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Following the Communities and Local Government (CLG) pilot exercise, all sites remain committed to the concept of individual budgets. There are many positive stories of how individual budgets (IBs) have made a real difference to people's lives, enabling true person‐centred support and informed choices about integrated packages of care and support. There were also impressive examples of creative joint working at site level, where sites adopted pragmatic solutions and worked round obstacles wherever possible. Based on experiences to date, all the pilot sites feel that IBs have a key role to play, but that they should not be considered as the only option for personalising housing‐ related support services and increasing choice. Commissioned Supporting People (SP) services can be responsive and person‐centred, as well as providing consistent coverage over large geographical areas, and some authorities consider that commissioned SP services can work alongside IBs and promoted this model as a viable alternative. More work is needed to understand better how IBs can work together with commissioned services to deliver a seamless service.

There are currently a number of reasons why providers need to review their services: to prepare for Supporting People, to develop a strategy for rent restructuring, to implement Best Value, to assess the impact of new care standards, to develop an asset management strategy and for internal quality assurance purposes. The article describes an appraisal toolkit developed to achieve consistent and accountable assessments.

As supported housing providers prepare for Supporting People over the next two and a half years, we recognise how important it is not to lose sight of the need to ensure that vulnerable people receive the best possible care and support, and are not presenting a risk to themselves or to others in the community. This article looks in detail at best practice procedures for referrals, including assessment procedures, support contracts and individual support plans.

How many of us are running out of ideas to improve performance and deliver elusive goals and targets? The demand to raise standards is never far away from political rhetoric, the drive to improve outcomes for stakeholders is a constant imperative of leadership, and inspection regimes hold us to account by confronting us with the deficit between progress and outstanding issues. But do we really think we have found the best approach to delivering this change? Have we developed a method which optimises the continuous improvement agenda in a way that enables services to thrive rather than feel overwhelmed by the needs we are trying to meet? How do we close the gap between our innate sense of idealism and the real‐world problems of which we are only too aware? There is a fresh approach which works well, by placing people at the centre of the change process. It is called appreciative inquiry. This article explains how it has been used by Liverpool Council to powerful effect.

Young incarcerated male offenders are at risk of poorer sexual health, adolescent parenthood and lack opportunities for formative relationship and sexuality education (RSE) as well as positive male role models. The purpose of this paper is to report the process of co-production and feasibility testing of a novel, gender-transformative RSE programme with young male offenders to encourage positive healthy relationships, gender equality, and future positive fatherhood.

Using a rights-based participatory approach, the authors co-produced an RSE programme with young offenders and service providers at two UK prison sites using a sequential research design of: needs analysis, co-production and a feasibility pilot. Core components of the programme are grounded in evidence-based RSE, gender-transformative and behaviour change theory.

A needs analysis highlighted the men’s interest in RSE along with the appeal of film drama and peer-group-based activities. In the co-production stage, scripts were developed with the young men to generate tailored film dramas and associated activities. This co-production led to “If I Were a Dad”, an eight-week programme comprising short films and activities addressing masculinities, relationships, sexual health and future fatherhood. A feasibility pilot of the programme demonstrated acceptability and feasibility of delivery in two prison sites. The programme warrants further implementation and evaluation studies.

The contribution of this paper is the generation of an evidence-based, user-informed, gender-transformative programme designed to promote SRHR of young male offenders to foster positive sexual and reproductive health and well-being in their own lives and that of their partners and (future) children.

Taken at face value, it may initially seem difficult to argue with the sentiments enshrined in the rhetoric that surrounds the TEF – raising the status of teaching in Higher Education (HE), rebalancing its relationship with research, incentivising institutions to focus on the quality of teaching and making them more accountable for ‘how well they ensure excellent outcomes for their students in terms of graduate-level employment or further study’ (OfS, 2018, p. 1). Clearly, these are laudable aspirations that will chime with anyone who believes in the importance of students experiencing an education that enriches and transforms them and their potential. Drawing on Fraser and Lamble's (2014/2015) use of queer theory in relation to pedagogy, however, this chapter aims to expose the TEF not just ‘as a landmark initiative that is designed to further embed a neoliberal audit and monitoring culture into Higher Education’ (Rudd, 2017, p. 59) but as a constraining exercise that restrains diversity and limits potential. Although queer theory is more usually linked with gender and sexuality studies, Fraser and Lamble show us that it can be used ‘in its broader political project of questioning norms, opening desires and creating possibilities’ (p. 64). In this way, the queer theoretical lens used here helps us to question, disrupt and contest the essentialising hegemonic logics behind the nature and purposes of the TEF and its effects in HE classrooms. Using the slantwise position of the homosexual (Foucault, 1996), this queer analysis of the TEF can thus be helpful as a politically generative exercise in opening up space for new possibilities.