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This paper describes a service improvement project with two aims: to identify and screen all adults with Down's syndrome aged over 30 years in a defined locality using a standardised instrument to establish functional baselines; and to set up a database to facilitate early diagnosis of dementia in this population.

An assistant psychologist used a standardised instrument to screen participants who were identified through contact with health, social, and third sector, and housing services.

Eligible people were identified and screened using an informant‐based measure. Three groups were identified: group 1 showed no significant change; group 2 showed significant change but no signs of dementia; and group 3 showed significant change plus signs of dementia. People with suspected dementia were referred on for further investigation/assessment and supportive services.

Terminology is important in engaging families in a screening project, as is the opportunity to provide information. A proactive screening project can be established by employing working partnerships between intellectual disability and older adult services to aid diagnosis.

Adults with Down's syndrome aged over 30 years in a defined locality can be identified through contact with health, social, and third sector, and housing services. Those identified can be screened using a standardised instrument and a database of screening results established in order to establish baselines against which future re‐screening can be conducted. Partnership working between older adult mental health services and intellectual disability services can improve the diagnostic service to adults with Down's syndrome.

The “outcomes revolution” in healthcare has yet to impact strongly on secure intellectual disability (ID) services in the UK. The purpose of this paper is to review the service-level outcome studies that exist for this population, and to explore some of the challenges of conducting such research. It further describes some illustrative routine outcome data from the National High Secure Learning Disability Service.

Routinely collected outcome measures (length of stay; violent incidents; Emotional Problem Scale (EPS) Behaviour Rating Scale and EPS Self-Report Inventory) were analysed for two overlapping cohorts of patients resident in the high-secure service between 2008 and 2013.

The median length of stay of those discharged during the study period (n=27) was around 9.9 years (range one to 40 years). A significant proportion (25 per cent) of discharges resulted in an eventual return to high security. There did not appear to be a treatment effect over two to three years using staff-rated global clinical measures, but patient-rated clinical measures did reduce. Violent incidents also reduced significantly over a longer period of four years in treatment.

There are identified challenges to research design and outcome measurement which need to be addressed in any future cross-service studies.

There are relatively few published outcome studies from forensic ID services. None of the studies have used clinical measures of changes or patient-rated outcome measures.

This paper aims to consider the practices and experiences of the new school-based mentors for Early Career Teachers (ECT's), emerging from the UK Government's new early career framework (ECF) policy (DfE, 2019a). The paper uses Lipsky's (2010) framing of professionals as “street level bureaucrats” to consider the extent to which the ECT mentors, as new policy actors, exercise professional discretion (Lipsky, 2010) in negotiating and aligning the new ECF policy with existing practice.

To research the mentor's interpretation and enactment of the new ECF policy, semi structured interviews were undertaken with an initial sample of nine mentors and four induction tutors who were also mentors. Online semi structured interviews were held, lasting around 50 min. This method was largely pragmatic as the study started during a period when schools were still cautious of face-to-face visitors in terms of COVID-19. Although the benefits for the interviewer experiencing the culture and context in which the ECT mentor was situated were lost, offering online interviews was critical in securing mentors' time.

Findings suggest a disconnect between the intentions of the policy and the reality of its enactment at a local level. The ECT mentors have limited professional discretion, but some are exercising this in relation to their own professional development and the training they are providing for their ECTs. Most of the mentors are adapting the ECT's professional development journey whilst mindful of the programme requirements. The degree to which the ECT mentors used professional discretion was linked and limited largely by their own levels of confidence and experience of mentoring, and to a lesser extent the culture of their schools.

The ECF policy represents an important step in acknowledging the need to professionally develop mentors for the work they undertake supporting beginning teachers. However, the time and the content of the mentor training have not been given sufficient attention and remains a hugely missed opportunity. It does not appear to be recognised by the government policy makers but more significantly and concerning in this research sample it is not being recognised sufficiently by those mentoring the ECTs themselves.

