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Schools have an important role to play in supporting the psychosocial and physical health of students with Type 1 diabetes (T1D). Good school-based support for students with T1D is related to better diabetes management and quality of life. However, support for students with T1D appears inconsistent across schools in Western Australia. Strategic capacity-building for schools, including attention to policy and practice, is needed to support students with chronic and other health conditions. This project aimed to investigate how schools provide support for the psychosocial wellbeing and disease management of students with T1D. Ten schools, identified by a hospital-to-school transition team as being supportive of students with T1D, participated in this generic qualitative study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with school staff, students with T1D and their parents at each school. Inductive and deductive thematic analysis identified three overarching themes to encapsulate the various ways schools provided support: (a) school characteristics; (b) interpersonal support; and (c) organisational support, and eleven sub-themes outlined this support. Based on these findings, a conceptual model of support is presented. This can be used as a foundation for a professional learning tool to enhance the capacity of schools to support the wellbeing of students with T1D.

Children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes (T1D) spend a significant portion of their day at school. It is therefore important that schools provide a safe and flexible environment for disease management and psychosocial support. Little is known of the school experiences of children and adolescents with T1D in Western Australia. The aim of this research was to describe the mental health and school experiences of children and adolescents with T1D attending mainstream schools in Western Australia. Using an online questionnaire, 92 parents of children and adolescents with T1D were surveyed. The results suggest elevated levels of emotional difficulties among school students with T1D and variable levels of support from school staff to assist these students to manage their diabetes at school. Increasing teacher knowledge to provide more individualised support and enhancing the quality of communication between parents and school staff may be useful strategies to support the physical and emotional needs of children and adolescents with T1D at school.

Sexual abuse and dating violence are chronic problems for children and young people in out‐of‐home care. This study explored the impact of a prevention and response programme Power to Kids, which targets harmful sexual behaviour (HSB), child sexual exploitation (CSE) and dating violence (DV) for children and young people in home‐based (foster) care. Twenty‐eight case managers, 25 foster carers and 13 children and young people participated in a mixed methods study in Victoria, Australia informed by the research question: How does the Power to Kids programme impact the sexual health and safety of children and young people in home‐based (foster) care? The data analysis revealed a SAFETY approach whereby the sexual health and safety knowledge of carers and case managers was enhanced, and carers were given permission to have Brave Conversations with children and young people, who could then apply the new knowledge to their lives. Case managers were upskilled in identifying indicators of sexual abuse and empowered to escalate stalled therapeutic and disruption practice when children and young people were identified as experiencing HSB, CSE or DV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many schools in Australia students often begin their primary years with limited preparation for reading. "All hands on deck" are required to ensure the best possible student success rate for learning to read. In this project, Education Assistants, often under-utilised in schools, were used to implement a reading intervention to struggling readers in years one to three. Education Assistants were trained to withdraw students in small groups and engage students in an explicit, systematic early reading program. The intervention was implemented in a cognitively and emotionally supportive manner and the Education Assistants were trained using autonomy support, collaboration and reflection. Results showed encouraging growth in reading skills for all student age groups compared to the rest of the class. The Education Assistants responded well to the initial and ongoing training processes, refining their teaching skills and the intervention over the period. (Contains 11 figures and 5 tables.)

Alongside thin ideals, internalizing muscular and/or lean body ideals is associated with eating disorder (ED) symptomatology, especially among males. However, assessment of drive for muscularity (DM) and drive for leanness (DL) also captures attitudes and behaviors that are normative in the general population. The aim of this study was to identify components of DM and DL that are independently linked to core body image disturbance in EDs—shape/weight dissatisfaction, overvaluation ,and fear of weight gain—in community adolescents using network analysis. A representative sample of 4,975 Australian adolescents (53% females, Mage = 14.92) from Wave 1 of the EveryBODY study was included in the analyses. We estimated regularized and unregularized networks, identified communities of items, estimated bridge centrality between communities, and explored sex differences in network structure and connectivity with a Network Comparison Test. Results showed that items "feeling better about oneself if having a lean body" and "wishing to be muscular" had the highest bridge centralities, and network structures of male and females did not significantly differ. Importantly, some components of DM were negatively associated with body image disturbance. These findings suggest that, when investigating the role of DL and DM in EDs, it would be useful to further assess these constructs as multifaceted since relationships between these phenomena are likely more nuanced than previously speculated. Development and subsequent use of instruments for certain behaviors and/or attitudes more specifically associated with body image disturbance might be more informative than somewhat artificially confined focus on either thinness, leanness, or muscularity. Public Significance Statement: Desire to obtain muscular and desire to obtain lean body are considered risk factors for body image disturbance and, in turn, eating disorder development, but typically used scales also capture aspects common in healthy individuals. By using network analysis in community adolescents, we observed both positive and negative associations between drive for muscularity, leanness, and body image disturbance, which suggests that these concepts might need to be assessed as multifaceted rather than uniform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Humans influence species distributions by modifying the environment and by dispersing species beyond their natural ranges. Populations of species that have established in disjunct regions of the world may exhibit trait differentiation from native populations due to founder effects and adaptations to selection pressures in each distributional region. We compared multiple native, expansive and introduced populations of a single species across the world, considering the influence of environmental stressors and transgenerational effects. Location: United States Gulf and Atlantic coasts, United States interior, European Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, east coast of Australia. Taxon: Baccharis halimifolia L. (eastern baccharis). Methods: We monitored seed germination, seedling emergence, survival and early growth in a common garden experiment, conducted with over 18,200 seeds from 80 populations. We also evaluated the influence of environmental stress and maternal traits on progeny performance. Results: Introduced European Atlantic populations had faster germination and early growth than native populations. However, this was not the case for the more recently naturalized European Mediterranean populations. Introduced Australian populations grew faster than native populations in non‐saline environments but had lower survival in saline conditions commonly encountered in the native range. Similarly, expansive inland US populations germinated faster than coastal native populations in non‐saline environments but grew and germinated more slowly in saline environments. Maternal inflorescence and plant size were positively related with seed germination and seedling survival, whereas flower abundance was positively correlated with seedling early growth and survival. However, maternal traits explained a much lower fraction of the total variation in early demographic stages of B. halimifolia than did distributional range. Main conclusions: Phenotypic differentiation could allow B. halimifolia to adapt to different biotic and abiotic selection pressures found in each distributional range, potentially contributing to its success in introduced and expansive ranges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the motives for asset revaluations in a sample drawn from 35 countries that permit asset revaluations. Prior studies that examined this issue concentrated on one or two countries, the UK and Australia, and showed that revaluations are related to financing needs, the capital intensity of the firm as well as issues related to political costs. The previous literature also found that revaluations were indicators of improved future performance and that performance was related to the magnitude of the revaluations. This study shows that although the conclusions drawn from the previous studies are applicable to countries that are similar to the UK and Australia, they do not hold when applied to a much larger set of countries and that the motivations for and effects of revaluation are not uniform across various country classifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores palliative care issues for Australian Aboriginal patients with end-stage renal failure. Renal disease is epidemic amongst Aboriginal Australians. The Central Australian Palliative Care Service, based in the remote town of Alice Springs, sees a high proportion of renal patients, with different demographic characteristics to those seen in urban palliative care services. A case history illustrates distinctive concerns for local service provision, including communication issues, cultural requirements for maximizing quality of life, and the need to provide care in remote locations. Palliation for end-stage renal failure (ESRF) patients should be based on standard principles, but modified in accordance with local practical requirements and community needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]