Evaluation of the dissemination of active support training in staffed community residences.

Our aim was to replicate Active Support, a staff training intervention designed to increase the assistance given to adults with severe mental retardation living in community residences in order to increase their participation in activities. Training was conducted in 38 residences, involving 303 staff members and 106 persons with mental retardation. Active Support resulted in significant increases in assistance and engagement in activity. Significant correlations between participant abilities, receipt of assistance, and levels of engagement were found. Active Support was found to be of greater benefit to people with lower adaptive behavior and to have a diminishing value for people with higher adaptive behavior, implying that its implementation should be matched to the support needs of residents.

Epilepsy and intellectual disability.

A Medline and Psychline literature review of epilepsy in people with intellectual disability was performed. The review has highlighted the importance of the impact of epilepsy on the lives of individuals and their families, affecting physical morbidity, leading to an increased mortality and increasing the care-giving burden. Interventions with a strong evidence base are mainly pharmacological with an increasing body of work on the novel antiepileptic drugs. Surprisingly little research exists into the quality of service provision for this population. The authors suggest three areas for future work: (1) an increasing application of research methodologies such as direct observation and qualitative studies into this field; (2) an exploration of the broad impact of treatment and (3) the possibility that epilepsy is a barrier to care provision.

The effectiveness of staff support: evaluating active support training using a conditional probability approach.

Active Support, a package of procedures which includes activity planning, support planning, and training on providing effective assistance, was introduced in five community residences serving 19 adults with severe mental retardation following a multiple baseline design. Real-time observational data were collected on the level of assistance residents received from staff and their engagement in activity. Active Support was shown in a companion paper (Jones et al., 1999) to increase the levels of assistance residents received and their engagement in activity. Increased assistance was particularly experienced by the behaviorally less able and the disparity in activity between the more and less able was reduced. In the analysis presented here, the effectiveness of assistance was evaluated before and after Active Support training by calculating the likelihood of engagement occurring given the occurrence of assistance. This likelihood was represented by the statistic, Yule's Q. Yule's Q significantly increased following Active Support training, an increase that was maintained at follow-up. The increased effectiveness of assistance was related to other research findings on the relationship between staff: resident interaction patterns and resident behavior.

Sunglint patterns: unusual dark patches.

Anomalous dark areas in sunglint patterns are occasionally seen in photographs taken by the Applications Technology Sattellte. These dark areas appear to be caused by relatively calm surface conditions against a background of higher sea states. Evidence of cold water temperatures suggest the presence of upwelling. These sightings may thus be of importance to the fishing industry.

Large-scale screening by the automated Wassermann reaction.

In view of the drawbacks in the use of the Kahn test for large-scale screening of blood donors, mainly those of human error through work overload and fatiguability, an attempt was made to adapt an existing automated complement-fixation technique for this purpose. This paper reports the successful results of that adaptation.