Tizard News and Events

The first talk in our Research Seminar Series is being held on Wednesday 28 October 2015 at 1700 hrs at the Kent Business School, lecture theatre 1.   Glynis Murphy, Co-director of the Tizard and Professor of Clinical Psychology and Disability will be giving the lecture “What happens to ex-offenders with learning disabilities after leaving prison?“.

Prof Glynis Murphy will be looking at her recent research on offenders and social care – OFFSCA-ID; a project that has looked at the cost and benefits of social care and its effectiveness in preventing people with intellectual disabilities from re-offending.

Please email if you wish to book a place – J.Ruffels@kent.ac.uk

See our web page to look at the programme of events for this academic year.

On Thursday 24 September 2015, Prof Glynis Murphy attended the Liaison & Diversion expert panel where the final service specification for Liaison and Diversion services was agreed.  Currently only 50% of areas in England have a L&D service.  These exist to identify offenders who have mental health, learning disability or substance misuse vulnerabilities when they first come into contact with the criminal justice system  For many offenders prison can exacerbate these issues and make their situation worse.

The new services are due to be rolled out across the Country where they  will be screening people for learning disabilities and other vulnerabilities and diverting them from custody where possible;  aiming to improve their health outcomes, reduce re-offending and identify vulnerabilities earlier, thus reducing the likelihood that offenders will reach crisis point.

Prof Murphy will be giving the first talk in our Seminar series this year, 28 October 2015 at 1700 hrs.  “What happens to ex-offenders with learning disabilities after leaving prison”.  Full details of this event are available on our web page.

Melina Malli, Phd student at the Tizard Centre alongside Dr Rachel Forrester-Jones and Professor Glynis Murphy, have published a recent article “Stigma in youth with Tourette’s syndrome: a systematic review and synthesis”.  

Tourette’s syndrome (TS) is a childhood onset neurodevelopmental disorder, characterised by tics. To our knowledge, no systematic reviews exist which focus on examining the body of literature on stigma in association with children and adolescents with TS. The aim of the article is to provide a review of the existing research on (1) social stigma in relation to children and adolescents with TS, (2) self-stigma and (3) courtesy stigma in family members of youth with TS. Three electronic databases were searched: PsycINFO, PubMed and Web of Science. Seventeen empirical studies met the inclusion criteria. In relation to social stigma in rating their own beliefs and behavioural intentions, youth who did not have TS showed an unfavourable attitude towards individuals with TS in comparison to typically developing peers. Meanwhile, in their own narratives about their lives, young people with TS themselves described some form of devaluation from others as a response to their disorder. Self-degrading comments were denoted in a number of studies in which the children pointed out stereotypical views that they had adopted about themselves. Finally, as regards courtesy stigma, parents expressed guilt in relation to their children’s condition and social alienation as a result of the disorder. Surprisingly, however, there is not one study that focuses primarily on stigma in relation to TS and further studies that examine the subject from the perspective of both the ‘stigmatiser’ and the recipient of stigma are warranted.

Aida Malovic, PhD student, presented a paper on Keep Safe, a new treatment programme for adolescents with harmful sexual behaviour at the EAMH-ID (European Association for mental health in intellectual disability) Conference in Florence.

Led by Rowena Rossiter and Prof Glynis Murphy, the project is funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and involves the development of a manualised treatment programme with experience from trial sites, one in Bristol (led by Dr Stephen Barry), another in St Andrews (led by Emma Marks) and a third in NCATS (led by Oliver Eastman) informing the intervention.

Dr Julie Beadle-Brown, Dr Jill Bradshaw and Lisa Richardson gave presentations at the Conference, Making Research Count,  this September.  If you wish to see a copy of these they are available on the University of Bedfordshire website

Dr Julie Beadle-Brown & Lisa Richardson “Person centered approaches with adults with autism”
Dr Jill Bradshaw “Living in Fear: experiences of hate crime and discrimination amongst people with autism”

Becky Hardiman, PhD student at the Tizard Centre is looking for children and parents to help with her research project ” exploring the relationship between cortisol and challenging behaviour in boys with Fragile X syndrome”.

For more details regarding participants please see the flyer.

The Tizard Centre hosted a very successful event as part of the University of Kent’s 50th Anniversary celebration weekend.  We were delighted to have Dr Janet Carr, OBE, as our Guest Speaker.  Dr Carr gave a very informative lecture based on her 50 year research project into children with down’s syndrome that has been a lifelong commitment to changing attitudes.  After half a century this is the world’s longest-running research project into people with Down’s syndrome.

The longitudinal study began with 54 babies born in the year to November 1964 and living with their families in a part of south-east England. Driven by an interest in people and behaviours and a sharply inquisitive mind, Carr’s aim was to establish the children’s educational needs using intelligence tests such as pattern-matching. The research, which began when the babies were six weeks old, was conceived by the Medical Research Council psychiatric genetics research unit at London’s Maudsley Hospital. It was initially intended to last just 10 months but the young researcher wanted to look longer term and explore family interactions.

“I thought, as well as looking at how the little people are, I’d like to look at how it affected their families. It was widely accepted that having a baby with a disability meant that it would be a disaster, that families would break up. That’s what I expected to find,” she recalls. In fact Carr discovered that, while the babies’ development was slower than their non-disabled peers, families coped well as the children grew, with youngsters bonding and developing good relationships with their brothers and sisters.

This was at a time when the “intellectually handicapped”, as people with Down’s syndrome were then known, were regarded as non-persons to be consigned to institutions. Carr wrote up the research as her doctoral thesis in 1970-71. Although she assumed the project was over, she began sending birthday cards – something she continues to this day. “I wonder what I had in mind writing on birthdays … maybe subliminally [I knew I’d continue]”.

The United Response development team have developed a new communication tool to add to their best practice suite of resources.  This brand new resource has been written by Dr Jill Bradshaw, lecturer in Learning Disability at Tizard.  The communication tool looks at helpful strategies for people who have difficulties in communicating and being understood.

The 12 page guide is packed with helpful strategies that will help share ideas with people with a range of disabilities more clearly, successfully and in a truly person-centred way.

To access this tool  This is also available on the Resources section of our web pages: www.kent.ac.uk/tizard/resources/index.html

The full report on the study of Raising Awareness and Combating Stigma: A Global Review is now available online.  This presents  findings from a review into attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities around the globe, and efforts to improve them in line with Article 8 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Person with Disabilities.

Three versions of this are available 1. an executive summary of the project and its findings 2. the full report and 3. an easy read summary designed for people with intellectual disabilities.  The report was launched at a public event at UCL on 16 July 2o15.

Rebecca Monteleone has been studying for her Masters in Intellectual & Developmental Disability at the Tizard Centre over the last year having won the prestigious Fulbright scholarship, funded by sources in the UK and USA.  This is awarded to American postgraduates and offers them the opportunity to study in the UK.  Rebecca recently presented her research work at the annual Social Policy Association Conference in Belfast, alongside her supervisor Dr Rachel Forrester-Jones.