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The objective of this paper is to describe the activities, challenges and mitigation strategies, lessons learned and reflections on the importance of engagement from the first year of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) Engagement of People with Lived Experience of Dementia (EPLED) Advisory Group and cross-cutting program. EPLED was created to support persons with dementia and care partners to be actively involved in the CCNA research process.The Advisory Group was formed to work with CCNA researchers and programs to develop new ways to further collaborate and advance the methods of patient engagement in research on dementia. A role profile and recruitment poster were developed and, after interviews, 17 people were invited to join the Advisory Group. We planned three online EPLED meetings to take place between July-August of 2020, with one in-person meeting to be held in Canada. Due to COVID-19, we moved all of these meetings online. In the first year, EPLED and the Advisory Group met seven times formally, four times informally, developed a website, engaged with CCNA research projects, participated in CCNA "Central" activities and formulated an evaluation plan. For researchers and people with lived experience of dementia, motivations for patient engagement included challenging stigma, making meaning from their experience (such as building relationships and having their voices heard) and contributing to research. Common challenges to engagement were related to navigating the impact of COVID-19, such as difficulty in getting to know each other and technical issues with video-conference software. We learned that developing trusting relationships, providing education, offering support, being flexible and acknowledging tensions between research, practice and lived experience, were vital to the success of the Advisory Group.The first year of the EPLED Advisory Group demonstrated the potential contributions of people with lived experience of dementia as partners in research. Building these collaborations with individuals and communities-people living with dementia, care partners, researchers and research institutions-has the potential for positive impact across these groups and, ultimately, improve the lives of people living with dementia and their care partners.In this paper, we describe the development of the Canadian Consortium of Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) Engagement of People with Lived Experience of Dementia (EPLED) cross-cutting program and the first year of the EPLED Advisory Group. EPLED was created to build opportunities for patient engagement in the CCNA’s research on dementia. People living with dementia and current/former friends, family and care partners were recruited from across Canada to join the Advisory Group. In the first year, the Advisory Group met seven times formally, four times informally, developed a website, engaged with CCNA research projects, participated in CCNA “Central” activities and formulated an evaluation plan. Challenges included the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, online meetings, and differing expectations and priorities. Lessons learned and reflections on the importance of engagement are discussed in the context of research on dementia and from the perspectives of researchers and Advisory Group members.

Can police prioritize children they encounter by risk of future harm involving those who witnessed domestic abuse? We tracked the prevalence and frequency of future harm involving all 6670 children who Kent Police (UK) found witnessing domestic abuse and referred to Social Services in 2012. A 3-year tracking period lasted exactly 1065 days after the date of each initial referral. Four categories of events were tracked for each child: (1) further witnessing of domestic abuse, (2) a child being named as a suspected offender of a criminal offense, (3) a child being reported as a victim of a criminal offense, and (4) a child being reported as a missing person from the home. Further harmful events were highly prevalent (48%), yet over 92% of those events were repeated reports of witnessing domestic abuse. Less than 3% of the cohort went on to become a victim of crime, 1.6% were reported missing, and 6% were named as offenders in a crime over the 3 years. Total events including new witnessing of DA were heavily concentrated in a “power few”: under 10% were reported in 50% of the 8685 subsequent events over the next 3 years. Tracking subsequent harm to children present at domestic abuse shows more than enough concentration of future events to justify selective targeting of resources for further efforts to protect these children, ideally by using advanced predictive analytics such as random forests modeling.

The key objectives in this chapter are, first, to understand how homicide investigations are resourced, and the ways in which investigative costs, investigative actions and exhibits (output evidence items) are related to detection outcomes. A second important objective is to identify solvability factors which distinguish between detected and undetected cases, and to identify factors that help predict differences in solvability among the detected cases. Third, the accuracy of detectives’ homicide classification for predicting case costs in England and Wales is also assessed, and fourth differences between the two police jurisdictions in the study are examined. The study is based on a population of 290 homicides committed in Hampshire and Thames Valley Police jurisdictions, which cover shire counties in lowland England and Wales. There is a fuller set of homicide characteristics for Thames Valley Police data which enables a more comprehensive solvability factor analysis. Nine-tenths of cases were detected. Solvability factors explained over a third of detection outcomes whereas investigative costs did not help explain whether or not cases were detected. Solvability factors were identified which included suspect numbers, homicide type (murder/manslaughter/infanticide), offender–victim relationship (stranger/friend/relation) and suspect age. In contrast to existing research, whether the homicide occurred in a private or public place and whether knives or firearms were used had no effect on detections. Murders were less solvable than family-related incidents while homicides where hammers, golf clubs, spades, axes and blunt instruments were used as weapons reduced the prospects of a detected outcome. At odds with other studies, stranger homicides were linked with higher not lower odds of detection, while offences involving drugs tended to improve detection odds, a probable reflection of how solvability factors differ under circumstances of virtually unlimited resourcing and very high detection rates. Given exceptionally high detection rates, alternative indicators of solvability were evaluated that could be used to predict solvability differences among the detected cases. These indicators included number of investigative actions, number of exhibits per action and costs per action, all of which differed between detected and undetected incidents, plus time taken to charge suspects. Higher numbers of actions, less costly actions, fewer exhibits per action and greater time taken to charge suspects indicate lower solvability and characterise difficult-to-solve cases for which additional, often unproductive, investigative activities are undertaken in exhausting possible investigative avenues. Homicide characteristics predicted 28% of the variation in number of investigative actions which was the best alternative solvability indicator. It is notable that resources had little, if any, statistical effect on detection outcomes. This is because these homicide investigations were fully funded so that investigative effort continued to be expended until all investigative options were tried. This resulted in more actions, albeit lower costs and less productive ones, as case solvability fell, so that earlier cases involved fewer more costly and productive actions, while later cases involved more less costly actions which produced fewer exhibits. This tends to equalise investigative costs and make undetected cases almost as costly. Hence resources tended to reflect case solvability and add little statistical explanation of detection outcomes. Police homicide grades based on detectives’ experience were good predictors of homicide costs, though it appears there is some potential to improve these predictions by drawing on statistical analysis of solvability factors. That detectives’ grades proved to be better predictors of investigative costs than variables measuring homicide characteristics is undoubtedly affected by the limited number and range of homicide characteristics in the data set, whereas detectives have all factors available to them on which to base their case cost estimates. Investigative costs were higher in Thames Valley Police jurisdiction, the principal effect of which was to accelerate the investigation so that suspects were charged earlier than in Hampshire Police Force jurisdiction. There is a need for more detailed examination of investigative costs and the type—witness, forensic, electronic—and quality of evidence—which results from various investigative actions for different types of homicide to understand their role in detecting cases. This would provide insights into how to make homicide investigation more cost-effective by tailoring investigative actions to particular sorts of incidents.

Glue sniffing and the misuse of solvents by children and teenagers have seriously affected school populations throughout the United Kingdom during the last 10 years. Children with special educational needs seem more likely to indulge in solvent abuse than other children because some tend to suffer from anxieties, frustrations and inferiority feelings generated by the stresses arising both from their conditions and the attitudes of other people towards them, writes Dr Denis O'Connor, lecturer and director of the Counselling Clinic for adolescents, School of Education, Newcastle University.

(1975). Reflections on a Course for School Counsellors. British Journal of In-Service Education: Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 68-71.