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This paper aims to explore the match between needs and services related to participation for frail older adults receiving home care.

A qualitative multiple case study was conducted with 11 triads each involving an elder, a caregiver and a healthcare provider working in a Health and Social Services Centers (HSSCs).

Although HSSCs in Québec are supposed to promote social integration and participation of older adults, services provided to the older adults in this study focused mainly on safety and independence in personal care, dressing, mobility and nutrition, without fully meeting older adults’ needs in these areas. Discrepancies between needs and services may be attributable to the assessment not covering all the dimensions of social participation or accurately identifying older adults’ complex needs; older adults’ and their caregivers’ difficulties identifying their needs and accepting their limitations and the assistance offered; healthcare providers’ limited knowledge and time to comprehensively assess needs and provide services; guidelines restricting the types and quantity of services to be supplied; and limited knowledge of older adults, caregivers and healthcare providers about services and resources available in the community.

To improve and maintain older adults’ participation, a more thorough assessment of their participation, especially in social activities, is required, as is greater support for older adults and their families in using available community resources. It is also important to review the services provided by HSSCs and to optimize partnerships with community organizations.

The purpose of this research is to investigate if, and in that case, how and what the e‐government field can learn from user participation concepts and theories in general information systems (IS) research. It aims to contribute with further understanding of the importance of citizen participation and involvement within the e‐government research body of knowledge and when developing public e‐services in practice.

The analysis in the paper is made from a comparative, qualitative case study of two e‐government projects. Three analysis themes are induced from the literature review; practice of participation, incentives for participation, and organization of participation. These themes are guiding the comparative analysis of our data with a concurrent openness to interpretations from the field.

The main results in this paper are that the e‐government field can get inspiration and learn from methods and approaches in traditional IS projects concerning user participation, but in e‐government, methods are also needed to handle the challenges that arise when designing public e‐services for large, heterogeneous user groups. Citizen engagement cannot be seen as a separate challenge in e‐government, but rather as an integrated part of the process of organizing, managing, and performing e‐government projects. Analysis themes of participation generated from literature; practice, incentives and organization can be used in order to highlight, analyze, and discuss main issues regarding the challenges of citizen participation within e‐government. This is an important implication based on this paper that contributes both to theory on and practice of e‐government.

Lessons to learn from this paper concern that many e‐government projects have a public e‐service as one outcome and an internal e‐administration system as another outcome. A dominating internal, agency perspective in such projects might imply that citizens as the user group of the e‐service are only seen as passive receivers of the outcome – not as active participants in the development. By applying the analysis themes, proposed in this paper, citizens as active participants can be thoroughly discussed when initiating (or evaluating) an e‐government project.

The paper addresses challenges regarding citizen participation in e‐government development projects. User participation is well researched within the IS discipline, but the e‐government setting implies new challenges that are not explored enough.

Most public foresight programmes in the 1990s limited participation to technological experts in the identified fields. However, almost all the programmes had an implied social dimension and several concluded that more inclusive participation was needed in future programmes. The paper aims to discuss how inclusiveness might be achieved.

At first sight extending participation seems eminently possible. Inclusiveness is a matter of definition and process that has been encountered in other foresight style activities where the opinions of the polity need to be taken into account. Definitions and processes form the core of our approach, using ideas from human behaviour, sustainability and corporate governance.

Learning how to extend participation has started through the German FUTUR programme and the creation of some online discussion forums. Some other programmes in The Netherlands (1996) and the UK (from 1998 onwards) have attempted to become more inclusive, with varying degrees of success.

The discussion is restricted to exploring some general principles related to making foresight programmes more inclusive. Some of the detail has been worked out but is not complete enough to be discussed.

Inclusiveness introduces specific management and process needs, if foresight programmes are to be extended into the social sphere without their becoming chaotic. The principles discussed imply a need for a change in mind‐set for foresight sponsors and practitioners.

None of these ideas have been used in practice and to that extent are original.

This article is concerned with strategies for combating health inequalities for refugees. It explores a service provider's (St Pancras Refugee Centre) response to the mental health and social care needs of refugees in the London Borough of Camden. Drawing on primary and secondary research, the article presents relevant findings and theoretical discourse in this area. It also draws on my own experience of working with refugees, providing a holistic approach to their social care requirements. The main focus is an examination of how social care and mental health needs are addressed. The article argues that providers need to develop services which engage with users on a mutually beneficial level in order to combat health inequalities and provide adequate health and social care provision.

Sustainable development may best be achieved by enhancing the commitment of local communities. Stewart and Hams (1991) argue that the requirements of sustainable development cannot merely be imposed but that active participation by local communities is needed. However, the terms ‘community’, ‘host community’ and ‘participation’ can be interpreted in a myriad of ways. Before entering a full discussion of host community participation in tourism planning, it is first necessary to explore the various potential interpretations of these terms and to define their meaning and function. This chapter therefore clarifies some of the issues surrounding the terms community, host, host community and participation. The major typologies and available models in relation to host communities’ participation in sustainable planning for tourism are also reviewed.

