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Epidemiologic surveillance indicates an increased susceptibility to obesity among children with special health care needs (SHCN) in comparison to children without. The present study investigated this disparity in weight severity between both groups, with a focus on the provision of obesity management counseling by physicians. This study consisted of a retrospective medical record review that acknowledged the effect of patient-provider interactions on health behaviors and risk perceptions. An independent sample t test compared the incidence of clinician-initiated obesity management counseling received by children with SHCN to that which was received by children without SHCN. This t test revealed a statistically significant difference between the weight management frequency received by youth with SHCN (M = 1.0, SD =.46498) and the weight management frequency received by youth without SHCN (M = 2.0, SD = .74975), t(100) = 7.826, p = .000, α =.05 over a 2-year timeframe. Bivariate correlation analysis validated a correlation between weight severity among children with SHCN and the incidence of clinician-initiated obesity management counseling. The results indicated a small but significant association between weight severity and weight management frequency among children with SHCN, r(50) = .287, p = .044, α =.05. These results support the need for a transformation in the delivery of preventive health services for children with SHCN, such as providing clinician-based obesity management strategies and increasing access to validated diagnosis-specific preventive health screening tools. These results promote positive social change by informing efforts to improve health outcomes and decrease health disparities experienced by people with SHCN.

From the day their child is diagnosed, parents of children with special needs are traveling on a journey of extremes. The stress parents experience can lead down many paths filled with stress, worries, and concerns as their constant companion. These conditions exert extreme pressure on parents and can lead to life-altering changes. Parents who are resilient and able to cope with continuous change will ultimately weave through the unknown to a place of positive growth known as post-traumatic growth. The research project was based on qualitative data obtained from interviews with eleven parents of children with special needs. One of the many service professionals these parents interact with on a regular basis is service coordinators. Service coordinators know many personal details related to each family and are in a position to support parents positively to encourage post-traumatic growth. Separate interviews were conducted with nine service coordinators to collect qualitative data for this project. The researcher also conducted an analysis of peer-reviewed research articles and discovered the key factor related to parent’s resilience is encouraging social support provided by peer parents. This increases their resilience and is a critical factor towards achieving positive post-traumatic growth. During research analysis, the researcher found Family-Centered Care to be the most promising method for service coordinators to interact with families and increase the factors of resilience in parents. The current focus at Regional Centers is person-centered thinking. While this practice is beneficial for the clients served, it lacks the holistic consideration of the client and their family together. Future practice recommendations for service coordinators would include policy changes within the Regional Centers to focus on parent’s strengths to discern the supports required to provide the highest quality of care for their children. Training for service coordinators to promote resilience and increase post-traumatic growth in parents would provide additional support in a parent’s life. Support is the key factor in supporting post-traumatic growth. When parents feel supported, they can achieve more and join in stronger collaboration with service coordinators.

The purpose of this project was to examine and explore negotiating strategies for parents with children with disabilities. The research showed there were insufficient materials for teaching negotiating strategies to parents to assist them in obtaining critical or basic services for their special needs children. Many families lack financial resources, have English-language barriers, and have educational challenges when facing school administrators that possess these vital resources. These circumstances mean that parents may feel intimidated and disempowered when meeting with school officials. By providing a simple and easy-to-use guide of Negotiating Strategies, parents can be empowered and encouraged to use their skills for negotiation, conflict management, power, networking and mediation during an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meeting. The guide will increase awareness and understanding for parents when participating with school administrators, allowing them to capitalize on their rights for seeking appropriate and needed services for their children with disabilities.

The inclusion of students with special needs in regular education classrooms has been required by federal law for more than three decades. However, much of the responsibility for successful accommodation of students with disabilities rests upon the shoulders of teachers. Previous research has indicated that successful inclusion of students with special needs is strongly influenced by the attitude of teachers involved. In this study, all secondary agriculture teachers in Utah were surveyed to determine their attitudes and perceptions related to their willingness and ability to include students with special needs in their classrooms and laboratories. Selected personal and professional characteristics were correlated with these attitudes and perceptions. A large majority of teachers responded that they understand the concept of inclusion, are in favor of including students with disabilities, and have had a positive experience teaching students with special needs. However, fewer respondents indicated that they had the skill level to successfully include students with disabilities. Overall, while teachers indicated willingness to include the students with most of the specific types of disabilities, they were less positive in their perceived abilities to successfully accommodate students with some specific categories of special needs.

The experiences of students with special needs attending regular schools, their involvement and achievement within their school setting, and the theoretical underpinnings directing and determining what is best practice and delivery of effective education, have been an area of on-going change and development over the last 30 years. Teaching and learning processes involved in the effective pedagogical practice of special education have been consistently evolving, providing schools with developing options to enhance effective education practice for all students regardless of any academic, social and/or physical differences and subsequent needs. This study researches the experiences of students defined as having an intellectual disability who attend “Aprender”, a special program catering to the students’ special needs within the framework of a regular school setting. These students are eligible to attend a special school due to their individual circumstances, yet they have chosen to attend a regular Catholic school. The study examines the experiences of the students as they participate in the program, by documenting their voice through their school journeys within the social, locational and academic inclusive participation as members of their school community. The research consisted of a longitudinal case study and methods used included interviews, observations, field notes and surveys. The study findings identify the value of relationships as a key element determining the success of inclusive practice within the Aprender program, in particular the peer relations that existed between the participants, their teachers and other students. The study also identified the theme of development, with strong emphasis placed on the examination of academic, social and emotional growth within the experiences of the students. The study illustrates the difficulties that the students with special needs encounter in their educational setting, in particular the social and academic challenges that affects their inclusion. These experiences contributed to determining the success of the approaches structured to support the students’ inclusion in the program. The study found that the program was largely successful in its aims to include SWSN in a regular school setting, though some aspects of a holistic inclusion were less successful, and offers recommendations for further improvement.

