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The purpose of this study is to outline a process-oriented psychology informed view of the impact of ever-increasing acuity within an adult inpatient system and conceptualise how an integrated therapies team (ITT) can work with the chaos that this brings.

A reflective scientist-practitioner based approach was used over a two-year period.

Several factors lead to “chaos” in an inpatient unit, including societal inequality, the trauma and adversity it creates and the impact of this at a systemic, interpersonal and intrapersonal level. Chaos is one means of coping and can dominate inpatient working, whereas understanding the underlying distress is often marginalised. Developing an ITT can support working with chaos. The ITT holds the therapeutic perspective for the wider multi-disciplinary team (MDT) and therapeutic and facilitation skills are central to how it operates. Processing the chaos and working with the underlying distress is its overarching function.

Developing an ITT offers a robust structure for evolving inpatient MDT working to cope with increasing acuity in a psychologically informed way.

The chaos in question is often viewed as patients’ issue but from a collectivist perspective it is something that all members of society are responsible for.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to conceptualise the chaos on an inpatient ward as a process needed by the system as a way of coping and propose the addition of an ITT to inpatient working.

As the First Lady, Michelle Obama stated that she had a number of priorities but that the first year would be mainly about supporting her two girls in their transitions to their new life in the White House. Her choice to be mom-in-chief drew unusually intense and rather puzzling, scrutiny. The chapter briefly discusses the range of reactions along the political spectrum as well as African-American feminists’ analyses of the stereotypes of Black women underlying those reactions. This analysis engages the debates from a different perspective. First, the chapter addresses the under-theorizing of the racialized gender norms embedded in the symbolism of the White House and the role of First Lady. It challenges the presumption of traditional notions of true womanhood and the incorrect conclusion that mothering would preclude public engagement.

Second and most importantly, this chapter argues that there are fundamental misunderstandings of what mothering meant for Michelle Obama as African-American woman. Cultural traditions and socio-historical conditions have led Black women, both relatives and non-kin, to form mothering relationships with others’ children and to appreciate the interdependence of “nurturing” one's own children, other children, and entire communities. Those practitioners whose nurturing activities encompassed commitment and contributions to the collectivity were referred to as community othermothering. Using primary sources, this chapter examines in detail Michelle Obama's socialization for and her practice of community othermothering in her role as First Lady. Attention is focused on her transformation of White House events by extending hospitality to more within Washington, DC, and the nation, plus broadening young people's exposure to inspiration, opportunities, and support for setting and accomplishing their dreams. Similarly, the concept of community othermothering is also used to explain Michelle Obama’s reinterpretation of the traditional First Lady's special project into the ambitious “Let's Move” initiative to end childhood obesity within a generation. The othermothering values and endeavors have helped establish the White House as “the People's House.”

The patterns of ICAEW Education and Training (E&T) reforms are traced through the nineteen‐seventies, nineteen‐eighties and nineteen‐nineties. The three decades are explained respectively as periods of: uniform rises in entry and examination standards; greater regulation of training relationships and the introduction of a technician qualification with an initial second class status; and deregulation and attempts at specialization. Syllabus reforms are attributed to the changing needs of larger firms and are presented as favouring large firms’ students, often to the detriment of smaller firms’ students, while other E&T reforms are seen as favouring either firms or their students. The cumulative effects of past E&T reforms, that either small firms or their students are net losers, may be overcome by redistributing training costs from small firms to large firms when syllabus changes are made.

This paper examines how entrepreneurship focused programs build capacities for disadvantaged groups to pursue more dignified lives. The struggles of disadvantaged entrepreneurs against pronounced structural constraints are well documented, but less is known about how targeted programs of entrepreneurship focused support change the status quo for disadvantaged communities.

The paper is grounded in a mainly inductive, interpretive study and explores the work of an entrepreneurship focused program targeted at refugee participants. The paper reports on intensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews with 23 program participants in London, UK.

The empirical sections elaborate three key mechanisms supporting greater self-determination and better opportunities: building entrepreneurial intention, building contextual legitimacy and building proximal ties. These mechanisms empower disadvantaged groups to pursue a wide variety of meaningful goals, including but not limited to starting a business.

This paper draws attention to problems of over-emphasizing the disadvantaged entrepreneurs' agency. It uses the vocabulary of self-determination theory (SDT) and offers a psychosocial perspective of the consequences of disadvantage and the potential for entrepreneurship focused programs to build key capacities and improve precarious lives.

This study aims to investigate the effects of resilience and social support on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a sample of 121 veterans (n = 56) and civilians (n = 65).

Gender, age and marital status were collected, along with occupation for civilians and the unit served with, rank, length of time deployed, overall months active and location for veterans. The trauma experiences scale for civilians, the PTSD checklist for civilian and military, Resilience Research Centre’s Adult Resilience Measure-28, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support and the Deployment Risk and Resiliency Inventory-2 scales were used.

The results revealed for both samples, resilience and social support (except unit support for veterans) impacted PTSD symptoms. However, social support did not mediate the relationship between resilience and PTSD.