There is an urgent need by the UK government and school leaders to understand the link between the quality of mentor preparation and the quality of the ECTs who will be entering the profession and influencing the quality of education in future years. More time and resourcing need to be focussed on the professional development of mentors enabling them to exercise professional discretion in increasingly sophisticated ways in relation to the implementation of the ECF policy.

The ECF policy is the latest English government response to international concerns around the recruitment and retention of teachers. The policy mandates for a new policy actor: the ECT mentor, responsible for the support and professional development of beginning teachers. The nature of the mentor's role in relation to the policy is emerging and provides an interesting case study in the disconnect between the intentions of a policy and its initial enactment on the ground. The mentors may be viewed as street level bureaucrats exercising degrees of professional discretion as they interpret the policy in their own school context.

A framework pertaining to the decision‐making process, called the Tourists' Cognitive Decision Making (TCDM) model, is presented for the purpose of identifying and understanding the cognitive process of trip decision making. Unlike traditional decision‐making models, the TCDM model incorporates latent influence, along with problem formulation, information search, evaluation and implementation into its framework.

For preservice teacher candidates (PSTs), receiving feedback on core practices is an important component in supporting the development of their practice. However, coaches are often underprepared to support PSTs on core practices, and feedback can be infrequent or low quality (Anderson and Stillman, 2013; Clarke et al., 2014). Understanding such variation in the content and process for providing feedback to PSTs is important in evaluating and improving feedback effectiveness for amplifying their learning.

The authors studied feedback provided by coaches in response to a video of a sample PST’s lesson. The authors examined the extent to which coaches’ feedback targeted the core practice of eliciting student thinking and whether this was associated with their assigned PSTs’ instructional practices during student teaching. The authors also questioned whether this aspect of coach feedback could be changed in response to professional development.

The results provide preliminary evidence that coaches vary in the extent to which they focus feedback on a particular practice, even when directed to do so. Moreover, when coaches provide focused feedback on a core practice, the PSTs that they coach use the core practice during student teaching. Further, coaches’ feedback can be improved through professional development.

This study contributes to a limited evidence base examining the association between feedback and PSTs’ observed practice. It also establishes that coach feedback can be improved with professional development. The authors discuss these results in the context of documenting and improving teacher preparation.

This study aims to determine preference and concerns regarding tap vs bottled water and recommendations to increase tap water use in a US Midwest university. The authors propose interventions to increase tap water use based on survey results.

The authors conducted an online survey of the community of a regional comprehensive university in the St. Louis metro-east region (Illinois, USA). They analyzed 781 responses using mixed methods, and developed recommendations based on community-based social marketing principles.

Black respondents reported higher bottled water use than White respondents. Undergraduate students reported higher bottled water use than faculty or staff. Most respondents were concerned about cost and environmental impact for bottled water and taste and water quality for tap water. Chemical and safety concerns were specific and location-focused for tap water only. Concerns were similar to Safe Drinking Water Act mandated public information, such as prior reports of lead (Pb) in campus drinking water. Tap water taste concerns may relate to proximity to the water treatment plant, resulting in high residual chlorine levels. To increase tap water use in this community, the authors recommend persuasive information campaigns, improvements to infrastructure and distribution that increase tap water convenience, more transparent public reporting on tap water lead levels, management of residual chlorine levels, and establishment of institutional norms favoring tap water over bottled water.

The authors evaluate barriers to drinking tap water across multiple environmental and social systems. The methods used in this study combine mixed methods analysis and community-based social marketing. The findings integrate respondent demographics and concerns, local water quality, local and national contamination events, campus-specific sustainability initiatives and barriers, and national drinking water regulations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that mentoring has on Canadian early career teachers’ (ECTs’) well-being. The authors describe findings from a pan-Canadian Teacher Induction Survey (n=1,343) that examined perceptions and experiences of ECTs within K–12 publicly funded schools, with particular interest in retention, career interests and the impact of mentoring on well-being.

An online survey was used to examine perceptions and experiences of ECTs within publicly funded K–12 schools across Canada. For this paper, the authors selectively analyzed 35 survey questions that pertained to mentorship and well-being of ECTs, using quantitative and qualitative procedures.

