Search results

Democratic Therapeutic Communities (TCs) provide an environment for offenders to work on longstanding emotional and relational problems and address their offending behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to explore the experience of making psychological changes on a TC from the perspective of residents.

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to explore the experience of five former residents of the TC at HMP Gartree.

Four main themes emerged, each with two sub-themes: Motivation to Change (sub-themes: Engagement, Determination); Environment (sub-themes: Boundaries, Experience of care); Removal of Masks (sub-themes: Embracing vulnerability, Emerging authenticity) and Relationships (sub-themes: Re-enacting the past, Challenge from peers). Findings are discussed in relation to existing literature.

Understanding service users perspectives on what helps facilitate change can help staff empathise with their experiences and strengthen their relationships. The importance of clear and consistent boundaries that are perceived as fair and the development of meaningful relationships with staff in creating an atmosphere that enables change has implications for other therapeutic or supportive environments. This research represents the experiences of five participants who were motivated to take part and comfortable to speak to a professional about their experiences. As such, generalisations about the wider TC population should be made cautiously and further research would be beneficial.

The research adds to the underrepresented area of service user perspectives in a forensic TC. It contributes a rich account of the experience of psychological change that can help staff working in TCs understand and relate to their residents experiences.

Nicotine is widely known as a tobacco constituent and for its use as a tobacco cessation aid. The development of new devices for nicotine delivery in recent years has led to uncertainty among consumers regarding the health risks of nicotine relative to tobacco. The purpose of this study was to discover if current and former consumers of tobacco and tobacco harm reduction (THR) products could distinguish between “nicotine” and “cigarettes” and examined the preceding media dialogue to determine if conflicting messages by the media influence public perceptions.

A quantitative survey was administered online in Norway (NO), Japan (JP), the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US), while face-to-face computer-aided interviews were conducted with randomly selected samples in India (IN), Greece (GR) and South Africa (SA). Participants were between 18 and 69 years of age and either current users of tobacco and THR products or previous users who quit within the past five years. Questions assessed beliefs about harmfulness of nicotine. Nicotine and other products and substances were also independently rated for harmfulness on a scale of 1–10 and subsequently compared. In addition, the authors examined the media dialogue of top media outlets in four countries to assess the potential influence on people’s beliefs.

A total of 54,267 participants (NO: 1,700, JP: 2,227, UK: 2,250, USA: 2,309, IN: 41,633, GR: 1,801, SA: 2,359) were sampled with the percentage of women participants ranging from 14.8% (IN) to 53.8% (UK). Between 68.3% (men, IN) and 88.7% (men, USA) of current consumers believed nicotine is harmful. Current consumers who agreed with the statement that nicotine is the primary cause of tobacco-related cancer ranged from 43.7% (men, UK) to 78.0% (men, SA). In six countries nicotine was rated nearly as harmful as cigarettes and alcohol, while other substances such as sugar, salt or caffeine, were usually rated as less harmful.

A large proportion of consumers across all surveyed countries view nicotine and cigarettes similarly. Clearer communication on the harmful properties of both by the media is needed to help consumers make informed decisions about products across the continuum of risk. Messaging to consumers, especially via the media, propagates misinformation about the relative harms of tobacco and nicotine through reporting that is often incomplete and biased toward more negative aspects.

This study specifically assessed public perceptions of nicotine as opposed to products containing nicotine, which is the focus of previous studies. Apart from showing that consumers often incorrectly perceive nicotine and cigarettes as similar in terms of harmfulness, the authors highlight the need for more accurate and complete reporting by the media to clarify widespread misunderstandings and mitigate public uncertainty.

The PRIME contract is revolutionising the property industry. It has enabled the UK Government’s Department of Social Security to outsource not just its facilities management and property management but also its entire property portfolio and the risks associated with it. PRIME will provide the Department with 22 per cent cost savings over the life of the contract, give it the flexibility to downsize its portfolio to 60 per cent of its original size and replace hundreds of separate service provision contracts with one service provider, Trillium. Trillium is one of the new types of property service providers who are taking advantage of the historical failure of traditional property owners to give occupiers what they want in terms of service and flexibility. The implications for corporate real estate are enormous ‐ who better to deal with occupier problems like surplus space, flexibility, property market risk and service quality than the supply side of the industry. The potential benefits for those property providers on the supply side who are positioned to take advantage are substantial ‐ instead of just rental income from one property for one occupier, there is the opportunity to capture all occupancy cost revenue for an entire portfolio. The occupier can potentially save costs, increase flexibility, reduce risk and more closely align its corporate real estate with its business strategy.

The Independent Inquiry into Access to Healthcare for People with Learning Disabilities reported in July 2008. Based on a public consultation, a review of research and evidence and the views of witnesses and stakeholders, the Michael Inquiry concluded that there are risks inherent in the care system for people with learning disabilities and that they are largely due to a failure to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to services, as required under the Disability Discrimination Act. The Inquiry found evidence of a significant level of avoidable suffering due to untreated ill‐health, and a high likelihood that avoidable deaths are occurring. Although the report highlights examples of good practice there are some appalling examples of discrimination, abuse and neglect. The article makes ten essential recommendations for urgent change across the whole health system and the Inquiry team report contains practical illustrations of how to implement them.

There has been considerable debate over the causes and consequences of ‘deindustrialisation’. The relative decline of manufacturing, and particularly of manufacturing employment, and the corresponding relative growth of services, is prevalent in both slow and fast growing economies. This has led many to argue that the process is one of historical evolution such that the advanced stage of economic development is characterised by a modern tertiary sector with growing preferences for service products. This paper argues that this view is an oversimplification: dein‐dustrialisation may result from economic success; however, it may also reflect economic weaknesses. In particular, a declining manufacturer sector may have adverse impacts on a trading nation's ability to generate sufficient exports to pay for necessary imports, and hence also on the growth of productivity, national income and living standards.

This year, almost 4 million expectant mothers will receive personalized letters about infant care from a disposable diaper manufacturer. A leading manufacturer of hair coloring products will send trial samples to regular users of competing brands. And at supermarkets across the country, shoppers will watch personalized advertisements for cookies, toothpaste, and coffee at checkout counters equipped with video screens. In these instances and countless others, advertisers are finding new ways to communicate with their customers that capitalize on and leverage the long‐term relationship between the advertiser and consumer.

The responses of 222 logistics managers in manufacturing firms were analysed to identify logistics strategies and evaluate relationships between organisational environment and logistics strategy. The findings were integrated with previous research to develop a contingency model of logistics strategy.

Somehow, without loading up on games or owning a sound card, the author has 28 CD‐ROMs at home, with more on the way. How did all these discs get there and what do they say (if anything) about the CD‐ROM marketplace? When are CD‐ROMs marvelous new publishing media, when are they essentially compact diskette replacements, and when are they wastes of good polycarbonate? The author goes through his motley collection, noting some highlights and some messy situations. After all this grumbling, the author adds notes on the personal computing literature for April through September 1994.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the first 15 months of operation of an innovative specialist national public health observatory for intellectual disability.

The paper provides a narrative account of aims and achievements of the service.

In the first 15 months of operation the observatory has: made available to those involved in commissioning health and social care services, a wealth of information on the health needs of people with intellectual disabilities; identified specific improvements that could viably be made to increase the quality of future information; and begun working with local agencies to support them in making the best use of the available information.

People with intellectual disabilities experience significant health inequalities. This paper describes an innovative approach to helping local agencies make the best use of available information in order to commission services that may reduce these inequalities.