2,334 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
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
An exploratory descriptive study of foster care and non-foster care adolescents' perceptions on self-esteem, 2002
No full textThis study examines perceptions on self-esteem of adolescents in foster care and non-foster care adolescents. The study was based on the premise that there is a statistical significant relationship between the perceptions on self-esteem of adolescents in foster care and non-foster care adolescents. A case study analysis approach was used to analyze the data gathered using the SPSS program. Descriptive analysis and frequencies are presented as percentages, frequency distribution, the Mean, the Standard Deviation, Chi-square test, and the T-test was used with a p-value of .05 to determine significant relationships between variables. The researcher found that the hypothesis was accepted and that there is a statistical significant relationship between the perceptions on self-esteem of adolescents in foster care and non-foster care adolescents. The conclusions drawn from the findings suggest that there is a need for more research that will contribute to elevate the awareness for services needed among this population
An exploratory descriptive study of the outcome of the length of time foster children spend in the foster care system in Floyd county Georgia, 1999
No full textThe purpose of this exploratory descriptive study was to compare the length of time foster care children were spending in care two years prior to the passage of Senate Bill 611 and two years after the legislation took effect in one Northwest Georgia county, Floyd County. Length of time in care was also examined to determine if differences existed among age, reason for placement, and racial background. An interview was utilized to complete the Agency Protocol and Procedures instrument with the local county Director of the Department of Family and Children Services and the Floyd County Juvenile Court Judge. Findings indicated that new written policies are in place and extensive training has been completed in the Floyd County Department of Family and Children Services in relation to the changes associated with Georgias Senate Bill 611. A case study method was employed to complete the study of a sample size of forty children in foster care reviewed by the Citizen Review Panel of the Floyd County Juvenile Court. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used. Paired t-tests were conducted to determine if the mean length of time in foster care for children sampled differed prior to the passage of Georgia Senate Bill 611 from July 1, 1994 to June 30, 1996 as compared to after its passage and implementation for the period of July 1, 1996 to June 30, 1998. Non-significant results were found when comparing all children as a group. However, the average placement time from pre and post legislation was found to be 16 months. Similar results were found when making comparisons by age, racial background, and reason for primary placement. Almost all age, racial background, and primary reason for placement subgroups were found to show large reductions in mean length of time in foster care. However, when considering age subgroups, mean increases were actually found in the two youngest categories. Small numbers of children within subgroups and large variability may contribute to the non-significant results even though some large reductions in mean length of time were found
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
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Policy and Practice Recommendations for Ensuring that Foster Care Serves Children’s Best Interests
No full textFoster care is a poorly regarded intervention to protect children exposed to abuse or neglect even though the totality of research evidence suggests no differences in child wellbeing between children receiving foster care versus similar children who do not, or slightly positive effects for select subgroups or for select outcomes. In this brief, PRC associate director Elizabeth T. Gershoff and co-author Sarah A. Font highlight what it would take to make meaningful improvements in children’s experiences and outcomes in the foster care system. These include: subjecting foster care interventions to rigorous impact evaluation; measuring the quality of the children’s experiences in foster care; and making strategic investments in data integration across multiple systems to produce high-quality impact and process evaluations.Population Research Cente
D. T. Max, 36th Annual ODU Literary Festival
No full textD. T. Max is a graduate of Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. His new book, Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, was released in August 2012 and was a New York Times best-seller. He is also the author of The Family That Couldn\u27t Sleep: A Medical Mystery
Social Support Moderates the Rate of Transition between Alcohol Use Initiation and Depression
No full textThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2023Alcohol use and depression are well-documented to be highly correlated, with adolescent alcohol use predicting adult depression. However, the rate of developing depression after alcohol initiation, and factors that reduce the rate of development, are under researched. Higher social support is independently linked to reduced alcohol use and reduced depression, suggesting that it may slow the rate of developing depression after alcohol initiation. We used data from five years of the accelerated longitudinal cohort National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) study (beginning 2012), participants of which were recruited from five sites across the United States (University of California San Diego, Duke University, Oregon Health & Science University, University of Pittsburgh, SRI International). NCANDA participants (n=831, aged 12-21, 51% female at baseline) were recruited to mirror national-level representation regarding race, ethnicity, and sex, oversampling for participants with family histories of problematic alcohol use. Survival analysis was applied to estimate the typical time (i.e., months) to depression onset (i.e., CES-D-10 score of 10 or higher) following age at alcohol use initiation (i.e., first alcoholic drink), age at first regular drinking period (i.e., first period of drinking at least once a week), and age at first binge drinking episode (i.e., first time consuming at least 4 or 5 drinks in one period). Moderation by social support was tested across models to determine the extent to which social support might buffer the rate of heterotypic transition. Participants who drank before experiencing depression were included (n=509, female=255, Mage=16.98). Higher social support was associated with a seven percent decreased rate of reaching the CES-D-10 threshold for depression after the first drink (HR 0.93, 95% CI [0.88, 0.98], p=0.001) and the first binge drinking episode (HR 0.93, 95% CI [0.87-0.98], p=0.009), but not the first regular drinking period or after controlling for demographics. Women reached depression significantly more quickly than men after the first drink (HR 0.57, 95% CI [0.4, 0.82], p=0.002) and the first binge drinking episode (HR 0.55, 95% CI [0.36, 0.85], p=0.006). As such, people with lower social support during the period following early drinking are not just vulnerable to experiencing depression, but they may also experience a faster onset and thus more long-term consequences (i.e., longer period of depression, additive or cascading symptoms)
The Role of Measurement Based Care in Clinical Supervision
No full textThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2022Measurement Based Care (MBC) is a method to systematically evaluate treatment as it progresses in real time, integrating standardized and idiographic measures relevant to treatment progress to inform clinical decision making (Fortney et al., 2017). There is a lack of training resources specifically geared toward teaching clinical supervisors how to use MBC during clinical supervision. This study investigates if an asynchronous, video-based training impacts attitudes towards and usage of and attitudes toward using MBC during supervision. Licensed mental health providers who reported currently being clinical supervisors were recruited to watch a training video demonstrating the use of MBC during clinical supervision. After watching the video participants were randomly assigned into two groups: one that received weekly email reminders of the benefits of MBC in supervision, and one that did not. Participants’ attitudes towards MBC and its use in supervision were measured immediately pre- and post-training, and at one-month follow-up. The preliminary results indicate that watching the MBC training video significantly increased supervisors' self-reported attitudes toward MBC, perceived ability to teach the benefits of MBC, and self-reported likelihood of incorporating MBC during clinical supervision when compared to their baseline scores at Survey 1
A study of the impact foster care policies have on permanency outcomes for children in Georgia's private foster care, 2012
No full textPermanency for children in care is defined as having a lasting family relationship that is safe and meant to last a lifetime. Child advocates recognize that permanency should be the goal for all children in foster care, but this belief was not actualized for many children who entered and remained in the system until adulthood. This study explored the impact of foster care policies on permanency outcomes for children in one private foster care agency in Georgia, Neighbor To Family. A Mixed Methods Triangulation Design, inclusive of both qualitative and quantitative measures was used to carry out the study. The research questions addressed include the following: Is there a statistically significant relationship between permanency rates of Group 1 and Group 2 and is there a statistically significant relationship between the length of stay rates of Group 1 and Group 2? The chi-square test of association was used to examine the association between permanency outcomes in Groups 1 and 2 and length of stay rates in Groups 1 and 2. The results did not yield a statically significant relationship between thlength of stay and permanency variables. However, further statistical testing of permanency and age variables within Group 1 resulted in a significant relationship at the
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