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In view of the decline in the number of residential and nursing homes over the last few years, East Sussex, Brighton and Hove Health Authority was concerned about optimum usage of places. This project aimed to ascertain the views of home owners and managers on their working relationship with the health authority, local hospitals and social services.Respondents felt that the incoming residents were generally frailer and more dependent than a few years ago, funding allocations were inadequate, given the standards now expected of care homes, and there were delays of up to a year in reaching agreement. Several indicated that they would no longer take publicly funded clients unless the families could top up the payments. Ten percent of the private residential homes surveyed were for sale or due to close. Between 40 and 50 older people were estimated to be awaiting transfer to EMI or nursing homes in East Sussex. Over 35% of homes complained about inappropriate discharges of their residents from hospital, and a poor standard of nursing care. Communication with hospitals was poor and relationships with the health authority and social services needed strengthening. Routine admissions were appropriate, but hospital discharges may have been premature. Home owners/managers were dissatisfied with their relationship with the NHS. Improvements are needed if partnership working is to be developed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of pet ownership and its relationship to wellbeing in later life. In particular, the paper addresses the issue of pet ownership in communal residential settings for older people both now and in the past, comparing attitudes, policies, and practices in regard to pets in the late 1950s with the early years of the twenty‐first century.

Following a review of the research literature on older people and companion animals, the paper draws on new data derived from recent research conducted by the authors. It compares archived material on the residential homes for older people that Peter Townsend visited in the late 1950s as part of his classic study, The Last Refuge (1962), with findings from revisiting a sample of these homes 50 years later. The authors employed the same methods as Townsend (observation together with interviews with managers and residents).

The historical dimension of the research reveals ambivalence both in the past and in present times in respect of residents' pets in care homes. Top‐down controlling regimes in the past have been replaced by concerns about health and safety and the need to strike a balance between rights, risks, and responsibilities. The variations in current policy and practice in England and Wales seem to reflect the subjective views and experiences of care home managers and proprietors. The lesson seems to be that care home owners should be expected to have an explicit policy in regard to the keeping of companion animals, but one that is not dictated by law.

The longitudinal data drawn on in this paper add a new perspective to research on older people and pets in care homes.

The purpose of this paper is to consolidate the range of issues relevant to owner occupiers who age in place and to offer an initial overview of how effective partnerships can respond to and meet the changing needs of housing, health and social care of our ageing population.

Issues affecting older people's changing needs are considered holistically and considered in terms of how partnerships can be enhanced to develop improved services in the future.

Most owners wish to stay in their own homes for as long as possible and it can be cost-effective to do so; however, we need to look at new and innovative ways of developing and providing front-line services to enhance health and safety in the home, but also quality of life and wellbeing such as combating loneliness and isolation. However, although there are examples of evidence-based good practice, service provision is variable and there is a risk that many older home owners may miss out on services for which they may are eligible. With this in mind, it may be helpful to develop a new framework where one key practitioner holds responsibility to consolidate and coordinate the range of local services available as a package that offers a range of housing, health and social care services.

There are currently many policy and practice gaps in older owner occupier's housing conditions and suitability to meet their changing needs. This paper has a particular starting point in housing, and how other personal or technological services can help support independence for as long as possible and adapt to the owner-occupier's changing health and social care needs as they age in place. The authors emphasise the importance of sharing evidence-based good practice partnerships.

In 2004, the author carried out a small scale study to find out the views of those living and working in private care homes in England about a range of issues connected to inspection, regulation and ways to better protect older people. This study reports on views from 19 managers and 19 residents about their understanding of abuse, their perceptions of the different forms of abuse and the possible action to deal with offending care staff. Although there was some consensus about the seriousness of certain types of abuse and how managers would investigate the allegation, the findings indicate that mandatory training for registered care home owners and managers is necessary to clarify their responsibilities in relation to their actions and the reporting of certain offences to relevant agencies. Residents' views also need to be taken seriously if they are to voice their opinions about life in a care home.

The Cameos of Care Homes project is an opportunity to use the medium of film to showcase the experiences and reflections of frontline care home staff whose employers participated in the National Health Service (NHS) England Vanguard programme. Reflecting on their involvement in one of the Enhanced Health in Care Homes Vanguards, 12 staff describe, in front of the camera, the impact on themselves and their colleagues, on their care for their older residents, and on the wider culture of the care home. The paper aims to discuss this initiative.

The paper reports the experiences of care home staff that were purposefully recorded on film about their participation in a care home Vanguard. The recruitment of the care homes and staff is described, as are the development of interview questions and approaches needed when filming is considered as a research method.

Participating care home staff reported that their involvement in the Vanguard programme had improved knowledge, confidence, morale, communication skills and the homes’ learning cultures. They were enthusiastic about reporting their experiences on film. Examples were given of proactive early support from local NHS staff leading to improvements in care, thereby reducing demand on the NHS. However, participation was resource intensive for care homes. Care home staff hoped the support that accompanied the Vanguard programme would continue but were uncertain to what degree this would happen once the Vanguard programme ceased.

The interviews were undertaken with a self-selecting group of care home staff from two care homes operating in one of the six Vanguard sites in England. By their very nature, interviews for a public film cannot provide anonymity.

