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Special guardianship order (SGO) assessments require social workers to make plans and recommendations for ongoing post-SGO contact between the child and the parents. However, there is very little policy to inform and guide practitioners on how these duties should be undertaken, and no studies that describe current practice. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the recommending of contact in special guardianship cases is currently working, by holding focus groups with social workers and special guardians. This paper reports on the results of a study to examine what contact plans social workers are recommending, the thinking behind their decisions and the views of the special guardians who have to make those plans work.

The research involved a mixed methods approach comprising of an online questionnaire, two focus groups for social workers and two focus groups for special guardians. This paper describes the second part of the study and reports on the qualitative results from the four focus groups. The methodology was based on a pragmatist theoretical position, and used an interpretivist approach and elements of the analytical procedure of grounded theory in order to generate inductive research. The focus group method was chosen as the best way to gather rich information on the opinions and ideas of practitioners who are recommending contact and the carers who are managing it.

Participants provided a wide range of views on the issues, with practitioners describing the challenges of planning contact, and special guardians explaining the problems they faced with the parents. Involving special guardians in the study gave a chance to include the different perspectives of the people who have to make the contact recommendations work, and contrast their views on contact planning with those of the professionals. The study makes recommendations for practice, which recognise the difficulty of preparing an initial contact plan that will remain relevant for years ahead.

The number of focus groups the author held was limited by the author’s own personal resources and the time the author had available, and one group only had three social workers on the day. The author’s involvement affected the responses, and the author’s questions dictated the issues that were commented on, but the answers were the opinions that the participants wanted to express. The nature of the approach means that no two sets of focus group results would ever be the same. And as the direction of the discussions was largely dictated by the participants, the coverage of all aspects of contact was probably inconsistent.

This research sheds light on a crucial area of social work permanency planning, that has suffered from a lack of previous research, in order to better inform future practice. The paper reports on what contact plans social workers are recommending, the thinking behind their decisions and the views of the special guardians who have to make those plans work. It concludes with recommendations for improving future special guardianship policy and practice.

The research clearly raises a number of specific difficulties faced by special guardians and problems with current policy and practice. These include the special guardians’ lack of understanding about contact, the difficulty for social workers of long-term planning, the challenge posed by uncooperative parents who behave badly, the view of carers for the need for a greater emphasis on the quality and reliability of contact, and the challenge to careful contact planning posed by the adversarial court process.

Special guardianship has had a major impact on permanency planning since its introduction 12 years ago. However, apart from one DfE study in 2014, very little research has been produced to inform policy and practice. There have been no studies specifically on contact in special guardianship cases, despite contact being one of the two major factors in determining the success of SGO placements. This study has provided the first in-depth evaluation of social worker contact planning in special guardianship, and the first investigation of special guardians’ views on contact.

The purpose of this study is to provide insights into value creation within a newspaper consumption community, adding to current information research by demonstrating how an atypical consumption community can co-create value in ways different from those identified in extant research. The upheaval of the newspaper industry’s business model and value chain in the face of digitalisation has led to significant decreases in newspaper revenue. To stay successful in the modern digital climate, it is essential for newspapers to utilise the interactive features of Web 2.0 to find new value sources. To do so, it is necessary to focus not just on tangible financial value but also symbolic value. The study supports the notion that consumers collectively co-create value through consumption community practices.

Through the conduction of a netnographic exploration of active consumers on the Guardian website and interviews with passive consumers, the study’s aims of understanding co-creation in digitally facilitated newspaper consumption environment were achieved.

The findings have opened up new ways in which newspapers can harness value through consumption communities as well as suggesting the future scope of research. This study indicates that newspapers foster an atypical environment for the creation of a cohesive consumption community – something that has failed to be appreciated in extant information research – because their diverse content influences the formation of multiple community pools with members who do not always share the same beliefs. In addition, the study reveals that the Guardian’s online consumption community co-creates value without strict adherence to the prescribed contingencies set out in current literature. The findings uncover new patterns in community behaviour proving value to be created not just through their co-consumption but also through individual consumption.

This study contributes to discussions on how communities co-create value and how this differs with different article subjects (lifestyle and political and types of participants, both active and passive).

This study illuminates the experiences of adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and intellectual disabilities (IDs) and their challenges and successes in receiving quality healthcare services. Individuals with developmental disabilities often experience health issues associated with aging at earlier ages and at higher rates than the general population. This population has a higher incidence of chronic health conditions that require regular medical attention.

The intent of this project was to learn directly from adults and their caregivers how well healthcare providers understand autism, explore their experience with how well their care is coordinated between primary healthcare and other specialty services, and identify factors which could impact access to care and to discover what other barriers which may potentially influence health outcomes for ASD adult.

A qualitative study conducted with semi-structured interviews with 12 adults diagnosed with ASD and/or their guardians/caregivers.

Some of the adults interviewed experienced negative health outcomes and suboptimal relationships with healthcare providers; others seemed to have positive relationships. Clinical and communications accommodations were necessary to make healthcare provision more comfortable. Barriers to accessing healthcare services existed in many forms.

The healthcare needs of the growing population adults diagnosed with ASD/ID are anticipated to be significant. This challenge is further exacerbated given there are few trained healthcare providers who are prepared or dedicated to serve this population. Continuing to build awareness of the health needs of the ASD/ID adult population is critical.

This project is highly innovative as it is the first attempt to understand how the adult autism population accesses care and perceives their healthcare interactions. This study serves as a starting point to suggest new opportunities for further research for this growing population.