The findings revealed a strong correlation between the mentoring experiences and well-being of the participating Canadian ECTs. The teachers who did not receive mentorship indicated significantly lower feelings of well-being, and conversely, teachers who participated in some kind of mentorship demonstrated much higher levels of well-being.

This paper draws on the selective analysis of the data from a larger study to elicit the connections between the mentoring support and perceived well-being. Due to inconsistencies in terminology and multifaceted offerings of induction and mentoring supports for ECTs across Canada, there might have been some ambiguity regarding the formal and informal mentorship supports. A longitudinal study that is designed to specifically examine the connection between the mentorship and well-being of ECTs could yield deeper understandings. A comparative study in different international contexts is commended.

The findings showed that the ECTs who did not receive any mentorship scored significantly lower feelings of well-being from external, structural, and internal well-being sources, and conversely, the ECTs who participated in some kind of mentorship scored much higher levels of feelings of well-being. Policy-makers should therefore continue to confidently include mentorship as an intentional strategy to support and help ECTs to flourish. However, inconsistent scoring between individuals and their levels of external, structural and internal well-being suggest that more research on the connection between mentoring and well-being of the ECTs.

Work-life imbalance seems to be more challenging for ECTs than policymakers who provide these expectations are aware. Therefore, excessive work demands and intensive workloads need to be given proper attention for their potential negative effects (such as stress, burnout and absence) on the beginning teachers’ health and well-being. Likewise, purposeful strength-based approaches should be undertaken to establish generative and pro-social efforts to enhance the connectedness, collaboration, collegiality and resilience-building opportunities for novice professionals within flourishing learning communities.

In this paper, the authors have undertaken the first steps in exploring the impact that mentoring has on Canadian ECTs’ well-being. The study increases the understanding of how mentoring can be used as a purposeful strategy to support the well-being of ECTs and retain them in the teaching profession in Canada and potentially in different international contexts.

The methods of coping and their relationship to disease severity, cognitive function, depression and health‐related quality of life (HRQoL) were examined in 79 Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and their carers. The coping methods of the PD patients were not associated with disease severity, cognitive function, or depression. In general the majority of correlations were weak. However, patients who used avoidance and cognitive coping methods reported improved HRQoL. Impaired cognitive function, poorer HRQoL and increased disease severity were associated with depression in patients. In carers, avoidance coping was associated with depression and cognitive impairment in the patient being cared for. These findings demonstrate the complex relationship in PD between impairment, quality of life, depression, cognitive function and the coping styles adopted by patients and carers. The study also highlights the difficulties in measuring these interactions with quantitative outcome measures.

Current approaches to early childhood teacher education have moved from a view of student–teacher training as interactions involving one novice and one expert, to a process that demands resources and engagement of several professional players while mediating students’ learning in practice. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a triadic mentoring model of a university–school collaboration (“Academia–Classroom”) on student teachers’ (STs) learning in the context of early childhood education in Israel. Eight mentoring triads were formed in six kindergartens. Each mentoring triad was comprised of the ST, a cooperating teacher and the college supervisor. This paper focuses on three representative triads of the eight that were studied.

The in-depth study adopted qualitative methodology including three complementary data-collection sources: observations of the STs working with children in the kindergarten; observations and recordings of the triadic mentoring conversations following the observations; in-depth interviews with each participant in the mentoring triad. Data were analyzed using an interpretative framework developed for the study, which combined elements from Engestrom’s cultural historical activity theory, Gee’s building tasks and Edward’s relational agency.

The research identified three major patterns of interaction operating in the mentoring triad that promoted or hindered the learning process of early childhood education students: dissonant, harmonic and argumentative. The way in which relational agency developed in the triads was found to be the most significant aspect of students’ learning process.

The patterns of interaction identified shed light on new aspects of relational agency, thus offering additional interpretative lenses for examining how relational agency operates in ST mentored learning processes. These new identified patterns have practical implications for the design of mentoring frameworks in early childhood teacher education.