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Concerns about quality and standards of care in the nursing and residential home sector have exercised policymakers, managers and practitioners in both Australia and the UK for some years. While Australia is a relatively young country, demographically speaking, it has in place a coherent ‘aged care’ policy. The UK on the other hand, with its rapidly ageing profile, has only recently made a serious policy commitment to the health and social care agenda for older people. Australia therefore has several years of experience to be shared with the UK when it comes to policy and practice of quality improvement. In particular, there are valuable lessons to be learnt from Australia's national outcome standards and monitoring system for care homes, and its more recent introduction of a care homes accreditation system. Apart from identifying any issues associated with the implementation of such approaches to quality improvement, it is important to establish whether they have an impact on the quality of care and life of older residents. As the UK moves to implementing national minimum standards in 2002, lessons from Australia are timely and may help inform best practice and policy in long‐term care in the future.

Taking the views of the residents of homes into account is an important objective in the context of community care reforms. This article describes the development in Australia of a systematic, credible approach to realising that objective and recommends a similar application in the UK.

Engaging people from lower socio‐economic backgrounds in self‐management of their chronic disease(s) presents particular challenges (Walker & Peterson, 2003). A demonstration project (HealthPartners) targeting such clients with diabetes and/or cardiovascular disease, plus one or more co‐existing conditions and aged 50 years or older, has recently been co‐ordinated by the Canning Division of General Practice in Western Australia. Six new interventions for clients were developed, including one‐to‐one facilitation. Where the latter occurred, a key aspect of client management and commitment adopted by HealthPartners was joint preparation of action plans by client and facilitator. Such action plans covered issues identified, stage of change, goals, actions and progress (the extent to which actions specified in a previous plan had been carried out by the time the plan was revisited). The paper provides an overview of the action‐planning process and its outcomes, and the results of an impact assessment of the programme as a whole. To be effective in changing behaviour, it appears important for many clients to participate in a group with peers in a relevant activity.

Three expert commentaries have been written about the approaches to health and social care integration in Sandwell, Hertfordshire and Barking & Dagenham which were described in the last issue of this journal. They cover organisational, user/carer and international perspectives.

In response to a call for greater attention to the mental health promotion needs of older people, this study aims to identify those aspects of mental health messages that may be particularly effective with older audiences.

Individual interviews and focus groups were conducted with 111 Australians aged 40 years and older.

A low level of knowledge relating to mental health issues and the confounding of mental health with mental illness resulted in participants stating a preference for health experts, government officials, and high‐profile and “everyday” individuals who have successfully recovered from mental illness as spokespeople for mental health messages. A common theme was that spokespersons should have evident and extensive knowledge of .mental illness, either through qualifications, occupation, or personal experience.

The findings demonstrate the highly negative connotations surrounding mental illness and the lack of familiarity with the concept of positive mental health. There is much scope to educate the public about the importance of staying mentally healthy and how this outcome may be achieved.

This paper draws upon findings from a secondary analysis of suspected financial abuse cases in files of the Guardianship and Administration Tribunal in Queensland, Australia. The paper explores the association between formal and semi‐formal asset management arrangements and suspected financial abuse cases. The role of families as formal asset managers is also considered.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of cognitive diversity on strategic issue interpretation among the boards of directors making sense of sustainability management. The study also investigated the centrality of the corporate sustainability issues to identify common interpretative patterns in the shared cognitive maps among the companies. In addition, the aim was to advance quantitative methods for the analysis of decision-makers’ cognition.

The research was an exploratory study analyzing 43 individual cognitive maps collected through surveys from the boards of nine cleantech companies. For the elicitation of the cognitive maps, the study used the hybrid cognitive mapping technique. The diversity of the shared cognitive maps was analyzed using the distance ratio formula and the graph analysis method with eigenvector to measure the centrality of the strategic issue interpretation in the maps.

This study provides evidence through the analysis of distance ratios on the existence of cognitive diversity among companies within the same industry. Surprisingly, despite the cognitive diversity, the study identified strong common patterns on strategic issue interpretations among the companies. In addition, the study shows that the sustainability management issues have gained minor attention from the boards of directors.

