Search results

The paper summarises some of the main results of a study of inter‐agency collaboration in the provision of community mental health services in one city in Britain. The research was based on interviews with service purchasers and providers in health, social services and the voluntary sector. The results suggest that, in spite of cordial working relationships and a historically stable organisational structure, collaboration between agencies in the provision of mental health services was being seriously damaged by contradictory central government policies of tight operational control yet fostering internal markets in purchasing and providing. It is recommended that research is urgently needed to assess the impact on vulnerable clients’ quality of life and level of functioning of changes in inter‐agency collaboration forced by the introduction of internal market mechanisms.

The pharmacological addition syndrome which integrates the complex factors involved in maintenance of smoking as a behaviour, has led to many attempts to find aneffective cessation treatment, either through replacement therapy or through behavioural programmes or a combination of both. Research carried out by the Wessex branch of Operation Smokestop, a project providing training, support and research for community‐based self‐help stop‐smoking groups, reveals that the problem may now be more fruitfully examined through a social and political framework. Such influences may prove to have more bearing on the suggested gender‐based differences in smoking and cessation than that of nicotine alone. Women smoke as a way of dealing with their daily lives. Health and addiction worries result in their greater numbers of attempts to stop smoking. Significant drops in prevalence for women are not found since they are more likely to relapse through their dependence and because girls are taking up smoking at a greater rate than boys. Women are not smoking more to be more like men but because they feel powerless and unable to change their cultural, social and political and economic environments. The results are based on 516 Smoking Patterns test questionnaires which produce a picture of an individual's smoking motivations based on seven factors.

The purpose of this paper is to review historical and contemporary union driven advances in gender and race equality within the movement and the workplace in order to show how far unions have come in the last 50 years, but also to identify continuing equality deficits.

As well as reviewing extant literature in order to provide historical background, the paper draws upon original analysis of the series of biennial TUC Equality Audits, the latest SERTUC equality survey and interviews with national union officers responsible for equality in large-, medium- and small-sized unions.

Over the last 50 years, unions have made considerable progress in representing women both in leadership and democratic structures as well as in the workplace bargaining and consultative arena. However, BAME members remain underrepresented in both domains. A hostile socio-economic/political context threatens to hinder further progress.

It is quite clear that the authors cannot assess unions’ current record on equality by reference only to outcomes and benefits of big set-piece organisation, industry or sector negotiations. Future research could usefully explore in more depth unions’ qualitative contribution to workplace equality practices in context of challenges in the internal and external environments.

Unions need to step up commitment to integrating equality into the bargaining agenda. They also need to continue investing in campaigning activities and identify ways of making successful outcomes more visible within the union, to members and to non-unionised workers. Workplace unions need to develop strategies to confront the fact that strong equality policies do not necessarily translate into good workplace practices.

The paper provides a long-term evaluation of union progress on equality within the movement itself and the workplace.

Addresses some of the key debates within the HRD literature and considers the extent to which HRD can be described as a field of study. The paper addresses the issues raised in the contributions that make up this special issue and identifies a broad range of methodologies and use of research methods. It argues that all of the contributions fit into at least one theoretical perspective: capabilities, psychological contacts and the learning organization/organizational learning. The paper concludes with a consideration of the prescriptions which the perspectives advocate for HRD in organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore models of community outreach to BME and faith communities in the London Borough of Harrow.

The paper explores community outreach with a specific emphasis on the delivery of community mental health services through partnership working with BME faith groups.

The paper considers models of community outreach to BME and faith communities and explores the impacts of service cuts and the emerging Big Society agenda on BME and faith groups.

Having identified some of the challenges that exist, solutions are proposed that can help to enhance the likelihood of achieving funding through delivering flexible innovative models of working which play to pre‐existing strengths.

At a time of service cutbacks when people are increasingly reliant on locally based BME communities to provide essential services, the role of information provision and basic training is critical in delivering culturally accessible and tailored services.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the relevance of intersectional theory (Crenshaw, 1989; Winker and Degele, 2011) in understanding how youth workers name themselves in their everyday lives. An intersectional approach will assist youth workers in developing a clear understanding of their own self as they work with young people from diverse and challenging backgrounds.

