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The purpose of this study was to review and make changes to the performance management process in place for teachers in a school for autistic children with learning disabilities. The performance management process consisted of line managers setting targets for their staff and points were given for targets met. Targets were related to improving outcomes for the children in the school. Teacher engagement in the performance management process was measured by the number of teachers reporting their points monthly and the number of points earned monthly.

The PDC (Austin, 2000) was conducted to determine changes to the process to improve teacher engagement with the performance management system. These changes to the performance management process consisted of an antecedent and information intervention (flowchart implemented summarising performance management process), equipment and processes interventions (change to graphing requirement, set rolling targets implemented) and consequence interventions (teachers set rolling targets to meet with their line manager regularly and to report on targets met monthly).

The number of teachers completing and submitting monthly summary forms increased following the changes made to the performance management process. The average number of points received increased significantly during the intervention. The intervention implemented following the use of the PDC led to increased teacher engagement in the performance management process and thus potentially improved the outcomes for the children within the school.

The PDC is a fairly simple tool to use to identify solutions to problems in the workplace. The procedure used herein is replicable across many settings and different workplace issues.

Service use between six and 11 years of age is reported for children adopted from Romania into UK families, and compared with that for children adopted within the UK before six months of age. Between six and 11, there had been only one adoption breakdown, and about one in ten couples experienced a marital breakdown. Apart from continuing concerns over hepatitis B carrier status in a small number of children, physical health problems were not a prominent feature. By contrast, nearly one‐third of the children from Romania placed in UK families after the age of six months received mental health services provision ‐ a rate far higher than the 11 to 15% in the groups adopted before the age of six months. Such provision was strongly related to research assessments of mental health problems and largely concerned syndromes that were relatively specific to institutional deprivation (quasi‐autism, disinhibited attachment and inattention/overactivity). There were similar differences between the UK adoptees and the adoptees from Romania entering the UK after six months of age in major special educational provision and, again, the findings showed that the provision was in accord with research assessments of scholastic achievement. The between group differences for lesser special educational provision were much smaller and there was some tendency for the early adopted groups to receive such provision for lesser degrees of scholastic problems than the children adopted from Romania who entered the UK after six months of age. The policy and practice implications of the findings are briefly discussed.

This study aims to explore the experiences of living through the COVID-19 pandemic for people who faced homelessness and dealt with mental health and/or substance use challenges.

This qualitative study was comprised of 26 1:1 interviews (16 men and 10 women), conducted between February and May 2021 with people who experienced homelessness in North East England during the COVID-19 pandemic. An inductive reflexive thematic analysis was undertaken, with input from individuals with lived experience who were involved throughout the study.

Four themes were developed. The first theme, lack of support and exacerbation of mental health and substance use difficulties, highlighted how the lack of in-person support and increased isolation and loneliness led to relapses or new challenges for many people’s mental health and substance use. The second theme, uncertainty and fear during the pandemic, explored how the “surreal” experience of the pandemic led to many people feeling uncertain about the future and when things would return to normal. The third theme, isolation and impacts on social networks, discussed how isolation and changes to relationships also played a role in mental health and substance use. Finally, opportunity for reflection and self-improvement for mental health and substance use, explored how some people used the isolated time to re-evaluate their recovery journey and focus on self-improvement.

The experiences shared within this study have important implications for planning the future delivery and commissioning of health and social care services for people facing homelessness, such as sharing information accessibly through clear, consistent and simple language.

As one of the few papers to involve people with lived experience as part of the research, the findings reflect the unique narratives of this population with a focus on improving services.

The benefits of including a psychosocial group programme alongside a medical inpatient detoxification and stabilisation regime has been recognised within addiction research; however, a “gold standard” psychosocial intervention has not been established. This small-scale study aimed to evaluate the psychosocial group (“Straight Ahead”) currently running at a substance use inpatient unit based in the UK.

A mixed-methods questionnaire design aimed to capture service user perspectives of the group programme via a questionnaire and assess whether an individual’s recovery capital and emotion regulation scores improved during their stay.

Thirty-four service users participated in the evaluation. Results indicate the group significantly increased individuals’ recovery capital scores; however, it did not significantly improve emotion regulation. The three themes from the qualitative results focused on the importance of shared experiences, learning of new skills and the group as a positive experience. Service users provided suggestions for improvements, and these informed the provision of service-specific recommendations for the team and project commissioner.

The evaluation provides tentative support for the use of the Straight Ahead programme and provides an insight into what service users find helpful when attending a psychosocial group during an inpatient detoxification admission.

This article reviews the contents of the previous year's editions of the Journal of Children's Services (Volume 2, 2007), as requested by the Journal's editorial board. It draws out some of the main messages for how high‐quality scientific research can help build good childhoods in western developed countries, focusing on: the need for epidemiology to understand how to match services to needs; how research can build evidence of the impact of prevention and intervention services on child well‐being; what the evidence says about how to implement proven programmes successfully; the economic case for proven programmes; the urgency of improving children's material living standards; how to help the most vulnerable children in society; and, lastly, the task of measuring child well‐being.

GREAT writers only too often go unrewarded in their life‐time and, while no one could say this of Walter de la Mare, winner of the Library Association Carnegie medal for an outstanding children's book published in 1947, it is pleasing that his writing for children should be thus rewarded. The book selected (Collected Stories for Children, Faber 10/6), contains old favourites like “The Scarecrow,” and “The Dutch Cheese.” Mr. de la Mare is especially fortunate in having found, in Irene Hawkins, an illustrator who can interpret his work so perfectly, and this volume is enhanced by her charming illustrations. One of the best anthologies for children is Mr. de la Mare's Come Hither and it is one that badly needs to be reprinted. Copies in public libraries are too well thumbed—a sure sign of popularity—but librarians hesitate to discard irreplaceable volumes of this kind.

We report the findings from a study exploring the experiences of individuals undergoing MRI scanning for research. Semi‐structured interviews took place before and after scanning with 17 participants; 12 were healthy volunteers and five were patients with a diagnosis of remitted depression. Themes of apprehension and curiosity prior to scanning were common in both groups. Patients were often confused about the procedure. Negative feelings were an issue at the outset, characterised by shock related to the physical surroundings, after which positive feelings, for example relaxation, were often experienced, and in the case of patients, learning more about their brain. Written information about imaging was deemed satisfactory; however the ability to ‘experience’ aspects of scanning beforehand was suggested. Scanning may be viewed as a process beginning prior to the procedure itself and involving positive and negative emotions. Increased information, reassurance and a more interactive intervention to reduce anxiety may be beneficial and may improve individuals' experience of this widely used procedure.

The 150th anniversary of Thomas Hardy′s birth is briefly noted and a number of recent publications on the author and his work are noted in the context of his corpus of critical material on him.

Myra Hindley is typically described as an ‘icon of evil’. In the 1960s, Hindley and her boyfriend Ian Brady sexually tortured and murdered at least two girls and three boys, aged between 10 and 17 years, in the Manchester area of the UK. All except one were sexually assaulted. She has provoked a huge amount of public commentary for more than three and a half decades after her conviction. This chapter asks how Hindley's actions were understood and interpreted at the time. Central themes are the concept ‘evil’, sexual violence, pornography, permissive society and patriarchy, as refracted through gender and class.