Evaluation of the self directed support pilot for children and young adults with a physical disability

Disability and Community Care Services, Department of Communities commissioned an evaluation of the outcomes, process and costs of the Self Directed Support pilot by a research team led by the Social Policy Research Centre.  This final report provides findings about the outcomes for participants and their families, implementation of the pilot, the process and cost analysis. It also draws together implications for future development of similar programs.  The Self Directed Support pilot had two key objectives: community inclusion and the empowerment of service users to make their own choices about their support (self direction). Self directed support enabled individuals, their families and their other informal supporters to identify their needs, lifestyles and aspirations, and set personal goals. By giving people with disabilities access to planning and case management, and control over their allocated funding, the program allowed them to be their own agents of change (Department of Communities, 2010: 7). The Queensland Department of Communities selected two service providers from a negotiated tender process to implement the Self Directed Support pilot to two groups of people with disability – children and their families, and young adults. One was the Sunshine Coast Children’s Therapy Centre (SCCTC), which supports young children (0-6 years) with physical disabilities and their family carers and significant other informal supporters. SCCTC had one full-time service coordinator. The second was the Acquired Brain Injury Outreach Service (ABIOS) in Brisbane, which supports young adults (20-35 years) with acquired brain injury and physical disability. Existing ABIOS case managers (ten) incorporated the self directed support function into their other responsibilities. The two provider

Safe at school?

This recent research project investigated the safety of students with cognitive disability in and around school. Evidence shows that children and young people with cognitive disability experience violence, abuse, and neglect at rates considerably higher than their peers. Despite this, little is known about the perspectives of students with cognitive disability on what helps and hinders them in feeling and being safe at school. Qualitative research focused on gathering the perspectives of 27 students and families, and other key supporters such as teachers, disability, and child protection workers about personal safety and harm in and around school, together with their views on how harm might be avoided or better responded to. A significant discord emerged between students’ experiences of harm, the responses provided by education providers, and the systemic structures they found available to support resolution of abuse. The rights of students with cognitive disability to be safe at school were in many cases not upheld. Strengthening the implementation of the legal and human rights of students with cognitive disability in school settings is reliant in large part on the efforts and collaboration of multiple stakeholders, requiring sustained commitment to change at personal, school and systemic levels

Cookbook anxiety

The output is a creative project that responds to the Cookery Collection, one of the special collections in Leeds University library, which contains printed and archival material relating to food and cooking that dates from the late 15th Century until the present day. Research process: The project responds to selected cookbooks and printed material through still photography and moving image, especially mid 20th Century cookbooks containing early examples of colour photography. The work is inspired by mainstream images of food in cookbooks, particularly visual depictions of idealised lifestyles which conjures shared social fantasies, perpetuated by mainstream images and our own internalisation of them. In my response, still photographs and moving image sequences explore staged scenarios and table sets which parody the lifestyles depicted in the books, to explore the social and domestic anxieties subtly generated and communicated. Research insights: Cookbooks are utilitarian - they have an instructional purpose, but are also aspirational, and filled with social-class anxieties. They not only tell one how to do a thing, but also imply value judgements, sometimes directly through words, and sometimes indirectly through photographs. The reality of preparing to entertain is hugely influenced by visual culture – we try to attain the mythical ideal, and in doing so perpetuate the visual myth. The output was exhibited and presented at; MAKE GOOD (group exhibition), Leeds Arts University, Sept 2019; PEERS (group exhibition), Vrij Paleis, Amsterdam, Sept 2019

