Tizard News and Events

We are delighted to announce that Vivien Cooper, OBE, has been awarded an Honorary
University of Kent degree and will receive this in today’s ceremony being held at Canterbury Cathedral.

Viv, CEO of the Challenging Behaviour Foundation, a small charity providing information and support to professionals and families caring for individuals with SLD and behaviour described as challenging, has had a long association with the Tizard Centre.

I was surprised and honoured to have been awarded this Honorary Degree from the University of Kent for services to people with severe learning disabilities.  Children and adults with severe learning disabilities and their families are often marginalised and isolated in our society.  Raising awareness of their rights and how they can be successfully supported is a key objective of the Challenging Behaviour Foundation, which is an aim shared by the Tizard Centre at the University.

Many congratulations to Viv for all her hard work.

Aida Malovic, PhD student at the University of Kent and a Research Assistant at Tizard, recently attended the South East Doctoral Training Centre 4th Annual Conference where she presented her PhD poster ‘Adolescents with Intellectual Disabilities who display harmful sexual behaviours: adaptation of measures’.  She was delighted to secure the vote for best poster.

Details of poster: harmfulsexualbehaviours_am

The Researching All Together Group (RAG) at the Tizard Centre is made up of service users who have been advising Tizard staff and students on aspects of their research such as commenting on information sheets, questionnaires, conference abstracts, accessible reports and other dissemination materials.

Researchers at the centre support the group to learn about how research is carried out. As part of the group’s remit they are working towards developing their own research ideas, as well as suggesting research priorities for funding.

The group met in June and discussed attending the next Tizard Centre Study Day meeting as well as looking at the availability and quality of images/symbols for information sheets that are sent to potential research participants.  The group have also been supporting work to develop an accessible version of the Tizard web pages so that people with learning disabilities and autism and their carers can find out more about our research findings….watch this space!

The Tizard Centre is considering putting on a new Masters level course in Positive Behaviour support and wish to gauge the potential level of interest for this.  To this end we would be grateful if you would complete a short survey.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RbLgHHIrafInXy00YNycOy-tOtTRZERnpv7s_6Fqh54

If other colleagues would be interested please forward this link to them.

A one day Conference to be held on Thursday 10 September 2015 at the University of Bedfordshire, Luton 0900-1400 hrs.  Presentation topics include person-centred approaches, improving skilled support, assessing needs, post-diagnostic support, experiences of hate crime and discrimination.  This is being organised by Making Research Count at the Universities of Bedfordshire and King’s College London, in partnership with the Tizard Centre, National Autistic Society and Local Authorities and Clinical Commissioning Groups.

Places are limited.  To book please see the flyer below.

Flyer Autism Conference 10 Sep 2015

We are delighted to announce that Dr Janet Carr, Honorary Senior Lecturer, has been awarded an OBE for services to people with Down’s Syndrome and their families.

Dr Carr, a pioneering psychologist, undertook a longitudinal study which began with 54 babies born between December 1963 and 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, Dr Carr’s aim was to establish the children’s educational needs, developmental progress and to look at their family’s lives.

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.   Dr 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],” she says smiling.  After 50 years this has become the world’s longest running research project into people with Down’s Syndrome.

Congratulations too go to Julie Nixon, who has also worked closely with Tizard over the years has been awarded Medallist of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday awards in recognition of her contribution as a foster carer and for services to children and families. Julie worked with us as a teaching fellow on the old diploma in applied psychology of learning disabilities (challenging behaviour) in the 1990’s and early 2000’s and then until last year, as a guest lecturer on the autism studies UG programme.  A learning disability nurse by background she left the Tizard to focus on her fostering career.

“Quality of life and quality of support for people with severe intellectual disability and complex needs”.  The findings of this research project are now available online:  https://kar.kent.ac.uk/48663/

People with severe and profound intellectual disabilities often spend a substantial time isolated and disengaged.  The nature and quality of the support appears to be important in determining quality of life.  Structured observations and staff questionnaires were used to explore the quality of life and quality of support for 110 people with severe and profound disabilities and complex needs.

On average people spent approximately 40% of their time engaged in meaningful activities, received contact from staff 25% of the time (6% in the form of assistance to be engaged).  Just over one-third received consistently good active support, which was associated with other measures of quality and support and emerged as the strongest predictor of outcomes.

Despite the drive towards the provision of local, specialised support, hundreds of children and young people with intellectual disabilities are still placed in out-of-area residential schools. Behaviour that challenges is cited as one of the main reasons why they are moved out of mainstream schools.

A scoping review, led by Dr Nick Gore of the Tizard Centre, University of Kent, surveyed research into the use of residential schools for children and young people with intellectual disabilities. The review found a paucity of evidence about both the use of residential schooling for children and young people with intellectual disabilities in the UK and the transition to adult placements.

To read the full scooping review 
 

Dr Peter Baker, Dr Peter Langdon and Professor Glynis Murphy from Tizard have returned from a 3 day Autism Conference in May hosted by a regional association in Larisa, Greece’s 4th biggest city.  The Association held a very successful conference with over 600 people attending including parents and professionals.  Speakers included Lesley Love (Headteacher at Rainbow School for children with autism), Professor Rita Jordan (Emeritus Professor Birmingham University), Professor Richard Hastings (Warwick University) and Dr Steve Noone & Professor Patrick Bolton (Institute of Psychiatry).

On behalf of the Association of Parents, Guardians and Friends of People with Autism, Larissa Prefecture, I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your participation to the conference, which was extremely honorable for all of us and for your contribution to the huge success of the event which again it was to a great extent due to your presence here.

 The conference apart from the dissemination of knowledge also helped us with promoting autism awareness locally in our city, region but also nationwide. The feedback we got  by reading the evaluation forms completed by the participants was really rewarding for all of us – as everyone seemed very pleased by the talks, the topics and the organization of the event.

Eri Kalogeropoulou, President of the Larisa Autism Association