Arguably the most distinguishing characteristic of the current rise of foresight for dealing with the long term is the explicit mention and involvement of actors and actor networks, i.e. participation. In general, this participation dimension is considered a valuable contribution to better anticipation and anticipatory behavior. However, participation should not be seen as the solution for the conceptual and practical difficulties of anticipation. This paper seeks to argue that, although participation is a necessary requirement for foresight, it contributes a number of new problems, which one prefers to see as dilemmas (since there is no solution to these “problems”). Understanding these “ten insolvable dilemmas of participation” is the main objective of this contribution.

This article employs theories and practice dealing with participatory approaches.

Although an important dimension of foresight, participation is often trivialized. However, using participation means also having to address new challenges for which no default design answer is possible.

Futures practitioners will be aware of the consequences of incorporating a participatory dimension into a foresight exercise.

Although participation has become a key feature of many contemporary foresight activities, generic design questions are either ignored or dealt with on a case‐to‐case basis. This paper is an attempt to employ the body of theories on participation and participatory approaches in order to frame the participatory dimension in foresight.

Aims to develop the conception and theory of school‐based management and map its characteristics of school functioning for facilitating the ongoing discussion and effort for school management reforms in local or international contexts. School‐based management employs theories of “equifinality” and “decentralization”, assumes that “school is a self‐managing system” and regards “initiative of human factor” and “improvement of internal process” as important. When compared with externally‐controlled schools, the characteristics of school‐based managing schools are very different in school functioning. They should have clear school mission and strong organizational culture. In these schools, managing strategies should encourage participation and give full play to members′ initiative; there should also be considerable autonomy of procuring and using resources to solve problems in time; the role of people concerned should be active and developmental; human relationship is open, co‐operative with mutual commitment; administrators should be high quality and always learning; and evaluation of school effectiveness should include multilevel and multi‐facet indicators of input, process and output in order to help the school learn to improve.

A key question in the provision of public health concerns how that provision is governed. The purpose of this paper is to examine the governance structure of a public health board and its perceived impact on the efficacy of clinical operations.

Structural issues examined the level of centralisation and public participation, and whether governance should occur through elected boards or appointed managers. These issues were examined through multiple lenses. First was the intention of the structure, examining the issues identified by parliament when the new structure was created. Second, the activities of the board were examined through an analysis of board meetings. Finally, hospital clinicians were surveyed through semi-structured interviews with both quantitative and qualitative questioning.

A contradiction was revealed between intention, perception and actual activities. This raises concerns over whether the public are significantly informed to elect the best-skilled appointees to governance positions.

This research holds implications for selecting governance structures of public health providers.

Few studies have looked at the role of a publicly elected healthcare governance structure from the perspective of the clinicians. Hence, this study contributes to the literature on healthcare structure and its impact on clinical operations, by including a clinician’s perspective. However, this paper goes beyond the survey and also considers the intention of the structure as proposed by parliament, and board activities or what the board actually does. This enables a comparison of intention with outcomes and perception of those outcomes.

Clarification of the term participation is sought through asking key organisational members, (a) why participation is being introduced in their organisation; (b) what are the conditions seen as necessary for its success; (c) what is the likely process in participative meetings; and (d) what are the likely outcomes of participation. Managers in large companies were found to give reasons for introducing participation in terms of increasing opportunities to communicate to employees and to gain acceptance of decisions. Managers in small companies see the benefits of participation primarily in terms of increased employee morale. Endorsement of participation occurs more often in modern organisations (light engineering, trained younger managers and less entrenched unions), where managers see it as a forum for two‐way communication. In traditional organisations (heavy engineering, traditional managers, entrenched unions) participation is seen as a response to political and union pressure and is endorsed only grudgingly.

In order to create sustainable health systems, many countries are introducing ways to prioritise health services underpinned by a process of health technology assessment. While this approach requires technical judgements of clinical effectiveness and cost effectiveness, these are embedded in a wider set of social (societal) value judgements, including fairness, responsiveness to need, non-discrimination and obligations of accountability and transparency. Implementing controversial decisions faces legal, political and public challenge. To help generate acceptance for the need for health prioritisation and the resulting decisions, the purpose of this paper is to develop a novel way of encouraging key stakeholders, especially patients and the public, to become involved in the prioritisation process.

Through a multidisciplinary collaboration involving a series of international workshops, ethical and political theory (including accountability for reasonableness) have been applied to develop a practical way forward through the creation of a values framework. The authors have tested this framework in England and in New Zealand using a mixed-methods approach.

A social values framework that consists of content and process values has been developed and converted into an online decision-making audit tool.

The authors have developed an easy to use method to help stakeholders (including the public) to understand the need for prioritisation of health services and to encourage their involvement. It provides a pragmatic way of harmonising different perspectives aimed at maximising health experience.

All health care systems are facing increasing demands within finite resources. Although many countries are introducing ways to prioritise health services, the decisions often face legal, political, commercial and ethical challenge. The research will help health systems to respond to these challenges.

This study helps in increasing public involvement in complex health challenges.

No other groups have used this combination of approaches to address this issue.