This research takes a qualitative approach, using in-depth interviews with cisgendered, female lesbian, gay and bisexual respondents of different social class, religion, ethnicity and age about their everyday experiences.

Intracategorical and anticategorical intersectional approaches (McCall, 2005) were used to assist in understanding how these professionals chose to name themselves in their personal and working lives.

The youth work literature, although focussed on the importance of issues of diversity, has not engaged with the ideas of intersectionality. The focus on intersections of sexuality, as well as social class, religion, ethnicity and age, fills another gap in the literature where less attention has been paid to the “category” of sexuality (Richardson and Monro, 2012; Wright, 2016b). These findings will be useful for youth workers and for practitioners and their trainers from a range of professional backgrounds such as therapists, social workers, teachers and health care practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the use of node-link mapping (NLM) on the effectiveness of a structured treatment for dual diagnosis for men living in a low-secure environment.

In total, 15 participants were recruited and randomly allocated to one of two conditions. The control group, treatment as usual (TAU) or the treatment group, TAU with NLM. Outcome measures used were: a qualitative evaluation form, The Alcohol and Illegal Drugs Decisional Balance Scale and the Brief Situational Confidence Questionnaire.

Results indicate no statistically significant difference for either group on the pre- and post-treatment outcome measures used. Qualitative data indicated that those using NLM reported the intervention as useful and instructive more often.

The results gained were only a snapshot of the intervention straight after treatment and did not take into account any long-term benefits of therapy such as substance use relapse rates. The outcome measures used may not have been properly understood by all respondents, or reflect practical change. The NLM tool may not have been used as confidently as TAU. The TAU condition needs to be reviewed to improve effectiveness, and NLM to be included to improve the accessibility. A study comparing other outcome tools needs to be completed. Training for staff using NLM may require coaching.

This paper has a high/low originality. It highlights a number of advantages to NLM when comparing this to TAU.

The aim of this paper is to give a critique of the extant literature on union commitment and participation in order to develop remedies to identified weaknesses

The paper uses a critical assessment of extant literature.

A number of critical deficiencies exist in the literature to which remedies are proposed.

The remedies need testing through empirical research.

Future research needs to have different research foci and questions.

With a reorientation of future research on union commitment, participation and leadership, unions may be better able to benefit from academic research in the area.

The paper suggests that a reorientation of future research on union commitment, participation and leadership will allow more incisive and more robust contributions to be made to understanding unions as complex social organisms.

This paper aims to identify critical factors that influence small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) suppliers’ involvement in their customers’ product development and contrast these with the factors identified from the customer perspective.

A multiple case study approach was used, including four companies. Data were collected through 32 semi-structured interviews, six workshops and documents.

A model is presented that merges this study’s nine identified critical factors with seven critical factors from the customer perspective. The model provides a dual perspective of supplier involvement in product development, wherein the supplier and customer perspectives are concurrently addressed. Some factors are unique for the supplier, but several mirror those on the customer side.

The study is based on data from SME suppliers in Northern Europe. As it is expected that SME companies are more constrained by limited resources, future studies could study critical factors at larger suppliers.

Customers and suppliers having insights about the critical factors can provide better conditions for product development for the other actor; for example, when evaluating customer–supplier integration.

The presented model of critical factors provides a more nuanced picture of supplier involvement in product development as prior research has been biased toward the customer perspective. This study emphasizes the importance of contextual information that has been unnoticed in the literature.

The development of free trade practices in the world market, together with the recent fluctuations on the international money market, is having an increasing impact on the small island economies, such as Mauritius. This paper, written from the practitioner’s point of view, discusses how the restructuring process is affecting female employees. Examples of corrective action being taken in favour of women, such as training programmes in entrepreneurship and leadership, are presented. The difficulties encountered in achieving the training objectives are reviewed and issues needing further attention to optimise the successful involvement of women in the upgrading of the Mauritian workforce are identified.