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There is a need to increase access to HIV testing in the UK in male migrant communities. The purpose of this paper is to assess the uptake and acceptability of a workplace HIV testing intervention aimed at increasing access to testing in non-clinical settings.

A total of 20 health check events were delivered at 11 UK organisations employing male migrant workers. Intervention included HIV testing, cholesterol, BMI, blood glucose, blood pressure; tailored health advice; take-away resources; optional post-event text reminders about HIV and general health. Mixed-methods evaluation included exit questionnaires (n=771), follow-up text messages (n=465) and qualitative interviews (n=35) to assess event acceptability. Qualitative data were analysed thematically.

Attendees were 776 employees from 50 countries (51 per cent male; 30 per cent migrant workers). A total of 52 per cent of attendees undertook an HIV test (75 per cent were first-time testers). In total, 96 per cent considered HIV testing to be an acceptable element of workplace health checks; 79 per cent reported new health-related knowledge; 60 per cent of attendees opted for follow-up text messaging; 26 per cent of text respondents reported independently taking HIV test post-event. High acceptability and uptake of HIV testing was associated with convenience, opportunity taking (through removal of deliberation and intentional test-seeking), and normalisation of HIV testing within a general health check.

This study is the first to demonstrate that opt-in HIV testing can be successfully delivered in the workplace within a multi-component health check. The workplace is an effective means of increasing access to HIV testing in groups at risk for HIV, including male migrant workers.

With the objective of encouraging the use of standard processes for exploring offenders' narratives two complementary procedures are discussed. One is a development of McAdams explorations with highly effective individuals, describing their life as if it were a book. This is a structured interview protocol that has been specifically produced for use with offenders, in which they describe their life as a film (LAAF). A number of studies with male and female incarcerated individuals as well as those without convictions have revealed important differences between people in how they give a free account of their past and future lives. This allows the differentiation of LAAF narratives and reveals the existence of dominant narrative forms in offenders' responses. These relate to those initially elaborated by Frye (1957) for fiction, namely tragedy, comedy, adventure and romance. The second method is the Narrative Role Questionnaire (NRQ) which elicits the inherent role that offenders saw themselves as playing during specific crimes. Completion of the NRQ by various samples reveals important differences between offences in the narratives that provide the agency for their criminal actions. The roles central to these narratives have also been found to embody distinct emotional components that maintain offending. Taken together the NRQ and the LAAF provide a framework for examining offence narratives which enables the main narratives of relevance to criminality to be identified and their implications for theory and practice to be elaborated.

This research aims to explore the perceived usefulness of audited social information in making economic decisions, in the eyes of both Tunisian financial analysts and bankers.

The authors conduct an exploratory qualitative study using twelve semi-structured interviews: seven are carried out with financial analysts, and five are performed among bankers.

This study’s results reveal that financial analysts and bankers paid little attention to the audited social information in making investment/credit granting decisions. The authors also show that the low perceived usefulness of social audit is due to many reasons related to political, economic, regulatory, educational, cultural and cognitive factors.

This study contributes to the current literature in several ways. First, it enriches the knowledge about the perceived usefulness of social audit. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the perception of financial analysts and bankers to audited social information and its usefulness for decision-making. Second, the focus on the Tunisian context is interesting as it was marked, since the outbreak of the Jasmine Revolution, by the uncertainty and the instability of political, economic and social conditions. Third, this research goes further by exploring the most important factors affecting the perceiveness of social auditing.

The digital library is a socio‐technical concept of great significance. It redefines the relationships between information providers and intermediaries and, potentially, transforms the way that services are delivered to users. This article, based on a British Library Research & Innovation Centre funded study, reviews current themes and directions in digital library research and scholarship. It locates the digital library in a simple work‐oriented framework emphasising its social as well as its systems and informational dimensions. The article highlights differences in understanding of the digital library construct between the library and computer science communities and identifies some critical areas for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a personal insight from a retired care professional into attitudes to the ageing process and being old. It shows how moving to another country in later life can improve quality of life.

The paper is an invited opinion piece and comment based on the author's experiences in dealing with their own ageing. It is an autobiographical account which challenges conventional views about the expected ways to meet the challenges of ageing.

Retirement need not lead to a “static” view of one's life. Meeting the challenge of moving to another country in later life can lead to new and renewed friendships, improvements in memory in learning a new language and developing enhanced awareness of other cultures. Moving house and home can be a stimulating adventure even when one is older.

Personal insights from experienced care professionals can demonstrate ways of responding to the challenge of ageing that are constructive and positive. It could encourage others to take up and confront their own forms of “adventure” as they grow older.

The more recent history of the National Health Service, especially the Hospital Service, has been in the nature of a lumbering from one crisis to another. From the moment of its inception it has proved far more costly than estimated and over‐administered, but in the early years, it had great promise and was efficient at ward level, which continued until more recent times. As costs increased and administration grew and grew, much of it serving no useful purpose, there appeared to be a need for reorganisation. In 1974, a three‐tier structure was introduced by the establishment of new area health authorities, the primary object of which was to facilitate — and cheapen — decision making; to give the district bodies and personnel easier access to “management”. It coincided with reorganisation of Local Government, which included the transfer of all the personal health services and abolition of the office of medical officer of health. At the time and in looking back, there was very little need for this and reviewing the progress and advances made in local government, medical officers of health who had advocated the transfer, mainly for reasons of their own status, would have achieved this and more by remainining in the local government service; the majority of health visitors appear to have reached the same conclusion. They constitute a profession within themselves and in truth do not have all that much in common with day‐to‐day nursing. The basic training and nursing qualification is most essential, however. It has been said that a person is only as good a health visitor as she is a nurse.

A structured sticker for examination of women in labour was introduced at Arrowe Park Hospital in 1998 to improve documentation of examination findings. This study was undertaken to assess whether the use of the sticker improved documentation of examination findings and second, compliance of sticker use. A retrospective analysis was performed on 64 cases randomised by random number generated on Arcus Quickstat from 470 women who were induced by prostaglandin during 1 January 1998 to 31 December 1998 at Arrowe Park Hospital. Women were induced by prostaglandin were chosen as the study population to obtain data from early labour. A total of 229 examinations were performed in these areas. Statistical analysis was undertaken on Arcus Quickstat, and χ² and Fisher’s exact tests were applied to check for statistical significance.

It tends to be called the corner shop, mainly because it occupied a corner building for extra window space, but also due to the impetus given to the name by television series seeking to portray life as it used to be. The village grew from the land, a permanent stopping place for the wandering tribes of early Britain, the Saxons, Welsh, Angles; it furnished the needs of those forming it and eventually a village store or shop was one of those needs. Where the needs have remained unchanged, the village is much as it has always been, a historical portrait. The town grew out of the village, sometimes a conglomerate of several adjacent villages. In the days before cheap transport, the corner shop, in euphoric business terms, would be described as “a little gold mine”, able to hold its own against the first introduction of multiple chain stores, but after 1914 everything changed. Edwardian England was blasted out of existence by the holocaust of 1914–18, destroyed beyond all hope of recovery. The patterns of retail trading changed and have been continuously changing ever since. A highly developed system of cheap bus transport took village housewives and also those in the outlying parts of town into busy central shopping streets. The jaunt of the week for the village wife who saw little during the working days; the corner shop remained mainly for things they had “run out of”. Every village had its “uppety” madames however who affected disdain of the corner shop and its proprietors, preferring to swish their skirts in more fashionable emporia, basking in the obsequious reception by the proprietor and his equally servile staff.