3,004 research outputs found
Views of children and young people in foster care survey: education
No full textThis paper explores the educational experiences of children and young people living in foster care in Queensland. Findings are drawn from the responses of 845 children and 1180 young people to the 2011 Views of Children and Young People in Foster Care survey, which is a rich source of information about children’s and young people’s attitudes towards and perceptions of their own education. Findings relate to educational status, key markers of educational disadvantage including suspensions and exclusions, and specific problems children and young people experience at school, as well as children’s and young people’s enjoyment of school and aspirations for the future. Information about educational support, including Educational Support Plans and support provided by Child Safety Officers and Community Visitors are also presented. Where relevant, comparisons are made between the 2011 survey results and prior surveys conducted in 2006, 2007 and 2009. Relationships between key educational measures as well as relationships to other important measures of health and placement stability are also explored.
The findings suggest that children and young people continue to experience educational disadvantage, including high rates of suspension and exclusion and a range of problems at school including problems with schoolwork, bullying and behaviour and that these difficulties can be exacerbated by the child protection system, for example, through placement instability. However, there are reasons for optimism. Children and young people are overwhelmingly likely to report that they enjoy school, expect to complete Year 12 and that their teachers generally like their schoolwork. Furthermore, over time, the proportions of young people reporting that they have an Educational Support Plan have grown, and, importantly, they are more likely to report that these plans are helpful. Analyses in relation to a number of educational variables reveal that young people with a plan they consider to be helpful fare better. Children and young people were also positive about the important role that CSOs and CVs are able to play in supporting their education.
While educational disadvantage is an enduring problem, the survey findings provide evidence of progress in key areas and suggestions for how continued improvements may be made
Expanding “Communities and Collections” in the K-State Research Exchange (K-REx) to benefit the K-State Community and Beyond
No full textKansas State University has used its institutional repository, the K-State Research Exchange (K-REx), to store and share its first year experience program, K-State First, and notably its common reading program, K-State First Book. We have done so with the aim that the accessibility and preservation of these documents ensures program stability, promotes engagement with first year programming, and provides the ability to foster growth,educational opportunities, and community building outside of K-State. Moving away from research concentrated repositories and taking a more holistic approach to scholarship, especially when realizing the pedagogical significance of collaborative campus programming, institutions can showcase, discover, preserve, and grow programs that shape campus communities and engagement.
This session will provide an overview of K-REx and spotlight the digital archive of the university’s first year experience program and common reading program, K-State First Book. We will discuss the benefits and challenges to expanding the purview of your repositories. We talkthrough the types of materials we decide to host in our repository and why we share what we do. We will also provide recommendations on new ways to evaluate what belongs in institutional repositories and how this diversity can benefit your program, your institution, the community, and others
Foster Care
No full textBakalářská práce se zabývá pěstounskou péčí v Libereckém kraji. Cílem této práce je objasnění některých problémů týkajících se výkonu pěstounské péče. Autorka pomocí rozhovorů získává ucelený pohled na výkon pěstounské péče a zjišťuje v čem je zásadní problém stát se profesionálním pěstounem.V teoretické části se autorka zabývá vymezením pojmů pěstounská péče a pěstounské péče na přechodnou dobu. Zabývá se vývojem dítěte do školního věku, historií pěstounské, dále legislativou včetně sociálního zabezpečení pěstounů a procesem pěstounské péče od podání žádosti až po předání dítěte.V praktické části se autorka zabývá rozborem výzkumných otázek, které vedou k objasnění problematiky pěstounské péče v Libereckém kraji. Z pěti rozhovorů s dlouhodobými pěstouny a pěstouny na přechodnou dobu vytvořila pět kazuistik, které objasňují problematiku pěstounské péče z hlediska požadavků stát se pěstounem, také se zabývají problematikou průběhu povinných příprav a samotným výkonem pěstounské péče.This bachelor thesis explores foster care in Liberec Region. The aim of this thesis is to explain particular issues related to foster care. The author presents cohesive view on foster care via interviews and discovers the essential challenges of becoming professional foster parent.The theoretical part addresses the issue of defining terms related to foster care and temporary foster care. Further, it deals with child development until school age, history of foster care, legislation including social security care for foster parents and the process of foster care from initial application to surrendering the child.In the research part the author applies a set of research questions leading to explaining issue of foster care in Liberec region. The author explains foster care challenges from the perspective of requirements applied to become foster parent via five interviews with long term and temporary foster parents. Further it deals with the issues of compulsory preparation process and providing foster car
Information and modeling issues in designing water and sanitation subsidy schemes
No full textIn designing a rational scheme for subsidizing water services, it is important to support the choice of design parameters with empirical analysis that stimulates the impact of subsidy options on the target population. Otherwise, there is little guarantee that the subsidy program will meet its objectives. But such analysis is informationally demanding. Ideally, researchers should have access to a single, consistent data set containing household-level information on consumption, willingness to pay, and a range of socioeconomic characteristics. Such a comprehensive data set will rarely exist. The authors suggest overcoming this data deficiency by collating, and imaginatevily manipulating different sources of data to generate estimates of the missing variables. The most valuable sources of information, they explain, are likely to be the following: 1) Customer databases of the water company, which provide robust information on the measured consumption of formal customers, but little information on unmeasured consumption, informal customers, willingness to pay, or socioeconomic variables. 2) General socioeconomic household surveys, which are an excellent source of socioeconomic information, but tend to record water expenditure rather than physical consumption. 3) Willingness-to-pay surveys, which are generally tailored to a specific project, are very flexible, and may be the only source of willingness-to-pay data. However, they are expensive to undertake, and the information collected is based on hypothetical rather than real behavior. Where such surveys are unavailable, international benchmark values on willingness to pay may be used. Combining data sets requires some effort and creativity, and creates difficulties of its own. But once a suitable data set has been constructed, a simulation model can be created using simple spreadsheet software. The model used to design Panama's water subsidy proposal addressed these questions: a) What are the targeting properties of different eligibility criteria for the subsidy? b) How large should the subsidy be? c) How much will the subsidy scheme cost, including administrative costs? Armed with the above information, policymakers should be in a position to design a subsidy program that reaches the intended beneficiaries, provides them with the level of financial support that is strictly necessary, meets the overall budget restrictions, and does not waste an excessive amount of funding on administrative costs.Water Conservation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Decentralization,Water Supply and Sanitation Governance and Institutions,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Health Economics&Finance