Food & identity

The output is a creative project that explores the concept of food identity as an important cultural and social construct through photography. Research Process: The project is inspired by mainstream images of food in cookbooks, lifestyle magazines and on social media, particularly visual depictions of idealised lifestyles which conjures shared social fantasies, perpetuated by mainstream images and our own internalisation of them. This project spanned a number of years, producing an extensive final body of work. Participants in this project were sourced through word-of-mouth, social media, and an online questionnaire. Final photographs were produced though a collaborative process which involved discussion and negotiation between the subject and photographer. Research Insights: The link between identity and food is cyclical. Food choice is informed by our time/space coordinates – age, nationality, regionality - and our cultural identity, including race, religion, and social class. We use food as an evolving representation of ideological and political identity, constructing ourselves through moral and ethical decisions. Identity can be established through choices such as meat free, dairy free, plant based, low fat, low carb, high protein, high welfare, big brand, small independent, local, international, familiar or exotic. Our relationship with food is complex; passionately held beliefs and values are often expressed through food choice. Food can possess emotional significance and invoke a range of human emotions from gratitude to guilt, from tearful reminiscences to joyful nostalgia. Intimate details and memories from one’s own life are often bound up in perpetuating food practices and rituals. Dissemination: The output was exhibited at Food & Identity, Food Photographer of the Year Finalists Exhibition (2015 & 2017),Mall Galleries, London. May 2015 and April 2017. Food & Identity, Dye House Gallery, Bradford. September 2015. Food & Identity, Bradford Brewery. July 2015. Food & Identity, Hothouse Conference. 21 March 2015

An Evaluation of Community-Based Interventions Used on the Prevention of Female Genital Mutilation inWest African Countries

The traditional practice called Female Genital Mutilation has been recorded in several countries in Africa and in other regions around the world. Female Genital Mutilation is regarded as a major Public Health burden due to the extensive health risks associated with the procedure and community-based interventions has been prescribed to eliminate the practice. This paper presents a review of published literature about community-based interventions carried out to prevent Female Genital Mutilation in West Africa between the years 2000-2013. A literature search was conducted for papers published between the years 2000 - 2013. Papers were reviewed if they reported a positive change in knowledge, attitude and behaviour towards FGM. Twenty papers met the inclusion criteria. A total of eight types of methods were identified: Advocacy Campaigns, Health Education, Sensitization Workshops, Community dialogue, Media campaigns (radio, newspaper, film shows, information posters) counselling, role plays and Skills training. This study identified that these interventions utilised health promotion models such as the behaviour change, client-centred/empowerment, social change and most commonly the educationalmodel. None of the interventions were based on the medicalmodel of health promotion. Hence, it seems an incorporation of the medical and educational models of health promotion could result in a greater impact in community-based interventions to prevent FGM

Futensils

The output is a creative project, Futensils. It was a collaboration between Sally Robinson and Carole Griffiths. Robinson contributed the photography to the project. Research Process: Robinson’s practice explores the central position of food photography in contemporary culture, the conjuring of shared social fantasies and idealised accounts of domestic life through these images. This includes examining the fetishization of objects involved in domesticity and particularly in the kitchen, and the social anxieties which permeate these objects and images. This project unites their interest, and involves ‘playing’ with domestic objects and utensils to create ‘found’ sculptures. The resulting photographs are experiments into animating and re-contextualising these objects and sculptures. The resulting exhibition showcased some of the photographs from this series alongside sculpted objects. Research Insights: The research demonstrated that food photography in popular culture conjures shared social fantasies and perpetuates idealised accounts of domestic life. This includes an exploration of the ‘mythical’ – idealised representations of the home, affection and fetishization of objects involved in domesticity. Kitchen objects relate to individual and group identities. The research highlights the link between food, identity and representation, and the construction of authenticity and myth. It reveals the social anxieties which permeate objects and images, and influence the production of ‘consensual hallucinations’. Dissemination: The project was exhibited at Dye House Gallery, Bradford in September 2018

Growing phonological and morphological knowledge and improving spelling outcomes in Year 2 primary school children through Explicit Instruction and contextualised dictation

