The well-being of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS is often significantly compromised, as they are prone to discrimination, victimization, and exclusion from social and familial structures. The present study examines the effect of HIV/AIDS on children's attitudes toward learning, as perceived by teachers and caregivers. Teachers and caregivers…

This paper presents findings from focus group interviews conducted in Swedish government group homes for young people with a history of psychosocial problems, substance misuse and criminal behaviour. Participants were asked to reflect on a newly developed sex education curriculum located within a harm-reduction paradigm prior to its…

Background: Disability staff are being increasingly required to support adults with Down syndrome who develop Alzheimer's disease. They have little understanding of the nature of care required, and may lack input from aged care and dementia services, which lack knowledge of intellectual disability. The aim of this study was to report on the…

Background: A client's motivation to receive services is significantly related to seeking services, remaining in services, and improved outcomes. The Motivation for Youth Treatment Scale (MYTS) is one of the few brief measures used to assess motivation for mental health treatment. Objective: To investigate if the psychometric properties of…

Background: Families in Ireland remain the main providers of support for people with Intellectual disabilities, and the aim of this study was to map their life experiences whilst involving their family members as co-researchers. Materials and Method: This qualitative, participatory study involved 10 focus groups attended by 70 parents and siblings…

Background: Research on staffed housing for people with intellectual disability has identified the challenges in achieving positive quality of life outcomes. However, a less well considered dimension of such services is that they are places of living and dying. This paper looks at the experiences of staff in dealing with issues of death and dying.…

Background: Active support is an effective intervention to support engagement of residents with intellectual disability in group homes. This survey explored resident characteristics of the people supported by organisations implementing active support, the provision of active support, its procedures and systems, and resident engagement in…

The need for progressive education is prevalent in one of the most underserved portions of the population: the adult developmentally disabled. Though John Dewey wrote little on the education of the disabled, his philosophy, and that of Mahatma Gandhi's, lend themselves to the further education of this unique segment of society. In this paper,…

States confine juvenile offenders in many types of facilities, including group homes, residential treatment centers, boot camps, wilderness programs, or country-run youth facilities (some of them locked, others secured only through staff supervision). But the largest share of committed youth--about 40 percent of the total--are held in locked…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the components of independent living training and services to determine their effectiveness in preparing foster youth in Tennessee for adulthood, and whether the youth's perceived effectiveness of these services affected their educational motivation. Support factors (i.e., family, financial,…

The purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes of direct care workers (DCWs) in group homes towards PWDs. This study also investigated DCWs' demographic and other variables on their attitudes towards PWDs. The scale of attitudes towards disabled persons (SADP) questionnaire was administered to a purposive sample of 108 direct care workers…

In the wake of a U.S. Justice Department investigation that found widespread use of excessive force by staff at upstate psychiatric care facilities for mentally ill children, this new edition of Child Welfare Watch identifies shortcomings in mental health services and explores possible solutions, including the expansion of alternatives to…

This policy analysis addresses situations when students with disabilities are placed by a noneducational agency outside the boundaries of their district of residence. Examples of such placements include foster or group homes, correctional facilities or residential treatment programs. For a typical student with a disability residing with his or her…

Background: People with severe challenging behaviour are vulnerable to exclusion from local services and removal to out-of-area placements if locally available supported accommodation is insufficient to meet their needs. There are concerns about the high costs and potentially poorer outcomes of out-of-area placements but relatively little is known…

Background: Identification of possible personal indicators of risk for challenging behaviour has generally been through association in cross-sectional prevalence studies, but few analyses have controlled for intercorrelation between potential risk factors. The aim was to investigate the extent to which gender, age, presence of the triad of…