Prof Glynis Murphy attended the Conference on Learning Disabilities and Challenging Behaviour as a key note speaker, presenting on the NICE guidelines to 160 delegates including carers and professionals.
Photo: The honorable Evarist Bartolo, Minster of Education Malta (centre) addressed the Conference photographed alongside Paula Doumanov who organised the Conference (second from left), Speaker Richard Mills from Research Autism, Katerina Laskaridou (Greece) and Prof Murphy (far right).
Study Plus at the University offers a diverse range of courses in lots of different areas, these are totally separate from your degree. Courses are free and open to all registered Kent students. These are non-credit bearing courses in a range of different and flexible modes and are not assessed.
Examples of study plus options:
You can choose a course which allows you to explore your creative side or to learn just for pleasure or you can pick new skills and improve your employability. Find out more about this free learning opportunity or email: studyplus@kent.ac.uk
Following on from Sally Phillips’ film about Down’s syndrome and the ethics of pregnancy screening, there have been a number of posts on the Tizard Centre facebook page. This is a closed group which you can join if you wish to keep upto date with all the latest news in this area.
Sally’s documentary is still available on iplayer.
Oliver Shone also wrote a great article printed in the Guardian “My brother has Down’s syndrome. I wouldn’t change him for the world”
The 15th World Congress of the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IASSIDD) in Melbourne, Australia was attended by a number of Tizard Centre’s academics, researchers and students: Prof Rachel Forrester-Jones, Prof Glynis Murphy, Prof Julie Beadle-Brown, Dr Pete Langdon, Dr Paraskevi Triantafyllopoulou, Lisa Richardson, Roy Deveau, Aida Malovic, Clare Melvin, Nicole Palmer, Melina Malli, Leah Vanono.
Senior academics from the Tizard Centre were involved in the organisation of the event either as part of the IASSIDD Executive, scientific advisory committee, as track directors or reviewers. Many of Tizard’s staff and students were attending the conference to present their research findings as part of symposia or as poster presentations over the 5-day event. PhD students Claire Melvin, Aida Malovic and Lisa Richardson were all won a travel grant to be able to attend the conference.
The opening ceremony of the conference included a welcome to country and smoking ceremony: a significant ancient ceremony performed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to welcome visitors to the country and a performance by the Australian boys choir of the Australian national anthem. There was a welcoming address from the Governor of Victoria and presidential address by the IASSIDD president Professor Vianne Timmons. Finally Tizard’s own Glynis Murphy participated in a Past Presidents forum, alongside Trevor Parmenter and David Felce discussing their achievements as IASSIDD Presidents and future challenges for IASSIDD.
Following the opening ceremony there were 4 days of key note addresses, symposia, roundtable discussions, special interest research groups meetings and poster presentations. Some highlights from the 4 days included Glynis Murphy’s keynote address on people with IDD in the Criminal Justice System, Julie Beadle-Brown as chair and panellist for a master lecture on self-determination and Rachel Forrester-Jones being presented with an award for best research poster.
The next World Congress is planned to be held in Glasgow on the 6th-9th August 2019.
#IASSIDD16 #IASSIDD19
We are delighted to announce that Jayne Hussey, RA/QA Officer at Toshiba Medical Systems has been awarded their scholarship for this year. Rescon Technologies is a UK Company focused on helping people lead healthier lives.
Jayne is starting her MA in Autism studies with the Tizard this week so many congratulations to her. The scholarship was awarded for her proposal to evaluate Rescon’s Lincus app for use with people intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Members of the Tizard Centre are currently attending the IASSIDD Conference 14 – 19 August 2016 in Melbourne. Prof Glynis Murphy delivered a key note speech on people with IDD and the criminal justice system and others have had research posters accepted for the various sessions. Prof Rachel Forrester-Jones demonstrated a particularly novel way to exhibit her research data “Clothes and Fashion & people with IDD”.
We are pleased to announce that the Quality and Outcomes of Person Centred Care Research Unit (QORU) at the PSSRU has agreed to offer a scholarship (up to £1200 towards home/EU tuition fees plus an additional £300 towards dissertation expenses) to a student who is studying or a Master’s programme, part-time, at the Tizard Centre. The scholarship will contribute to a student cognitively testing the adaptation of an existing Easy Read outcomes measure, the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT), for use in Rescon’s Lincus app with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
ASCOT (www.pssru.ac.uk/ascot) was developed by the PSSRU to measure the outcomes of social care for adults. It offers a suite of tools, including a new easy read version for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. ASCOT is being used internationally by researchers, policy makers and providers and was an impact case study for the wider school in the last REF.
Lincus (www.lincus.eu) is already being used across the UK by organisations for the self and shared care of people with learning disabilities, multiple and complex needs, diabetes and high blood pressure. It has been developed through a combination of academic research and coproduction with end users however has never been evaluated.
This is an exciting opportunity for some original research that involves working on a real world application of technology to support those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Criteria
o Applicants will already have been offered a place on a Master’s programme or be in the process of interviews.
o The scholarship will cover up to £1200 of home/EU tuition fees for any of the Master’s programmes at the Tizard Centre. Due to the nature of the research project, we can only offer this to a part-time student. It will also include an additional £300 towards dissertation expenses.
o In return, the award winner will complete their dissertation on cognitively testing the ASCOT-ER in Lincus with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
To Apply
Write a one page account describing:
a) Why is it important to give people with intellectual and developmental disabilities the opportunity to communicate how they feel about their quality of life?
b) What is cognitive testing and why is it important to include in a study like this?
c) How would you go about carrying out this research with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities?
o Email your one page account, with a covering email to: Dr Jill Bradshaw J.Bradshaw@kent.ac.uk by Monday 29th August 2016
Following receipt of your application you may then be invited to interview.
The University of Kent, University of East Anglia, University College London, Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Leicester Partnership NHS Trust and Partnerships in Care have been awarded funding from the National Institute of Health Research to conduct a three year project called the mATCH study.
Within the mATCH study researchers want to understand what is happening to people with autism who are detained in hospitals so the care pathways can be improved. To read more details please see the new webpage: https://research.kent.ac.uk/match/about-us-2/
Some people with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) are detained in hospitals under the Mental Health Act (2007) because of mental health problems, behavioural problems and risk. While all these patients have a diagnosis of ASD, their clinical presentations, risk behaviours, treatment needs and responses to treatment are very different. An inability to capture these differences adequately means that some patients stay in restrictive hospital settings for longer than needed. To minimise this risk and improve care, we need to tailor the care pathway to the needs of each individual patient. The current study aims to do this in two ways (1) systematically investigate a subtypology of people with ASD within psychiatric hospitals to examine whether this may help allocate people to receive the appropriate care, and (2) collect information over 1 year which can be used to improve their care pathway. The study will help to design better inpatient services and directly benefit patients by minimising the risk of them being in restrictive hospital settings for longer than necessary. People with ASD, carers and family members have been asked to take part in this and share in the oversight of our research.
