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Youth with complex service needs require extraordinary services that are often managed by different ministries (government departments) and in many cases from various service sectors. They often require education, child welfare, and justice services, and have increased exposure to poverty, mental health issues, chronic health conditions, and decreased high school graduation. While public services are designed to improve outcomes for youth with complex service need, little is known about how these youth use services during the child to adult transition period in Canada. Knowledge of service use in this transition is important as access and eligibility for services changes during this period for youth. To better understand the needs of youth with complex service need, we used cross-ministry administrative data from Alberta to identify service use pattern clusters from age 15 through 20 years. For revealed clusters, we report and discuss poverty, mental health use, high cost health service use, and high school completion covariate proportions. The data analysis revealed that those that used more services generally showed higher proportions of poverty, mental health use, high cost health care use, and high school incompletion than those that use less services. These service use clusters and covariate trajectories can be used to inform decision makers on how to allocate resources to support youth with complex service need during the child to adult transition.

Background Children with disabilities often face limitations that cross support sectors. Objective: Our aim was to measure cross-ministry service use, outcomes, and functional limitations faced by children who qualified for special education. Methods We used longitudinal British Columbia ministry data linked to children (0-18y) registered in K-12 education. Children were grouped by special education funding (most to least; Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Unfunded, and no special education), and related to 1) service use patterns, 2) the age they first used disability services, and 3) functional limitations reported in health visits. We also reported how length of special education use related to disability service use. Results Of 111,274 children, 154(0.1%) were Level 1, 4427(4.0%) Level 2, 2897(2.6%) Level 3, 13472(12.1%) Unfunded, and 90324(81.2%) not in special education. Children with higher funding levels, compared to lower levels of funding, generally were more likely to experience poorer outcomes, have functional limitations, have service needs, and receive early support. One exception was children with serious behavioural/mental health special education coding, which had poorer outcomes for their level of funding. Children received child disability supports early (about half of users started by 4y), but use was mostly limited to those with many years (9+years) of funded special education (70.7% of the all users) and biased to certain special education codes (i.e., Level 1, severe intellectual disability, and autism). Conclusions This study provides evidence of the long-term, diverse needs of children in special education and may be used to inform decisions surrounding their support.

Poor interlaboratory precision for the determination of nitrogen adsorption specific area initiated a study of the parameters involved. Degassing conditions were standarized following the investigation of temperature- time relationships of various alumina types which may be present in smelter-grade alumina. Complete isotherms were obtained, single versus triple points were compared, and attempts were made to use carbon as a standard. A standard degassing procedure has resulted in improved precision for two laboratories having different equipment. There are some unanswered questions regarding desensitization of surface during analysis and the applicability of the BET equation.