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Background: Very young children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds often show poorer language development. Whilst there have been attempts to provide early intervention programmes, these sometimes miss the most disadvantaged groups. Aims: This report presents preliminary feasibility and effectiveness data for a novel language intervention designed for parents of toddlers in the United Kingdom. Methods and Procedures: In total, 43 UK families of 2–4‐year‐olds were recruited to the study, half of whom completed an 8‐week course (Tots Talking) focussed on parent interaction, and half of whom acted as wait‐list controls. Results and Outcomes: Results suggest that such programmes are feasible for families with 86% staying in the intervention. In addition, greater changes in underlying communication skills such as joint attention and gesture were evident compared to wait‐list controls. Conclusions and Implications: We conclude that pre‐verbal skills may be more important to measure as initial outcomes than language or vocabulary change in this population. What This Paper Adds: What is already known on the subject: Children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds are at higher risk of communication difficulties and there is a need for community intervention programmes for very young children. What this study adds: This study suggests that such programmes can be feasible and effective, but that very early/basic communicative skills (such as joint attention) may be boosted first rather than language or vocabulary. What are the clinical implications of this work?: Children's centres and other community services could feasibly run short parent facing courses emphasising contingent communication in low SES families and other diverse groups. These may be more successful run with younger preschoolers. Joint attention may be a better focus of intervention before expecting vocabulary or language change. Community health professionals may find this information useful in referring and supporting families in need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Comparative optimism, the belief that negative events are more likely to happen to others rather than to oneself, is well established in health risk research. It is unknown, however, whether comparative optimism also permeates people's health expectations and potentially behaviour during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Objectives: Data were collected through an international survey (N = 6485) exploring people's thoughts and psychosocial behaviours relating to COVID‐19. This paper reports UK data on comparative optimism. In particular, we examine the belief that negative events surrounding risk and recovery from COVID‐19 are perceived as more likely to happen to others rather than to oneself. Methods: Using online snowball sampling through social media, anonymous UK survey data were collected from N = 645 adults during weeks 5‐8 of the UK COVID‐19 lockdown. The sample was normally distributed in terms of age and reflected the UK ethnic and disability profile. Findings: Respondents demonstrated comparative optimism where they believed that as compared to others of the same age and gender, they were unlikely to experience a range of controllable (eg accidentally infect/ be infected) and uncontrollable (eg need hospitalization/ intensive care treatment if infected) COVID‐19‐related risks in the short term (P <.001). They were comparatively pessimistic (ie thinking they were more at risk than others for developing COVID‐19‐related infection or symptoms) when thinking about the next year. Discussion: This is one of the first ever studies to report compelling comparative biases in UK adults' thinking about COVID‐19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compared higher education dental undergraduate student performance in online assessments with performance in traditional paper-based tests and investigated students' perceptions of the fairness and acceptability of online tests, and showed performance to be comparable. The project design involved two parallel cross-over trials, one in Year 3 ( n = 132) of the dental curriculum, one in Year 5 ( n = 134). A total of 266 students undertook related tests of the same knowledge base in both online and traditional paper formats. Order of presentation of the test form was randomized. One hundred and thirty-two students in Year 3 additionally completed questions concerning their perceptions of the acceptability and fairness of the online examination process. Focus group discussions were held with groups of students ( n = 30) from both Year 3 and 5 to explore their perceptions of the online format. The online tests were created using the commercial software package MaxExam (Bristol, UK). The results were analysed using repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the order of presentation being entered as a variable in the analysis. The results of the study showed that for both Years 3 and 5 students there was a high degree of consistency in performance between the two versions of the tests, although a minority of students performed better in the online version of the test. Over 70% of students rated the online test as acceptable, and 90% felt that the online format did not disadvantage them even in a 'high-stakes' situation. From these results, we conclude that online assessment does not confer any disadvantage to students. Students perceive such assessment to be both fair and acceptable, and to have some advantages over the traditional paper-based methods of assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current policy in UK health services emphasizes that, where possible, people with intellectual disabilities