Search

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.

INTRODUCTION The sentencing system in the United States is in crisis. America imprisons more of its people than any other country in the world by a massive margin --on average [...], The United States is in the midst of an unprecedented mass incarceration crisis. It imprisons more of its citizens than any other country--and by a considerable margin. It is now widely acknowledged that there is no community dividend stemming from an overly punitive sentencing system. Over-incarceration does not make the community safer and diverts billions of dollars annually from productive social services, such as health and education. Lawmakers have failed to find overarching solutions to this crisis. This Article proposes to change that paradigm by offering concrete reforms to remedy a key shortcoming of the sentencing system. Emerging evidence suggests that one of the main reasons for the mass incarceration crisis relates to the dysfunctional plea bargaining process, in which the prosecution has the stronger negotiating power and often uses it to press for harsh penalties. The reality is that most defendants in the United States do not receive a trial, let alone a fair one. Their fate is determined by a negotiation with a prosecutor. More than ninety percent of all criminal matters in the United States are finalized in this manner. There is a wide-ranging consensus that this process is flawed. It results in a large portion of defendants receiving harsher penalties than is commensurate with the seriousness of their offense. Sometimes it also leads to defendants, who are innocent, pleading guilty in order to avoid the uncertainty of a trial. The process is especially unfair to minority groups, with evidence establishing that African Americans, in particular, receive harsher penalties than similarly situated white defendants. This Article proposes reforms to the plea bargaining process that will demonstrably and profoundly reshape the framework for plea negotiations. The central plank of the proposed reform is to shift more discretion and power from prosecutors, who invariably agitate for tougher sentences, into the hands of (impartial) sentencing judges. This can be achieved by conferring a discount to offenders who plead guilty. The size of the discount should be up to thirty percent. A similar system already operates effectively in Australia. In addition to this, defendants who plead guilty in circumstances when there is a weak prosecution case (and who are tenably innocent) should receive a discount of up to seventy-five percent. This proposal would considerably reduce incarceration numbers in a way that does not compromise community safety and preserves the cost-saving benefits of the current plea bargaining process. The reform will also reduce the discriminatory operation of the sentencing system against offenders who come from socially and economically deprived backgrounds.

In this article Shaleigh Page and Julie Clarke explore the use of reflection journals as an important tool to improve student attitudes to mathematics in the primary classroom. They share some useful ideas that include reflection sentence starters and the use of specific reflection questions.