The preparation of this paper was prompted by publicity and research evidence of neglect/abuse of older persons in residential care. It sets out to present a new way of combating neglect/abuse of individual residents, drawing also on preliminary findings from a long‐term research project on guardianship. This project, provisionally entitled Guardianship Relations: Models for ground rules, looks at the situations of all vulnerable persons irrespective of settings whereas the following notes concentrate on the need for guardians for persons who reside in homes for the elderly (residential care homes/RCHs).

The Group of Unmanned Assistant Robots Deployed in Aggregative Navigation by Scent (GUARDIANS) multi‐robot team is to be deployed in a large warehouse in smoke. The team is to assist firefighters search the warehouse in the event or danger of a fire. The large dimensions of the environment together with development of smoke which drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges for search and rescue operations. The GUARDIANS robots act alongside a firefighter and guide and accompany the firefighters on the site while indicating possible obstacles and the locations of danger and maintain communications links. The purpose of this paper is to focus on basic navigation behaviours of multi‐robot or human‐robot teams, which have to be achieved without central and on‐line control in both categories of GUARDIANS robots' tasks.

In order to fulfill the aforementioned tasks, the robots need to be able to perform certain behaviours. Among the basic behaviours are capabilities to stay together as a group, that is, generate a formation and navigate while keeping this formation. The control model used to generate these behaviours is based on the so‐called social potential field framework, which the authors adapt to the specific tasks required for the GUARDIANS scenario. All tasks can be achieved without central control, and some of the behaviours can be performed without explicit communication between the robots.

The GUARDIANS environment requires flexible formations of the robot team: the formation has to adapt itself to the circumstances. Thus, the application has forced the concept of a formation to be re‐defined. Using the graph‐theoretic terminology, it can be said that a formation may be stretched out as a path or be compact as a star or wheel. The developed behaviours have been implemented in simulation environments as well as on real ERA‐MOBI robots commonly referred to as Erratics. Advantages and shortcomings of the model, based on the simulations as well as on the implementation with a team of Erratics are discussed.

This paper discusses the concept of a robot formation in the context of a real world application of a robot team (Swarm).

Abuse and misuse of Substitute Decision-Making (SDMg) authority impacts the lives of children and adults with decision-making disabilities. The concerns raised in this paper amplify previous attention addressed by advocacy agencies and law reformists such as the Law Commission of Ontario. I analyse problems associated with Plenary Guardianship from both the lived experience of the non-guardian perspective and from the authority bestowed to the Guardian pursuant to the Guardianship and Administration Act 1990 of Western Australia legitimating the unintended capacity to abuse one’s substitute decision-making authority. Substitute decision-making arrangements enable decisions to be made on behalf of a person with a decision-making disability; usually made when such arrangements are necessary and subject to safeguards. Detrimentally, the substitute decision-maker (SDM) can assert broader powers beyond sensible measures that include thwarting investigations undertaken by family members; removing family members from the life of the person for whom an order is made; inappropriately applying a paternalistic or ‘best interest’ approach to decision-making where other approaches are required; failing to consider the individual’s wishes or making decisions contrary to those wishes; having insufficient contact with the individual; and, sharing insufficient or incorrect information. Moreover, they may subject the individual for whom an SDM order is made to experimental medical treatment in tandem with imposing or condoning severe and harmful restrictive-practices. Consequently, the second issue addressed in this paper concerns normalising both chemical and physical restrictive-practices that are both morally abhorrent and clinically highly questionable. Furthermore, often undertaken by service providers and their contracted psychiatrists and treating teams, endorsed under authority of a collaborating Guardian or SDM.

This study analyzes the impacts of trust in the confessional institution of primary education on a students’ spirituality and performance and the moderating effect of the families' religion on the relationship between trust in the school and the student's spirituality as perceived by parents and guardians.

This study takes the form of a survey with 346 parents and guardians from a Brazilian Adventist education network. The authors used partial least squares structural equation modeling by SmarPLS 4 to analyze the data.

The results reveal that parents' and guardians' trust in the confessional institution of primary education positively influences their perception of students' spirituality, which, in turn, has a positive impact on their performance. In addition, the families’ religion does not strengthen the relationship between school trust and students’ spirituality. It does not matter to which religious group the family belongs – as their overall spiritual development that favors the students’ academic performance.

The research contributes to the literature on school management, individual spirituality and relationship marketing – particularly customer relationship management in schools, involving parents, guardians and students.

Those seeking a new place to live – especially in the private rented sector – now head online to do so. The platforms they use and adverts they see are an important source of information about the properties they will occupy and how their owners’ seek to project them. This paper aims to argue for the importance of property adverts as a source of data, using “property guardianship” to illustrate the value in the approach.

The study draws on an analysis of 503 advertisements published on SpareRoom.co.uk – a leading property search engine – in July 2018.

The authors put forward four key areas of findings. The first two look at legal understanding, dealing with the context, the advertisement provides for eventual occupation (the “process of construction”) and any indications they provide of legal elements of occupation (“diagnostics”). The final two deal with the broader positioning of the sector, analysing the practice of excluding prospective occupiers, such as the widespread inclusion of “no Department of Social Security” seen elsewhere in the private rented sector, and how the adverts project a certain lifestyle to their viewer.

The findings demonstrate that further research into property advertisements would be valuable, particularly into other sub-markets in the private-rented sector, such as student accommodation and “professional” lets.

This study is the only analysis of property guardian advertisements and the first dedicated study of private rented sector advertisements in the UK.

Provides an update of the British Library funded project ‘The changing information environment’, which featured an analysis of Internet use at The Guardian/Observer. Desktop access to the Web has made a difference, but searching skills have not improved significantly. Nor have attitudes to training or indeed library staff. In the light of the events at The Guardian/Observer considers the status and future of librarians in the media.