should access the same services as people without intellectual disabilities. One of the barriers to this is the confidence of clinicians and therapists. In this paper, we report on the development of a scale to describe the confidence of therapists in working with people with intellectual disabilities (the Therapy Confidence Scale-Intellectual Disabilities [TCS-ID]). One-hundred and eighty-one therapists who provided talking therapies but who did not work primarily with people with intellectual disabilities completed the scale; 43 people completed the scale twice for test-retest reliability purposes. One-hundred and seven people also completed a scale of general therapy self-efficacy. The TCS-ID has a single factor structure accounting for 62% of the variance, Cronbach's alpha for the scale is 0.93 and test-retest reliability is 0.83. There are significant differences in confidence based upon participants experience in working with people with intellectual disabilities and their therapeutic orientation, and there is a significant association between the TCS-ID and the General Therapy Self-efficacy Scale. Sixty clinicians working in mainstream mental health services received training on adapting their therapeutic approaches to meet the needs of people with intellectual disabilities. The TCS-ID was used pre-training and post-training and demonstrated a significant increase in confidence for all group. We suggest that the scale has good psychometric properties and can be used to develop an understanding of the impact of training for mainstream therapist in working with people with intellectual disabilities. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Message There is increasing emphasis on people with intellectual disabilities receiving services from mainstream mental health services., There is no research describing the experiences and outcomes of people with intellectual disabilities receiving mainstream talking therapy services., The confidence that clinicians have in working with people with intellectual disabilities may be a barrier to them receiving mainstream services., The Therapy Confidence Scale-Intellectual Disabilities is a psychometrically sound scale for measuring the confidence of therapists in working with people with intellectual disabilities and is a useful outcome measure for training clinicians to work with people with intellectual disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective This paper examines how negative experiences with the health-care system create a lack of confidence in receiving medical care in seven countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Methods The empirical analysis is based on data from the Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey 2007, with nationally representative samples of adults aged 18 and over. For the analysis of the experience of cost barriers and confidence in receiving medical care, we conducted pairwise comparisons of group percentages as well as country-wise multivariate logistic regression models. Results Individuals who have experienced cost barriers show a significantly lower level of confidence in receiving safe and quality medical care than those who have not. This effect is most pronounced in the United States, where people who have foregone necessary treatment because of costs are four times as likely to lack confidence as individuals without the experience of cost barriers (adjusted odds ratio 4.00). In New Zealand, Germany, and Canada, individuals with the experience of cost barriers are twice as likely to report low confidence compared with those without this experience (adjusted odds ratios of 1.95, 2.19 and 2.24, respectively). In the Netherlands and UK, cost barriers are only a marginal phenomenon. Conclusions The fact that the experience of financial barriers considerably lowers confidence indicates that financial incentives, such as private co-payments, have a negative effect on overall public support and therefore on the legitimacy of health-care systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Aims To identify and assess the effectiveness of experimental studies of interventions that report on multiple risk behaviour outcomes in young people. Methods A systematic review was performed to identify experimental studies of interventions to reduce risk behaviour in adolescents or young adults and that reported on both any substance (alcohol, tobacco and illicit drug) use and sexual risk behaviour outcomes. Two authors reviewed studies independently identified through a comprehensive search strategy and assessed the quality of included studies. The report was prepared in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Results From 1129 papers, 18 experimental studies met our inclusion criteria, 13 of which were assigned a strong or moderate quality rating. The substantial heterogeneity between studies precluded the pooling of results to give summary estimates. Intervention effects were mixed, with most programmes having a significant effect on some outcomes, but not others. The most promising interventions addressed multiple domains (individual and peer, family, school and community) of risk and protective factors for risk behaviour. Programmes that addressed just one domain were generally less effective in preventing multiple risk behaviour. Conclusions There is some, albeit limited, evidence that programmes to reduce multiple risk behaviours in school children can be effective, the most promising programmes being those that address multiple domains of influence on risk behaviour. Intervening in the mid-childhood school years may have an impact on later risk behaviour, but further research is needed to determine the effectiveness of this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]