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This viewpoint piece will highlight the contribution of trained lay community health workers to the integrated workforce in rural, remote and island settings, drawing on experience from a system strengthening project involving community health agents (CHAs) in four municipalities in Litoral Norte, a remote coastal and island region in the state of São Paulo, Brazil.

This viewpoint reflects on experiential learning from a unique north–south collaboration that spanned the period of a global pandemic. It adds to the international literature on the value of community health workers in public health and chronic disease management and highlights their potential pivotal role as integrators at point of care.

CHAs took forward actions that touched the lives of thousands of vulnerable families with low income and complex needs in communities with high levels of social and health inequalities. They acted as a bridge between patients and families at home, primary healthcare professionals and wider community partners and services. Their valuable insight into the healthcare issues and social challenges experienced by the community informed and supported family centred practice and population health goals. The CHAs rapidly pivoted to became an essential public health workforce during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As the authors establish integrated care systems and embrace proactive care and population health, the conditions are favourable for introducing a similar role in the UK. For psychological safety and avoidance of burnout people in such new roles will require training, supervision and full integration within community teams.

This viewpoint reflects experiential learning from a unique north–south collaboration that spanned the period of a global pandemic. It adds to the international literature on the value of community health workers in public health and chronic disease management and highlights their potential pivotal role as integrators at point of care.

This paper provides an overview of an improvement project that explored whether the implementation of IoRN2, a validated freely available tool designed for any health or social care professional to use, resulted in improved conversations across professions within an integrated rehabilitative reablement service.

A qualitative descriptive evaluative approach was applied underpinned by quality improvement Lean and Total Quality Management (TQM) to capture perceptions, variables and IoRN2 value-add. Professionals' (N = 8) across Nursing, Allied Health Professions, Social Work, Quality Improvement and Support Workers participated in one-to-one semi-structured <1 h interviews. Recurring themes and experiences were identified.

IoRN2 improved collaborative conversations. The evaluation of the tool demonstrated greatest impact when all professionals were IoRN2 trained. Participants, regardless of profession, believed that their conversations, professional relationships and outcomes improved when using IoRN2. When differing judgments arose with colleagues who were not IoRN2 trained, fear and tension emerged around trust, cultural manners and power play causing disconnects. Incorporating IoRN2 led to psychologically safe environments where trust, confidence and motivation to explore new creative conversations enhanced strength-based outcomes and helped to generate transformational change.

The small sample size offered transferable learning worthy of larger future study. The project lead was also the reablement service manager, which may have generated unintended influence.

IoRN2 has the potential to improve how HSC professionals converse, acting as a catalytic tool for system-level integration, transformation and sustainable improvement.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether formal authority of the HR department has any impact on line managers’ evaluations of HR department effectiveness.

Two studies were conducted in Vietnam. Study 1 comprised a survey of 405 line managers to test the hypothesized model. Study 2 comprised a survey conducted with 155 line managers validated the findings from Study 1. Structural equation modeling and PROCESS macro were used to analyze the data.

Line managers’ perceptions of the HR department’s formal authority had a positive and indirect impact on HR department effectiveness through the HR department’s strategic involvement and influence. Public sector line managers tended to perceive their HR departments as possessing a higher level of formal authority than did their private sector counterparts.

This study extends the theory of political influence as it applies to the HR department. Specifically, the study provides empirical evidence of the influences of an organization’s political conditions on the perceptions of HR department effectiveness. This study also contributes to the extant literature on HRM in Vietnam by showing how Vietnam’s HR departments can utilize power and influence in accordance with specific ownership types.

Public sector HR managers could establish their formal authority among stakeholders as a way to enhance the recognition of HR department effectiveness. This can be done by relying on the presence of the traditional bureaucratic characteristics of the public sector which confer the HR department with formal authority.

The study contributes an understanding of the determinants of HR department effectiveness in the context of Vietnam. Research findings show that highly formal authority practices in the public sector affect the way line managers perceive the strategic involvement of the HR department. The more formal the authority, the more the public sector HR department is perceived to be involved in the strategic management process. Thus, formal authority is a prerequisite that public sector HR departments need to signal its importance among line managers. To have a long-term influencing role in the organization, the HR department in the public sector needs to develop its political and influencing skills. In contrast to this, the private sector HR department needs to develop a strategic partnership with line managers in order to increase its influence and perceived effectiveness.

Blues music is in the midst of its second revival in popularity in roughly thirty years. The year 1960 can be identified, with some qualification, as a reference point for the first rise in international awareness and appreciation of the blues. This first period of wide‐spread white interest in the blues continued until the early seventies, while the current revival began in the middle 1980s. During both periods a sizeable literature on the blues has appeared. This article provides a thumbnail sketch of the popularity of the blues, followed by a description of scholarly and critical literature devoted to the music. Documentary and instructional materials in audio and video formats are also discussed. Recommendations are made for library collections and a list of selected sources is included at the end of the article.

Discusses the correspondence and use of each other′s ideas of Loeb and Veblen which are seen to be significant both in understanding the evolution of their own thought and as commentary on the times.

Evaluates the various functions of the British collective agreement, for example, its legal enforceability, agency and aspects of incorporation. Brings the discussion into the European context in relation to these issues. Cites a number of case law examples. Suggests that the UK may be in a “transitional phase between collective bargaining and a consensus culture between trade unions and management”. Concludes that the Labour government is attempting to steer a middle way between US‐style individualism and European‐style social partnership.

There are very few individuals who have studied the question of weights and measures who do not most strongly favour the decimal system. The disadvantages of the weights and measures at present in use in the United Kingdom are indeed manifold. At the very commencement of life the schoolboy is expected to commit to memory the conglomerate mass of facts and figures which he usually refers to as “Tables,” and in this way the greater part of twelve months is absorbed. And when he has so learned them, what is the result? Immediately he leaves school he forgets the whole of them, unless he happens to enter a business‐house in which some of them are still in use; and it ought to be plain that the case would be very different were all our weights and measures divided or multiplied decimally. Instead of wasting twelve months, the pupil would almost be taught to understand the decimal system in two or three lessons, and so simple is the explanation that he would never be likely to forget it. There is perhaps no more interesting, ingenious and useful example of the decimal system than that in use in France. There the standard of length is the metre, the standard of capacity the cubic decimetre or the litre, while one cubic centimetre of distilled water weighs exactly one gramme, the standard of weight. Thus the measures of length, capacity and weight are most closely and usefully related. In the present English system there is absolutely no relationship between these weights and measures. Frequently a weight or measure bearing the same name has a different value for different bodies. Take, for instance, the stone; for dead meat its value is 8 pounds, for live meat 14 pounds; and other instances will occur to anyone who happens to remember his “Tables.” How much simpler for the business man to reckon in multiples of ten for everything than in the present confusing jumble. Mental arithmetic in matters of buying and selling would become much easier, undoubtedly more accurate, and the possibility of petty fraud be far more remote, because even the most dense could rapidly calculate by using the decimal system.