Using Explicit Instruction (EI) to teach spelling is controversial because teaching approaches vary considerably in the contemporary classroom. Teachers may privilege visual over linguistic strategies and include target words based around themes, rather than the phono-morphological structures of words. There is also little current research about the benefits of using sentence dictation to practise taught spelling skills and thus to increase the likelihood of developing spelling automaticity. Spelling automaticity is important because it complements crucial reading and writing skills. Developing fluent spelling through EI, followed by sentence dictation, was a specific focus of this study. Two primary schools in rural NSW and a total of 30 teachers were involved in this mixed methods research. One of the schools was used as a comparison school and the other was the intervention school. All 30 teachers involved in the study completed a knowledge survey about the components of the English spelling system considered essential to teach spelling explicitly. From this data, the specific knowledge of the teachers involved in the Year 2 intervention, the Learning Support Teacher and the Acting Principal, was extracted. The two Year 2 teachers in the comparison school received professional development on meaning-based approaches to spelling, whereas the five teachers at the intervention school received professional development on EI techniques and word level components of the English spelling system. Mid-intervention teacher interviews gathered data about their feelings on implementing EI techniques in practice. Post-intervention quantitative tests and interviews allowed in-depth and rich understandings of aspects that either enabled or hindered implementation of the intervention. The spelling competence of 60 students at the two schools was also assessed before any intervention took place. The 35 Year 2 students in the two classes at the intervention school received EI in the phonological and morphological aspects of words, editing, and contextualised sentence dictation during Term 3. The 25 students in the Year 2 class at the comparison school continued their established literacy routine. Interviews with randomly selected students from both schools facilitated an exploration of their feelings about spelling approaches used during the term. The findings showed that spelling results in both schools improved as expected. However, overall the intervention school had superior results to the comparison school; one class in the intervention school consistently outperformed all other classes in word spelling and dictation assessments with moderate to large effects. Many of the teachers demonstrated an increase in morpheme knowledge, but not in word structure. In this study the EI spelling Lesson elements were reinforced by teaching strategies that included contextualised editing tasks and daily sentence dictations. These tasks were embedded in the term science theme of Insects, which was chosen in collaboration with the intervention teachers. The dictation component, a previously underutilised tool, involved students writing two lines from a contextualised poem, each day. In Australia, current methods of teaching spelling remain varied and contentious. Teachers who are engaged in improving spelling knowledge may find that using EI strategies reinforced by contextualised dictation can improve outcomes for all students

The Spelling Detective Project: A Year 2 Explicit Instruction Spelling Intervention

Teaching spelling is controversial because teaching approaches vary considerably in the contemporary classroom. Teachers may privilege visual over linguistic strategies, select words based around themes or let students choose spelling words, rather than focus on the explicit teaching of phono-morphological structures of words. A nine-week intervention spelling project that included the phono-morphological structure of words and contextualised sentence dictation was designed to support Year 2 students in a NSW school and is described here. The intervention aimed to support all students including those with learning difficulties and an English as an Additional Language (EALD) background, within a mainstream setting. The high-impact instruction was cumulative in design; it provided simple to more difficult target spellings; massed practice during instruction; distributed practice during generalisation; editing and dictation tasks; and continuous formative and summative assessment. Post-sentence dictation results showed that the students who received the intervention had improvements with modest to strong effect sizes

Developing site-specific guidelines for orchard soils based on bioaccessibility – Can it be done?

Horticultural land within the periurban fringe of NZ towns and cities increasingly is being developed for residential subdivision. Recent surveys have shown that concentrations of As, Cd, Cu, Pb, and ΣDDT (sum of DDT and its degradation products DDE and DDD) in such soils can exceed criteria protective of human health.¹ Soil ingestion is a key exposure pathway for non-volatile contaminants in soil. Currently in NZ, site-specific risk assessments and the derivation of soil guidelines protective of human health assume that all of the contaminant present in the soil is available for uptake and absorption by the human gastrointestinal tract. This assumption can overestimate health risks and has implications for the remediation of contaminated sites.² In comparison, the bioavailability of contaminants is considered when estimating exposure via dermal absorption and by ingestion of home-grown produce.³ Dermal absorption factors and plant uptake factors are included in the calculations for estimating exposures via these routes

Somite differentiation in Microtus ochrogaster with special reference to the origins of the dermis

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1979 R617Master of Scienc