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This paper aims to report on the findings of a qualitative study that explored the views and experiences of young people leaving care during the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic in Northern Ireland.

A qualitative approach was adopted involving semi-structured interviews with 24 care leavers 18–25 years old from across the region. Interviews were conducted remotely online or by telephone and explored young people’s lived experiences during the pandemic including their views on the formal support services and how best to provide ongoing for support care leavers during the pandemic.

Study findings highlight how known adversities for care leavers are exacerbated during the pandemic, having a detrimental impact, particularly on their emotional well-being. The response of the state as a corporate parent in mitigating the impact of the pandemic was found to be inadequate; with a need for much clearer communication, transparent and prompt decision-making and targeted specialist mental health services. The account given by the young people also highlighted the importance of participation and relationship-based practice to build on the young people’s resilience in the context of high levels of social isolation and limited access to informal support systems.

This research, based on the views of care experienced young people themselves, is the first study in Northern Ireland to report on the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic on care leaving. As such it makes a contribution to this emerging international field of study and, given the persistence of the pandemic, provides empirical findings and a social justice perspective of ongoing relevance to policy and practice with young people leaving care.

The purpose of this paper is to present an examination of the development of adult safeguarding policy from the perspectives of both policymakers and those who have sought to influence policy, to empower individuals with a learning disability to have a say in how policies, that influence their life and impact their right to independence, are developed.

This paper is based on a project which was led by a UK-wide interdisciplinary and multi-agency team, which included the central involvement of peer researchers who had lived experience of learning disability. It was based on a participatory disability research design.

Factors which enabled or restrained individuals with a learning disability, and their supporting organisations, from getting their voice heard in policy development, are identified.

This paper builds on policy theory and research, making recommendations for policy makers, disabled people and their supporting organisations as to how adult safeguarding policy, could be more effectively informed and influenced.

The purpose of this paper is to explore agency pathways and the management of risk for economically disadvantaged adolescent victims and perpetrators of domestic violence and abuse (DVA). In spite of recent national and international initiatives to raise the profile of this issue, significant gaps within DVA services exist within an urban district situated in the North West of England, UK. The study aims to present qualitative data gathered from service-users and service managers who have knowledge of referral pathways within the district. The paper also aims to examine the discursive relationships between the context, the intersectional significance of age, gender and class and the high levels of risk for survivors and perpetrators.

A purposive sampling strategy utilises phenomenology to explore participants lived experience of DVA. The study seeks to unite phenomenology and hermeneutics to help develop an understanding of adolescent DVA and participant’s experiences of available services. Knowledge of these experiences was garnered through shared narratives.

Through privileging the experiences and knowledge of survivors and practitioners, this study found current DVA service provision for survivors and perpetrators is limited and practitioner interventions can be oppressive without adequate training. These limitations are clearly at odds with national and international efforts to prevent violence against women and girls. This paper highlights significant risks for adolescent survivors and suggests ways in which targeted support might be improved. The findings conclude that central government and local councils might confront the impact of intersecting oppressions by addressing “classed sexism” in early intervention and educational strategies to effect lasting change.

Although the study is limited by a lack of participation from perpetrators, the data reveals worrying levels of risk, a reduction in funding pathways and a need for training for all statutory professionals. Additionally, another possible limitation of this study is that terms such as class, gender and heterosexuality were not defined by participants.

The paper considers the macroeconomic legacy of neoliberalism, suggesting that investing in early educational approaches, young person focused programmes and appropriate “classed sexism” training for statutory services is crucial for minimising risk.

To understand the experience of DVA, the intersections of class, gender and age warrants further consideration, particularly in light of claims that socio-economic and ethnic marginalisation has the potential to increase the risk of exposure to interpersonal violence.

This original research project prioritises participant knowledge and expertise in the hope of minimising risks for adolescent survivors and perpetrators of domestic violence (DVA). This paper privileges the voices and lived experiences of survivors and professionals who have expertise in DVA.

Project duration and cost play a significant role in fulfilling the objectives of both the contractor and the client. This paper builds upon the assumption that, for a given project quality, there exists a relationship between the project duration and the project cost. The behaviour of this relationship is very much influenced by the nature of the project. The paper proposes a general set of potential mathematical expressions for the above relationship and facilitates the identification of the project duration which yields lowest project cost. These are then applied to ‘Harmony’ type housing projects in Hong Kong. Moreover, while demonstrating the difference between the contractor's optimum cost‐time curve and that of the client, the paper suggests that the parties can select one of three options to reach a compromise. To this end, the paper introduces a set of mathematical expressions to represent these compromise‐solutions.

This study aims to identify and validate the different clusters of wine consumers in India based on the wine-related lifestyle (WRL) instrument. It also investigates how the identified clusters differ in terms of socio-demographic characteristics, such as age, gender, income, education, employment and marital status.

The authors conducted a survey using a structured questionnaire to collect data from wine consumers in India. The number of participants totalled to 432. The authors first identified the clusters using latent profile analysis. The authors then used the decision tree analysis based on a recursive partitioning algorithm to validate the clusters. Finally, the authors analysed the relationship between the identified clusters and socio-demographic characteristics using correspondence analysis.

Three distinct segments emerged after data were subjected to latent profile analysis, namely, curious, ritualistic and casual. The authors found that the curious cluster had a high mean score for situational and social consumption while the ritualistic cluster had a high mean for ritualistic consumption. The findings also suggest that the casual cluster had more female wine consumers.

This study makes methodological contributions to the wine consumer segmentation approach. First, it adopts a latent profile analysis to profile Indian wine consumers. Second, it validates the obtained clusters using the decision tree analysis method. Third, it analyses the relationship between the identified clusters and socio-demographic variables using correspondence analysis, a technique far superior to the Chi-square methods.

This paper aims to evaluate the protective potential of prickly pear cactus fresh cladodes (opuntia ficus indica (OFI)) on glycemic disorders, dyslipidemia, prooxidant/antioxidant stress biomarkers and reverse cholesterol transport (by evaluating the activity of lecithin-cholesterol acyltransferase (LCAT)) and paraoxonase (PON1) in rats prematurely exposed to cafeteria diet (CD).

Sixteen young rats were divided into two groups fed CD containing 50 per cent of hyperlipidic diet (HLD) and 50 per cent of junk food mix supplemented or not with 50 g of fresh young cladodes of OFI to 100 g of CD, during 30 days.

OFI cladodes supplementation decreased significantly body weight (p < 0.001), food intake (p < 0.05), adipose tissue weight (p < 0.01), fasting glycemia and glycosylated hemoglobin (p < 0.01), homeostasis model assessment (HOMA-IR) and insulinemia (p < 0.001), levels of cholesterol (C) (p < 0.05) and triacylglycerols (TG) (p < 0.01) in serum and in very low-density lipoproteins (VLDL-C p < 0.05 and VLDL-TG p < 0.01) and improves reverse cholesterol transport by increasing high-density lipoprotein cholesteryl-esters concentrations (p < 0.001) and by stimulating LCAT activity. Moreover, they attenuated lipid peroxidation in VLDL and low-density lipoproteins by increasing atheroprotective activity of PON-1 and in liver and adipose tissue by enhancing enzymatic antioxidant defence.

The young cladodes of OFI because of their antiobesity benefits could constitute a novel functional ingredient in pharmaceutical and nutraceutical applications.

Young cladodes of OFI in rat precociously submitted to a hyperlipidic diet/junk food (cafeteria model) seem to prevent metabolic disorders associated with obesity.