This study compares the manner in which local schools organize to address the policy problem of support for pupils with special needs. Since the end of the 1970s, it has been a central aim to decentralise basic comprehensive education in Sweden. Several reforms have totally remapped the formal organization structures and how educational resources are allocated from the state to municipalities. The role of central and regional state administration has shifted from being highly involved in regulating state grants to evaluating implementation of state goals. The implementa­tion structure approach used in research relies primarily upon semi-structured interviews with members of schools to identify who is involved in the tasks of defining needs, deciding priorities among needs, mobilising resources to alleviate needs and evaluating the work. From the teachers selected as the point of entry into schools, the interviewing proceeded to other members of the municipal educational system, within or outside the local school district. In each municipality one local school district was selected for study, and in each school district the study focuses on the upper level of the comprehensive school. Care has been taken to select schools of a certain size and to find schools with non-selective school populations. The same schools were studied in 1986 and 1995. One conclusion from the interviews in 1986 was that political intentions and the special SR- grant had minor or non-existent implications for the work being done in schools. It was of no interest where resources came from. This same conclusion can still be made in 1995. The review of how municipal education committees organized allocation of the SR-grant in 1986 did not indicate that they had acted to develop areas or criteria to direct more actively the use of resources in schools. This study argues that the capacity of municipal education committees to actively participate in the work has actually deteriorated. Decentralization of formal powers in combination with declining resources actually worsened the situation in this respect between 1986 and 1995. One can see that variation between schools in respect of total resources in the schools has declined, but to a level under the expected total amount of resources in 1986. In a comparison between schools on how schools actually have allocated resources to different education purposes, the finding is that the variation is immense both in 1986 and 1995 - but in different ways. Some schools gave priority to lowering the group average while others made their priority special education teachers. In both cases there is no evidence that pupil needs had anything to do with these priorities. The lack of evaluations for pupils with special needs is the foremost problem for both those with responsibility for schools and for the implications at higher levels.

Abstrakt Studien behandlar begreppskunskap inom området positionssystemet hos elever i matematiksvårigheter. Undersökningen har gjorts i årskurs 4 och omfattar naturliga tal avseende tiobassystemet. Studien består av en kvantitativ undersökning och en kvalitativ del med intervjuer. Resultatet av studien har organiserats i tre områden som har betydelse för individens utveckling av matematiska begrepp. Talområdet 1-10, talsystemets uppbyggnad samt förståelsen av stora tal. Av resultatet framgår att förståelse av ett begrepp kan vara mer ytlig än den ser ut att vara. Brister i grundläggande begreppsförståelse kan leda till att räknesvårigheter uppstår. Svårigheter är bland annat begreppen talsort och platsvärde, särskilt i stora tal. Sökord: begrepp, matematiksvårigheter, positionssystemet, schema, specialundervisning, tiobassystemet. / Abstract The study deals with the conceptual knowledge in the positional system for pupils with mathematical difficulties. The investigation was conducted in grade four and includes natural numbers for the ten-base system. The study consists of a quantitative survey and a quality part with interviews. The result of the study has been organized into three areas which have importance to the development of mathematical concepts for individuals. The number field 1-10, rules for the building of system of numbers and the understanding of large numbers. The result shows that the understanding of a concept may be more superficial then it appears to be. Deficiency in basic conceptual understanding can lead to numeracy problems. The difficulties included the concepts place-value and magnitude of number, especially in large numbers.   Keywords: concept, mathematical difficulties, positional system, schema, special needs education, ten-base system.

Policy guidelines of the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) state that accommodations and participation decisions on the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) do not threaten validity. However, these issues are contentious in American large-scale testing. New approaches integrate test access, administration, accommodation and participation within a unified fairness and validity construct. The current study, based on demographic and outcome data for the entire population of OSSLT-eligible students from 2006 to 2009, demonstrates changing patterns in accommodations and participation decisions across schools and years. In particular, English language learners are found to be considerably underrepresented among students receiving special needs accommodations. This has implications for the valid interpretation and fair use of test scores. Recommendations are proposed for improving fairness, consistency, and validity in administering accommodations and participation.

Purpose: To validate and assess the feasibility of using an assay of oral neutrophils to measure periodontal inflammation in uncooperative patients with special needs. Methods: Periodontal examination and neutrophil counts derived from oral swabs were performed on patients with special needs having comprehensive dental treatment under general anaesthesia (GA). The conventional periodontal measurements were compared to neutrophil levels while patients were under GA, and later at their recall examination. Results: Forty-nine patients were assessed under GA and 30 (61%) returned for recall examination. Spearman’s correlation allowed for comparisons between periodontal parameters and oral neutrophil counts. Despite limited cooperation, it was possible to acquire neutrophils (using swabs) for all patients that presented for recall examination in the ambulatory dental clinic. Conclusions: Oral neutrophil levels correlated significantly with conventional parameters of gingival inflammation and may serve as a standardized method for clinical assessment of periodontal diseases in the special needs population.