Researchers seeking the views of care home staff may wish to consider filming interviews and presenting the film as a research output that is engaging and informative for care home and wider audiences.

The paper presents an analysis of filmed interviews with care home managers and care workers working with older people. Their views on the Vanguard initiative have not been widely considered, in contrast to the sizeable literature relating to NHS activity and expenditure.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the business and research context influences how female entrepreneurs construct their identities.

Focussing specifically on the care work sector, the analysis of interview transcripts explores how participants struggle to establish a positive identity through reconciling the contradictory subject positions produced at the intersection of entrepreneurialism and caring.

The accounts reveal a silencing of the participants entrepreneurial identity and an embracing of their female identity, reflected in the mobilisation of a number of highly gendered “selves”. This is explained in terms of the participants' desire for legitimacy and integrity, principally in the eyes of their employees, something which is itself prompted by the precariousness of their position as female business owners in this sector.

The identity work is theorised at a structural level, reinforcing the need for future accounts of identity work to consider how this is always embedded in broader material conditions.

Presents an alternative way of enacting entrepreneurship and thus broadens normative notions of what it is to be an entrepreneur.

The paper complements existing post‐structuralist accounts of entrepreneurship and also illustrates the role of both broader structural and local contextual factors which both constrain and enable the identity work enacted.

Precarious work, characterized by low wages, unpredictable schedules and hours, physical hazards, and stressful psychosocial conditions, is a significant problem in the twenty-first century US economy. It most harshly affects women, racial/ethnic minorities, and immigrants. Caring labor jobs often involve precarious work and home health aide jobs are among the most precarious of these. With an ageing population creating high demand and a decline in the number of available workers, a societal crisis looms. The purpose of this paper is to discuss a business form that could positively impact the home care work environment.

This paper reviews previous research to call for closer examination of worker cooperatives as a means to reduce precarious work among home health care workers.

Worker cooperatives provide opportunities for economic empowerment for impoverished and marginalized workers. Cooperative Home Care Associates, a worker cooperative in the home care industry, reports better outcomes to workers than similar conventionally governed businesses.

This paper reviews results of a study comparing three organizational forms in the home health industry. Although there are relatively few worker cooperatives in the USA, future research should investigate this structure both where there is a low-wage labor force, and in general.

Better outcomes for employees in the worker cooperative suggest that this is a viable business form for workers in precarious work environments.

The paper highlights the features of an organizational form that could help alleviate social ills caused by precarious work.

This paper considers the structure and function of a business form little studied in the management discipline. Based on their unique features and possibilities, worker cooperatives should be of interest to equality, diversity, and inclusion scholars; and to strategy, organizational behavior, and entrepreneurship scholars.

This chapter is a qualitative study on how an Early Childhood Educator Professional Development grant impacted early childhood educators and their literacy practices. This chapter also discusses how the grant impacted the researcher who was also an instructional specialist working with the educators as part of the professional development.

The professional development changed practitioners’ literacy practices by encouraging them to improve children's access to books, to increase read alouds, to change literacy activities and to improve access to writing materials. These changes were also reflected in the experiences of the instructional specialist who also altered her own life.

Reports surveys of managers and environmental health officers (EHOs) carried out at the Food Policy Research Unit between December 1990 and April 1993 to evaluate current food safety monitoring system and relations between the various parties involved in residential care homes. A high degree of consensus existed among EHOs on the potential hygiene risks in homes and their consequences for residents. In up to 60 per cent of homes these risks were more probable than possible, with fundamental defects such as inadequate cleanliness and poor kitchen design being found. Blame did not lie entirely with the management of these homes – when they turned to the local EHOs for help 80 per cent were dismayed to find a high degree of disparity in the advice offered by individual officers and a lack of accord even on basic issues. Greater collaboration with the other agencies responsible for monitoring standards in care homes and nationally agreed standards are essential to improve levels of food safety, protect vulnerable elderly people and maintain the credibility of the environmental health profession.

This paper examines job satisfaction and participation in decision making in three home health aide facilities with different organizational structures (worker-owned for-profit, for-profit with no participation or ownership by workers, and nonprofit).

More than 600 surveys were completed by home health aides across the three facilities. The author also engaged in participant observation during training sessions and other meetings and conducted a small number of interviews with caregivers and agency management.

Home health aides at the worker-owned, participative decision making organization were significantly more satisfied with their jobs than those at the other agencies. Results for the other agencies were not significantly distinguishable from one another.

This study involved respondents from one of each type of business. A study across several of each type of organization would allow more focus on the effects of the structural characteristics of the organizations.

In the United States, the work that home health aides perform provides a valuable service to society. On behalf of caregivers and those for whom they provide care, conditions of the work need improvement. If participative democratic workplaces provide better outcomes, they should receive more attention from lawmakers, the business community, and researchers.

This research highlights the working conditions of the people (primarily women) who perform this work. The poor compensation received is a reminder of inequality in opportunity for some workers and of the value placed on this type of caring labor.

This research is unique in its focus on work environment and outcomes in home health care across nonprofit, for-profit, and worker-owned for-profit organizations. The findings of different job satisfaction outcomes from the others in the worker-owned organization and similar outcomes in the nonprofit and conventional for-profit organizations are also unique.