immigrants (about £12bn a year) is tentative, first because quantifying the variables that produce the £12bn is more informed guesswork than accurate measurement. Second, some of the official figures on which the estimate is based could be inaccurate. For example, there is evidence that the official figure for the total value of all assets in the UK could have been underestimated by 100% or more; and the real figure for remittances could conceivably be ten times the official figure. In short the cost imposed on UK natives by immigrants could easily be half or double the above £12bn.Immigration, infrastructure, cost, Musgrave, Migrationwatch, IPPR, Home Office, immigrants, migration, education, children, interest rates, remittances

An overall assessment - is it worth it?

Tax reform ; Income tax ; Corporations - Taxation