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At the heart of health and social care services is the pursuit of safety and dignity. Legislation and organizational policies are the main way in which statutory and independent organizations’ are tasked with enabling adults with mental health services along the road to recovery. Safety is an intrinsic motivator and basic need.

There is increased political recognition that social policy including the Mental Health Act 2007, which is a cornerstone, is in need of reform. A Conservative Manifesto pledge to reform mental health legislation is based upon the need to mitigate discrimination.

The chapter will explore the interrelationship between “poor outcomes” within the black community and safety; consider the opportunities to move from organizational complacency as a result of new policy and legal frameworks; and promote the view that developing a new discourse around safety is an integral part of improving outcomes for service users, particularly those who are poorly served currently.

A literature review plus reference to case studies will form the basis of the chapter ent and modern racism?

This chapter provides a descriptive account of a pilot study conducted to inform PhD level research. The study aimed to explore areas of support considered by participants to reduce their risk of perpetration and tested the degree to which the approach can produce useful findings. For the pilot, semi-structured interviews were conducted with two heterosexual men over 55 years of age sentenced for intimate partner violence (IPV)-related offences and supervised by the probation service in the UK. Interview and field note data were analysed thematically. This analysis produced themes relating to age-related risk and protective factors, barriers to help seeking and change over time. Themes indicate that protective factors relating to emotional support within the community, maintenance of social support networks, forms of crisis support and barriers to seeking help may reduce risk within this age group. Across the life course immediate and extended family support and advice and support from peers and colleagues appear of value. Loss of social connection in late life suggests increased risk of perpetration.

Training in research ethics in higher education institutions tends to be increasingly focussed on operational instruction and how to navigate review processes. This has largely come about as a result of the gradual extension of the ‘medical model’ of prospective ethics review to all research involving human participants over the last few decades. Often devolved to an administrator, the purpose of instruction in research ethics is sometimes reduced to form-filling techniques. While this may serve to facilitate researchers’ compliance with ‘auditable’ regulatory requirements, and to reassure risk-averse universities that they can demonstrate rigorous oversight, it does nothing to skill researchers in assessing the ethical implications of their own research. Mastering the skills to address and mitigate the moral dilemmas that can emerge during a research project involves more than having a pre-determined set of options for research practice. Changing their perception means enabling researchers to view themselves as ethical practitioners within a broader community of researchers. In this chapter we discuss the implementation of a university training programme that has been designed to improve both the moral character, and thus the moral competence of researchers. Using a virtue ethics approach, we employed case studies and discussion, backed up by provision of individualised advice, to help researchers to consider the moral implications of research and to improve their moral decision-making skills. Attendees reported greater engagement with the issues and increased confidence in facing ethical dilemmas in their own research.

The Academy of Social Sciences has promoted discussion among its member learned societies in order to explore the possibility of defining common elements among the various disciplines’ approaches to research ethics. This chapter provides a context for and an overview of principles developed by the Academy’s Working Group at the end of a series of symposia to encourage working towards common principles for social science research ethics.