Communication about sexual health and decision making with adolescents in foster care
No full textThis study uses original data to identify predictors of communication between child welfare workers in a Midwestern state and the adolescents they serve who are residing in foster care regarding their sexual health and decision making. Quantitative analysis was used to identify statistically significant models of communication between child welfare workers and adolescents residing in foster care regarding their sexual health and decision making. The comfort level of child welfare workers around discussing sexual health issues with adolescents residing in foster care was found to be a significant predictor in five out of six regression models
Evaluating Research Impact through Open Access to Scholarly Communication
No full textScientific research is a competitive business – in order to secure funding, promotion and tenure researchers must demonstrate their work has impact in their field. To maximise impact researchers undertake high priority research, aim to get results first, and publish in the highest impact journals. The Internet now presents a new opportunity to the scholarly author seeking higher impact: s/he can now make their work instantly accessible on the Web through author self-archiving. This growing body of open access literature (coupled with new publishing models that make journals available for-free to the reader) maximises research impact by maximising the number of people who can read it, and making it available sooner. Open access also provides a new opportunity for bibliometric research. This thesis describes the relatively recent phenomenon of open access to research literature, tools that were built to collect and analyse that literature, and the results of analyses of the effect of open access and its effect on author behaviour. It shows that articles self-archived by authors receive between 50-250% more citations, that rapid pre-printing on the Web has dramatically reduced the peak citation rate from over a year to virtually instant and how citation-impact – now widely used for evaluation – can be expanded to include a new web metric of download impact
Whangai: remembering, understanding and experiencing
No full textThe Māori customary practice of whangai is often equated with adoption or foster care.
There are, however, significant differences between the institutions. Adoption or foster care, tends to be mainly focused on the interests of the child. The institution of whangai, while being cognizant of the interests of the child, is weighted more towards establishing, nurturing and cementing relationships between individuals, families and broader relational networks. In this paper we draw on the lived experiences of six people who have been raised as whangai and/or have raised whangai. We were interested in their understanding of the cultural concept of whangai, how the customary practice of whangai has changed over time, and their projected thoughts on future generations’ experience of whangai. Findings suggest that the institution of whangai remains as a strong vehicle for both the care of children and for the nurturing of whangai kinship relationships. While participants recognised that contemporary Māori social environments have contributed toward multiple manifestations of whangai, most felt it to be an institution that will be valued and carried into the future
Sperm sociality: Cooperation, altruism, and spite
No full textCitation: Pizzari, T & Foster, K. R. (2008). 'Sperm sociality: cooperation, altruism, and spite', PLoS Biology, 6(5), e130. [Available at http://biology.plosjournals.org]. Copyright 2008 Pizzari and Foster. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Interphase chromosome positioning in in vitro porcine cells and ex vivo porcine tissues
No full textCopyright @ 2012 The Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and 85 reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The article was made available through the Brunel University Open Access Publishing Fund.BACKGROUND: In interphase nuclei of a wide range of species chromosomes are organised into their own specific locations termed territories. These chromosome territories are non-randomly positioned in nuclei which is believed to be related to a spatial aspect of regulatory control over gene expression. In this study we have adopted the pig as a model in which to study interphase chromosome positioning and follows on from other studies from our group of using pig cells and tissues to study interphase genome re-positioning during differentiation. The pig is an important model organism both economically and as a closely related species to study human disease models. This is why great efforts have been made to accomplish the full genome sequence in the last decade. RESULTS: This study has positioned most of the porcine chromosomes in in vitro cultured adult and embryonic fibroblasts, early passage stromal derived mesenchymal stem cells and lymphocytes. The study is further expanded to position four chromosomes in ex vivo tissue derived from pig kidney, lung and brain. CONCLUSIONS: It was concluded that porcine chromosomes are also non-randomly positioned within interphase nuclei with few major differences in chromosome position in interphase nuclei between different cell and tissue types. There were also no differences between preferred nuclear location of chromosomes in in vitro cultured cells as compared to cells in tissue sections. Using a number of analyses to ascertain by what criteria porcine chromosomes were positioned in interphase nuclei; we found a correlation with DNA content.This study is partly supported by Sygen International PLC
Supporting Data for Pharmaceutical Polymorph Control in a Drug-Mimetic Supramolecular Gel
No full textWe report the synthesis of a bis(urea) gelator designed to specifically mimic the chemical structure of the highly polymorphic drug substance ROY. Crystallization of ROY from toluene gels of this gelator results in the formation of the metastable red form instead of the thermodynamic yellow polymorph. In contrast, all other gels and solution control experimetns give the yellow form. Conformational and crystal structure prediction methods have been used to propose the structure of the gel and shows that the templation of the red form by the targetted gel results from conformational matching of the gelator to the ROY substrate coupled with overgorwth of ROY onto the the local periodic structure of the gel fibres</span
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