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The purpose of this paper is to set out the similarities and differences between the legal frameworks for safeguarding children and adults. It presents the case for developing a Transitional Safeguarding approach to create an integrated paradigm for safeguarding young people that better meets their developmental needs and better reflects the nature of harms young people face.

This paper draws on the key principles of the Children Act 1989 and the Care Act 2014 and discusses their similarities and differences. It then introduces two approaches to safeguarding: Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP); and transitional safeguarding; that can inform safeguarding work with young people. Other legal frameworks that influence safeguarding practices, such as the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and the Human Rights Act 1998, are also discussed.

Safeguarding practice still operates within a child/adult binary; neither safeguarding system adequately meets the needs of young people. Transitional Safeguarding advocates an approach to working with young people that is relational, developmental and contextual. MSP focuses on the wishes of the person at risk from abuse or neglect and their desired outcomes. This is also central to a Transitional Safeguarding approach, which is participative, evidence informed and promotes equalities, diversity and inclusion.

Building a case for developing MSP for young people means that local partnerships could create the type of service that best meets local needs, whilst ensuring their services are participative and responsive to the specific safeguarding needs of individual young people.

This paper promotes applying the principles of MSP to safeguarding practice with young people. It argues that the differences between the children and adult legislative frameworks are not so great that they would inhibit this approach to safeguarding young people.

In England in recent years, concerns have been raised about the proportion of time social workers and other frontline children's social care practitioners spend carrying out desk‐based, administrative activities. This article aims to report time use activity data from front line workers on the amount of time spent on different activities to support children in need (as defined by the 1989 Children Act).

The data were collected from a range of sources including focus groups, event records (diaries completed by practitioners) and online surveys.

The proportion of time spent on direct and indirect activities varies according to the types of process. Those associated with ongoing support have the highest proportion of direct activity, whereas those associated with decision making, especially if a one‐off activity, have the highest proportion of administrative activities. The greater the needs of the child, the more direct and indirect support was given, but there was some variation across social work teams. But the activities of social workers are interconnected, making it difficult to provide conclusive evidence, but the concern about the imbalance between direct work and administrative tasks seems justified.

The findings highlight the complexity of exploring how social workers spend their time and how the proportion of time spent on direct and indirect activities is determined by the needs and circumstances of children and their families.

Wider contextual practice issues are also explored including the recent increases in referrals to children's social care and the use of electronic recording systems.

The breakdown of the activities using the approach outlined in the article increases transparency in understanding how social workers spend their time.

This paper discusses the importance of the Six Sigma selection process, describes a Six Sigma project in a higher educational institution and presents a weighted scorecard approach for project selection.

A case study of the Six Sigma approach being used to improve student support at a university computer help desk was used. An error related to the timeliness of service was defined and improved over the course of the project.

The Six Sigma approach was useful for improving timely service, but a methodology for selecting the project was needed by the project leader. Using such a methodology would have ensured higher probability of project success.

This framework provides directions for selecting a Six Sigma project in a higher educational setting. The weighted scorecard method is presented and may be used for selecting a project which would likely be the most efficient use of time and resources.

While project selection methodologies have been published with regard to Six Sigma projects in business, this paper fills the need for selection criteria as they relate to higher educational settings.

Coercive practices – which are used as means to manage violent/aggressive behaviour in secure forensic settings – have come under scrutiny in recent years due to their paradoxical effects on provoking further service user aggression and violence. Previous research has found relationships between increased service user aggression with both service users’ interpersonal styles and perceptions of staff coercion (i.e. staff limit setting). This paper aims to investigate whether forensic service users’ levels of interpersonal sensitivity to dominance increase levels of self-reported anger and rates of aggression towards staff through perceptions of staff coercion.

In a cross-sectional quantitative study design, 70 service users were recruited from one high and two medium secure forensic hospitals. Standardised measures were completed by service users and recorded incident data was collected within the past year. Correlation and mediation analyses were run to investigate the relationship between study variables.

A significant relationship was found between service users’ interpersonal sensitivity to dominance and self-reported rates of anger, where forensic service users’ who had higher levels of interpersonal sensitivity to others’ dominance were likely to report higher rates of anger. No significant relationships were found between all other study variables.

The findings from this study contradict previous research where coercive practices may not necessarily increase rates of aggression towards staff but, in the context of service users’ interpersonal sensitivities to dominance, it may be more useful to consider the way in which coercive practices are implemented.

There is a gap in the literature, which looks at the way in which forensic service users perceive coercive practices in relation to their interpersonal sensitivities and whether this too has an impact upon service user aggression.

The benefits of humor for general well‐being have long been touted. Past empirical research has suggested that some of these benefits also exist in the work domain. However, there is little shared understanding as to the role of humor in the workplace. The purpose of this paper is to address two main gaps in the humor literature. First, the authors summarize several challenges researchers face in defining and operationalizing humor, and offer an integrative conceptualization which may be used to consolidate and interpret seemingly disparate research streams. Second, meta‐analysis is used to explore the possibility that positive humor is associated with: employee health (e.g. burnout, health) and work‐related outcomes (e.g. performance, job satisfaction, withdrawal); with perceived supervisor/leader effectiveness (e.g. perceived leader performance, follower approval); and may mitigate the deleterious effects of workplace stress on employee burnout.

The authors examine the results of prior research using meta‐analysis (k=49, n=8,532) in order to explore humor's potential role in organizational and employee effectiveness.

Results suggest employee humor is associated with enhanced work performance, satisfaction, workgroup cohesion, health, and coping effectiveness, as well as decreased burnout, stress, and work withdrawal. Supervisor use of humor is associated with enhanced subordinate work performance, satisfaction, perception of supervisor performance, satisfaction with supervisor, and workgroup cohesion, as well as reduced work withdrawal.

Profitable avenues for future research include: clarifying the humor construct and determining how current humor scales tap this construct; exploring the role of negative forms of humor, as they likely have different workplace effects; the role of humor by coworkers; a number of potential moderators of the humor relationships, including type of humor, job level and industry type; and personality correlates of humor use and appreciation.

The authors recommend caution be exercised when attempting to cultivate humor in the workplace, as this may raise legal concerns (e.g. derogatory or sexist humor), but efforts aimed at encouraging self‐directed/coping humor may have the potential to innocuously buffer negative effects of workplace stress.

Although psychologists have long recognized the value of humor for general well‐being, organizational scholars have devoted comparatively little research to exploring benefits of workplace humor. Results underscore benefits of humor for work outcomes, encourage future research, and offer managerial insights on the value of creating a workplace context supportive of positive forms of humor.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

This article is an extended version of an ‘experts’ briefing' commissioned to inform senior child welfare managers in English local authorities and voluntary agencies about the available evidence to inform the provision of effective services in complex child protection cases. It starts by noting how differences in the approach to service provision in different jurisdictions affect both the nature of research conducted and its transferability across national boundaries. It then summarises the characteristics both of parents who are likely to maltreat their children and also of the children most likely to be maltreated. The factors that make some families ‘hard to engage’ or ‘hard to help/change’ are then discussed, as are the essential elements of effective professional practice in child protection. Particular attention is paid to effective approaches to helping families and young people who are hard to identify or engage.