Mental Health Focus as a Deterrent for Justice Involved Youth

Tough-on-crime policies regarding youthful offending have resulted in a pendulum swing in which the juvenile justice system has shifted from a rehabilitative focus to one of punishment. The current paper evaluates different mental health program alternatives, as an option to return to a rehabilitative focus for juveniles, with a major focus on the Juvenile Treatment and Support Court in Kent County, Michigan. Through a qualitative analysis, there were findings of initial success with the youthful offenders presented in the court. Recommendations and limitations from the study are presented to aid further policy change and research

Making Breastfeeding Work for Medical Offices: A Six-Point Plan Proposal

Executive Summary Making Breastfeeding Work for Medical Offices: A Six-Point Plan Proposal Problem The health benefits of breastfeeding, for both mother and child, has been researched, documented and acknowledged by experts and leaders of health. Identification of limited evidence-based lactation support for breastfeeding women and their children (the breastfeeding dyad) in primary care clinics/offices, has been noted as a major barrier to breastfeeding exclusivity and duration. Purpose Making Breastfeeding Work for Medical Offices: A Six-Point Plan has been devised to meet the needs of a busy office. The purpose of this project is to provide a streamlined, evidence-based breastfeeding support toolkit for medical providers of all levels caring for the breastfeeding dyad. Goals The goal of the project was to identify perceived barriers to providing evidence-based breastfeeding and lactation support in primary care offices and to provide a toolkit of evidenced-based education, resources, and guidance for busy medical offices. Objectives The first objective was to identify the perceived and actual barriers providers and clinics face with breastfeeding support. The next objective was the development of a streamlined, evidenced-based, breastfeeding support toolkit for medical providers of all levels caring for the breastfeeding dyad. Finally, the implementation of the toolkit in offices and certification as breastfeeding friendly medical office. Plan The Making Breastfeeding Work for Medical Offices: A Six-Point Plan, was piloted in four medical clinics in Boulder County Colorado. Each office performed the self-assessment then implemented the toolkit over four months, and did the self-test again for post implementation assessment. Two site visits, pre and post intervention, and a Lunch-and-Learn with basic breastfeeding education was done during the intervention. A quasi-experimental quantitative design using a convenience sample with a coded before and after survey. Each survey was compiled and evaluated for statistical comparison using t-test. Outcomes and Results Other countries, states, and professional boards have established a Baby-Friendly Office Initiative or Breastfeeding Friendly Community Clinic guidelines. These vary from 8-19 steps yet, research states that providers do not follow all the steps, and on average, only five to six steps after implementation. The most difficult step identified was the approval of a lactation/breastfeeding policy in each clinic- even with a generic policy included in the toolkit. The clinics all verbally reported that the toolkit was easy to use and helpful to their offices. Over all, the intervention was successful with improvement in post-assessment scores compare to the pre-assessment

Capital Gains Distributions Treated as Principal Under the Uniform Principal and Income Act

In In re Brock, The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held: a distribution made by a mutual fund or regulated investment company, the source of which distribution is realized capital gains, is properly allocable to principal under section 5(3) rather than section 5(1) of the Pennsylvania Principal and Income Act of 1947. A typical mutual fund is an open-end diversified management investment company. Its business is to select, buy, hold, and sell corporate stocks and other securities. The fund\u27s income is twofold. It derives income from interest and dividends on the securities in its portfolio and gains or profits from advantageous sales of its securities. This income, after deduction of management fees, is distributed to the stockholders in two distinct dividends—cash and capital gains. The confusion presently begirding this area of dividend allocation has been caused, to a large extent, by the unique nature of a mutual fund. The principal issue is whether a mutual fund is analogous to an ordinary business corporation (a separate entity) or to a common trust fund (a mere conduit). The resolution of this issue is crucial. Under the separate entity theory, sales of securities by a mutual fund are treated as sales from inventory, and thus the gains from such sales are ordinary income to the trust allocable to the life income beneficiary. Under the conduit theory, however, such gains are treated as returns of capital and are thus allocable to principal, in the same manner as if the trustee had invested directly rather than through a mutual fund intermediary. Though the problem in In re Brock involved the nature of a mutual fund, the court based its decision on an interpretation of section 5 of the Pennsylvania Principal and Income Act. The court sought to determine whether capital gains distributions fall within the provisions of section 5(1) or section 5(3) of this act. After superficially disposing of section 5 (1), the court in Brock held that the second and third sentences of section 5(3) control capital gains distributions of a mutual fund. It is submitted that the court erred in this determination. Section 5 (3) applies only to the apportionment of dividends issued by the normal corporate enterprise. It has no application to capital gains distributions of a mutual fund. \u3eIt is submitted that the court in In re Brock could have reached the same desirable result that it did, without violating the provisions of section 5 of the Pennsylvania Principal and Income Act. This result could have been achieved by a fuller utilization of the conduit theory. The mutual fund is a unique entity. The many doctrines evolved to fit the usual type of associative enterprise do not fit the fund. The conduit theory recognizes this uniqueness and properly classifies the mutual fund as a mere conduit for management purposes. The mutual fund is not analogous to an ordinary business corporation and the doctrines evolved to govern the normal business corporation should not be superimposed upon a mutual fund. Since section 5 deals only with the dividend allocations of an ordinary business corporation, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court could have held that due to the unique nature of a mutual fund, section 5 did not apply at all. The court then would have been free of statutory restrictions and able to adopt completely the approach of the conduit theory under which capital gains distributions are classified as principal

The Relationship Between In-school Suspension and the Academic Achievement of Middle School African American Males

The purpose of this quantitative, correlational study was to investigate the relationship between time assigned to in-school suspension and the math and reading scores on the 2013-2014 Georgia Criterion Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT) for 6th to 8th grade regular education, African American male students. Archival data from school databases were used for this study. Following IRB approval and with permission from each district superintendent, in-school suspension and CRCT score data were collected for 6th to 8th grade regular education, African American male students who had been assigned to 1 or more days of in-school suspension, sampled from 30 middle schools throughout the state of Georgia for a total sample size of 1546 students. Time assigned to in-school suspension, where students guilty of rules violations are temporarily partitioned from their classmates, served as the predictor variable in this research effort. As viewed through the lens of Critical Race Theory and Expectancy Theory, this study centered the statistical analysis on African American middle school male students due to research strongly indicating that students in this subgroup are currently experiencing discipline disproportionalities and growing achievement gaps. Scores on the reading and math CRCT, a collection of standardized tests used to assess grade-level mastery of reading and mathematics learning objectives, served as the criterion variable. Statistical analysis used separate Spearman\u27s rho correlation (ρ) analysis (also referred to as Spearman rank correlation coefficient or Spearman rs) to determine that there was a statistically significant relationship between the time assigned to in-school suspension and scores on the reading CRCT (rs = -.123, p \u3c .0005) and math CRCT (rs = -.142, p \u3c .0005)

Presenting Expert Testimony

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