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There has been much research focusing on contracting and its effect on individual voluntary sector organisation, and some mapping of the extent of voluntary sector participation in joint community care planning. Each of these is a new and formal relationship with the statutory sector, and in many cases the tasks are fulfilled by the same voluntary sector worker (usually the senior paid officer of the agency). But the impact that these two new relationships have on the voluntary organisation’s perception of its dependence and inter‐dependence has received less attention. The paper will draw on structured interviews in three local authorities, with voluntary sector participants in contracts for social care, and with participants in joint community care planning groups, as well as on documentary research. It will explore the impact of the evolving roles for those seeking to operate effectively in the pluralist provision of public services. It will analyse experiences within joint community care planning structures, and will analyse experiences of contractual relationships. The paper will seek to identify the elements present in each research site which influence the culture of joint working within the two statutory/ voluntary relationships.

Learning disability services have been at the forefront of attempts to develop effective joint working between health and local authority agencies. There is now an emergent framework for commissioners to work together and some, albeit patchy, experience of doing so. Joint commissioning has demonstrated potential benefits for service users, though there is still considerable scope for widening the range of stakeholders and more firmly establishing it in the host organisations.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how cross-functional integration supports the execution of the demand-side processes and its effects on both the demand and supply-side processes.

A case study was conducted including a Brazilian multinational manufacturer in the automobile industry and some of its suppliers and dealers. 17 interviews were conducted. A theoretical framework is proposed containing five basic elements, they are: characteristics of the demand/supply processes; involved functions; integration factors; context influencers and impacts of integration on demand and supply processes.

The findings present three demand-side processes (Product Launch, Marketing and Sales and Demand Planning) that demonstrated a greater need for cross-functional integration in the studied case, mainly through informal integration factors.

The empirical results of this study have methodological limitations due to the use of the case study method. Future research should analyze the effects of other context influencers (e.g. natural catastrophes, civil wars and low level of unemployment) on cross-functional integration.

The results highlight that joint planning, willingness to work together, team spirit, adequate communication and cross-functional meetings helped the studied organizations to achieve competitive advantages and improve their performance.

This study provides a theoretical framework that helped to improve the understanding of the interrelationships between demand management constructs and cross-functional integration factors. There are indications that a political–economic crisis has stimulated the existence of a willingness to work together and group spirit among employees who remain in the organization after mass dismissals. This climate of cooperation helped to increase the agility and resilience of the studied supply chain, which is currently affected by a changing market.

Reviews key elements of the Joint Planning Group’s proposals for new quality assurance arrangements. Identifies some challenges, prospects and opportunities for institutions arising in the context of the proposed arrangements. Notes the Joint Planning Group’s emphasis on partnership and argues that a focus on self‐regulation may provide the basis of a way forward for future development for the sector, the new quality agency and those who contract with it.

The Manchester Healthy City project has carried out a major consultation with communities over the action plan for the Healthy City initiative. The four clear themes were housing and homelessness, the environment, crime and disorder, and mental health. These have formed the basis for key areas of work in which housing takes a lead role. This article will identify some of the joint initiatives which are going on in the various areas of strategic planning, commissioning and service delivery.

Government ministers have stressed that inter‐agency co‐ordination will be crucial to the success of their community care proposals. Yet the history of collaboration between health and local authorities has been one of limited achievements. Notwithstanding this general record there are a growing number of examples of apparently successful co‐ordination; moreover, amongst these are projects involving joint management, which is inter‐agency co‐ordination at its most complex. This article reports on a detailed study of five such projects, across a range of client groups, undertaken on behalf of the Department of Health. We found that the essence of such schemes is their fragility and vulnerability to a range of organisational pressures. We concluded that these pressures are sufficient to threaten the survival of newly established projects unless managers address certain key imperatives which we outline here.

The Author Reviews fourteen papers from localities throughout England outlining developments in collaborative approaches to mental health services. She considers how effective they are likely to be, in the light of evaluation and research.

This paper describes the development of an evaluation framework to document the process, impact and outcomes of a community‐based mental health promotion project. This initiative, the Rural Mental Health Project, is concerned with the promotion of positive mental health in rural communities in the Republic and Northern Ireland. As a community‐based initiative, this project involves multi‐component interventions that are implemented with diverse target groups across a range of community settings. Assessing the process of programme implementation is critical in order to capture and document the realities of programme planning and implementation. The evaluation approach adopted in this project is based on a logic model research paradigm (Scheirer et al, 1995). This model gives equal emphasis to process and outcome evaluation and seeks to relate the realities of programme implementation to intended programme outcomes. Project activity is tracked prospectively in order to examine the detail of actual programme delivery and its influence on expected project outcomes. This paper outlines the model as applied in this project and explores the methodological and practical challenges in evaluating complex community interventions.

The successful application of the group of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the tasks of monitoring large areas is becoming a promising direction in modern robotics. This paper aims to study the tasks related to the control of the UAV group while performing a common mission.

This paper discusses the main tasks solved in the process of developing an autonomous UAV group. During the survey, five key tasks of group robotics were investigated, namely, UAV group control, path planning, reconfiguration, task assignment and conflict resolution. Effective methods for solving each problem are presented, and an analysis and comparison of these methods are carried out. Several specifics of various types of UAVs are also described.

The analysis of a number of modern and effective methods showed that decentralized methods have clear advantages over centralized ones, since decentralized methods effectively perform the assigned mission regardless of on the amount of resources used. As for the method of planning the group movement of UAVs, it is worth choosing methods that combine the algorithms of global and local planning. This combination eliminates the possibility of collisions not only with static and dynamic obstacles, but also with other agents of the group.

The results of scientific research progress in the tasks of UAV group control have been summed up.

Knowledge of what makes for quality in adult learning disabilities services does not cascade directly down into grassroots practice. It is instead severely filtered and variously diluted through layers of national policy, local strategy and administrative complexity. In the current difficult climate, quality is not obtained without exposure to the strains and stresses inherent in the dynamics of the health and welfare bureaucracies and their attempts at partnership. Following a largely chronological and descriptive account of attempts to change and develop services in the Greater Glasgow area in the mid‐1990s, consideration is given to the effect of these ‘filters’ in the context of the Greater Glasgow Joint Learning Disability Project.