Implications for policy and practice were discussed.

The originality of this research stems from the incorporation of both a civilian and military sample by comparing their levels of PTSD, resilience and social support.

Purpose – This chapter describes the “Teen Alliance for Prepared Parenting–SPIN” (TAPP-SPIN) unwanted pregnancy prevention intervention for pregnant/parenting adolescents and their adult parent(s) in primarily African American and Latino communities in the District of Columbia (DC).

Methodology/approach – We augment TAPP services with SPIN Video Home Training (VHT)11Called Video Interaction Guidance in the United Kingdom., an intervention to build Parent–Child Connectedness (PCC). SPIN VHT aims to (1) improve adult–teen interaction to strengthen the supports teen parents need to continue to progress toward life success and (2) build the teen's ability to engage in warm, attuned, and skillful parenting of her child.

SPIN VHT uses a guided, strengths-based analysis of videotaped parent–child interactions to identify examples of the parent's competencies that support the child's well-being and optimal development. Collaborative review of an edited collection of video helps guide participants to integrate what has been effective into their daily patterns of interaction and communication.

Findings – The randomized experiment compares TAPP to TAPP-SPIN with a sample of 400 15- to 18-year-olds and their parents (dyads). After a baseline survey, we collect follow-up data at 6, 12, 18, and 24 months post-baseline. We collect outcome data on health information-seeking, pregnancy prevention communication, cognitions related to parenting and subsequent pregnancy, improved parenting, and clinical outcomes including subsequent pregnancy.

Social implications – The TAPP-SPIN intervention aims to advance the state of pregnancy prevention research in a population facing multiple health disparities.

Originality/value of chapter – This chapter describes the first ever randomized controlled trial of the SPIN approach to improving PCC.

International trade and its effects on the environment are increasingly discussed both in academia and by policymakers. To counter negative effects of international trade on the environment, so called environmental provisions have been integrated in trade agreements aimed at businesses and economies. However, as both the intent and effectiveness of these provisions are controversial, this paper aims to provide an overview of the current state of research and identified key factors influencing their effectiveness.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of 44 papers on the effects of environmental provisions in international trade agreements on the environmental performance of businesses, as well as economies from 1992 to mid-2024.

The integration of environmental provisions into trade agreements generally has positive effects on the environment while their effectiveness is influenced by their design and several boundary conditions. Alongside the importance of effective enforcement mechanisms, reputation concerns of businesses and lobbyism are discussed as intermediary factors in the design and impact of environmental provisions.

The insights can benefit policymakers to optimize future environmental provisions and advance the effectiveness of policies aimed at balancing the effects of trade liberalization with environmental protection.

Social sustainability is increasingly relevant for creating more sustainable trade policy while societal mechanisms seem to be an adequate tool to ensure effective enforcement of ecological provisions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this review is the first of its kind to provide a systematic overview of the literature on the effectiveness of environmental provisions that combines the micro-level of businesses and macro-level of economies, although the importance for trade in general and environmental protection, in particular, has been recognized in the academic literature.

Drawing on a cognitive attribution approach to charismatic leadership, this study identifies an overlooked influence behavior – supervisor self-disclosure of a traumatic loss as contributing to subordinate charismatic attributions (e.g. idealized influence) and trust toward their supervisor.

Employing an experimental vignette method, participants (n = 201) were assigned to one of two conditions: (1) supervisor self-disclosure of traumatic loss or (2) control condition, and then reported on charismatic attributions about the supervisor in the scenario and trust toward the supervisor.

The results revealed that supervisors’ self-disclosure to subordinates influences subordinate attributions of charisma toward their supervisors and affective-based, cognitive-based trust.

While an experimental approach supports causal inference, future research may consider the long-term effects of supervisors’ self-disclosure on subordinates’ attributions and trust.

Self-disclosure may be used authentically but cautiously to build relationships with subordinates and potentially benefit management development programs.

This study provides the first empirical insights into how a supervisor’s disclosure of a traumatic loss – an uncharted territory – affects subordinates’ perceptions of the supervisor’s charisma and subsequent trust.

There is a body of evidence that suggests a range of psychosocial characteristics demarcate certain adults to be at an elevated risk for victimisation. The purpose of this paper is to examine consistency between one police force, and a corresponding Victim Support service based in England, in their assessment of level of risk faced by victims of violent crime.

This study explored matched data on 869 adult victims of violent crime gathered from these two key services in Preston, namely, Lancashire Constabulary and Victim Support, from which a sub-group of comparable “domestic violence” cases (n=211) were selected for further examination.

Data analyses revealed methodological inconsistencies in the assessment of victimisation resulting in discrepancies for recorded levels of risk in domestic violence cases across these two agencies.

These findings provide a compelling argument for developing a more uniformed approach to victim assessment and indicate a significant training need.

This paper highlights areas of good practice and forwards several recommendations for improved practice that emphasises the integration of empirical research conducted by psychologists to boost the validity and reliability of risk assessment approaches and tools used.