The initial industry sample provided relatively restricted perspectives on managerial cognition, and to confirm the findings regarding the effects of industry on the shared cognitive maps of top decision-makers, wider industry-level data are needed.

This study provides an approach to facilitate the process of strategic decision-making for top decision-makers by identifying the shared beliefs of the selected strategic theme and to concentrate on the most central strategic issues in the company and industry. It reveals asymmetry between the significance of sustainability issues in an open agenda and the real position of sustainability concepts in the shared cognitive maps in the green industry. Also, the study advances cognitive mapping techniques for application in the board’s decision-making.

This paper contributes to brightening the black box of corporate governance by shedding light on the interaction of the concepts of corporate sustainability and other key strategic issues within the shared cognitive maps of the boards. It also provides new empirical knowledge on top decision-making processes and the effects of cognitive diversity on the strategic issue interpretations within the corporate boards of the green industry, and it further develops the methodology for the quantification of cognitive diversity and the content of cognitive maps.

The proportion of the population aged 65 and over is rapidly rising and is expected to reach 24.3 per cent by 2031, up from 12 per cent in 2006. As a result, the Hong Kong government is facing challenges in meeting the growing demand for residential care homes. To provide a clear picture for construction professionals engaged in the future design and operation of such homes, it is first necessary to understand the opinions of end‐users in existing facilities. The paper aims to identify key facilities management (FM) components in three particular areas of residential care homes.

In order to collect data from end‐users, a questionnaire survey of 119 end‐users (both elderly residents and staff) based on post‐occupancy evaluation (POE) was used to evaluate the FM performance of the homes and establish the relationships between the comfort levels of FM components and the satisfaction of elderly residents.

The findings in the questionnaire survey indicated that all 16 key FM components were significantly related to the satisfaction with the home, while space planning, temperature, ventilation, privacy, finishes, and staff were the factors predicting satisfaction with different areas.

The paper makes a number of practical recommendations to government and construction professionals for improving the residential care environment, including a wide corridor with short distance and a low‐speed air‐conditioning machines in the common areas. In the bedroom, designers are recommended to install some partitions in terms of privacy and consider the microclimate carefully. In the bathroom, the use of lifting devices, louver doors, sufficient ventilation and a stable hot water supply are beneficial for the elderly's satisfaction.

Post‐occupancy evaluation is a commonly used tool to evaluate FM performance based on the end‐user's perspective. The study innovatively investigates the impact of different FM components on elders' satisfaction degree by application of POE.

Given the aging population and resulting increase in the demand for residential care and attention (C & A) homes in Hong Kong, the government has allotted funds to provide better care services for the elderly. However, such appropriation seems to have focused on creating additional places, rather than improving the quality of services. The elderly may face risks if they are not provided with proper facilities to assist with activities of daily living (ADL), while those suffering from various diseases may be at even greater risk. In order to mitigate such risk and hence enhance the quality of facility management (FM), this paper aims to identify the major components of FM in C & A homes and investigate the relationships between these components and the risks and diseases facing elderly residents.

In total, 81 questionnaires were completed by elderly residents of C & A homes, evaluating their perceived comfort level with FM components, their disease status and the frequency of occurrence of various specified risks. Relationships between these variables were then established by Pearson correlation and partial correlation analyses.

In total, 13 FM components were identified, of which only four (space planning, noise, signage and catering) had significant relationships with the identified risks. Some of these relationships were moderated by specific diseases.

The relatively small sample size, with 81 respondents from seven homes, may limit the generalisability of the results. However, the study establishes a platform for conducting further large-scale surveys of elderly residents in different types of C & A homes. On the other hand, further investigation of the specific FM requirements of elderly residents suffering from various diseases is also encouraged.

This paper confirms that close relationships exist between various FM components, risks and diseases relevant to elderly residents in C & A homes. The results indicate that the FM components of space planning, noise, signage and catering should be addressed in order to reduce the risks such residents face.