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The article examines some qualitative data from the second phase semi-structured interviews conducted with 92 adult social care practitioners from 23 local authority social service departments in Great Britain. Protection rights and confusion about the type of information that could be shared legally between agencies were the barrier identified. According to most respondents, greater involvement and empowerment of service users in the adult protection process is one way of enhancing the system .

To compare the nature and prevalence of use of procedures employed to treat and manage challenging behaviours across two approaches to providing community-based supported accommodation for people with intellectual disabilities (ID) and severe challenging behaviour: noncongregate settings where the minority of residents have challenging behaviour, and congregate settings where the majority of residents have challenging behaviour.Community-based supported accommodation for people with ID and challenging behaviour.Longitudinal matched groups design.The nature and prevalence of use of procedures employed to treat and manage challenging behaviours. Observed and reported severity of challenging behaviours.Both types of settings were associated with low prevalence of use of behavioural technologies for the reduction of challenging behaviour (less than 15% of participants). In contrast, high proportions of participant received antipsychotic medication in both noncongregate (56%) and congregate (80%) settings. Congregate settings were associated with the increased use of physical restraint as a reactive management strategy, with over half of participants being in receipt of physical restraint by two or more members of staff.Changes in reported and observed challenging behaviour over a 10-month period were slight. The use of evidence-based behavioural technologies for the reduction of challenging behaviour may have led to better outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on the preparation of Ga/Al nanoalloys embedded glass-ceramic by heat treatment as well as femtosecond laser irradiation. The Ga/Al nanoalloys embedded glass-ceramic exhibits intense extinction in the visible region, as well as superior optical nonlinearities. The third-order nonlinear optical properties of the glass-ceramics were investigated by employing Z-scan technique. The maximum nonlinear extinction coefficient β and nonlinear refraction γ value reached 1.14 × 10−11 m/W and 2.01 × 10−17 m2/W, respectively. Three-dimensional Ga/Al nanoalloys embedded structures were also achieved in glass by scanning the focused femtosecond laser beam. These results may find applications for the fabrication of ultrafast optical switches and diffractive optical elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]