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This ‘case study’ demonstrates how one local authority approached the development of preventative services in response to the Department of Health's Promoting Independence initiative. It considers the key building blocks of a preventative strategy ‐ consultation and partnership, needs and risk assessment, monitoring and evaluation ‐ and describes how an action plan was formulated.

This study aims to address an acknowledged gap in the literature for the analysis of experienced practitioner views on the effects and implications of mandatory audit firm rotation (MAFR).

Using an exploratory and sequential design, data was collected from South African regulatory policy documents, organisational comment letters and semi-structured interviews of practitioners. These findings informed a field survey, administered to auditors, investors, chief financial officers (CFOs) and audit committee members of Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed companies.

Practitioners expressed considerable pushback against the potential efficacy of MAFR to improve audit quality due to various “switching costs”, notably the loss of client-specific knowledge and expertise upon rotation. In addition, the cost and disruption to both the client and audit firm are considered significant and unnecessary, compared to audit partner rotation. The audit industry may suffer reduced profitability and increased strain on partners, leading to a decline in the appeal of the profession as a career of choice. This is likely to have negative implications for audit industry diversity objectives. Furthermore, the industry may become more supplier-concentrated amongst the Big 4 firms.

The findings have policy implications for regulators deciding whether to adopt the regulation, as well as guiding the design of policies and procedures to mitigate the negative effects of adoption.

The participants are experienced with diverse roles concerning the use, preparation and audit of financial statements of large exchange-listed multinational companies, as well as engagement in the auditor appointment process. The extant literature presents mixed results on the link between MAFR and audit quality, with most studies relying on archival and experimental designs. These have a limited ability to identify and critique the potential’s witching costs and unintended consequences of the regulation. Experienced participants responsible for decision-making within the audit, audit oversight and auditor appointment process, are best suited to provide perspective on these effects, contrasted against the audit regulator’s position.

This paper has three purposes: to identify and discuss values that should be promoted and respected in personal health monitoring, to formulate an ethical checklist that can be used by stakeholders, and to construct an ethical matrix that can be used for identifying values, among those in the ethical checklist, that are particularly important to various stakeholders.

On the basis of values that empirical studies have found important to various stakeholders in personal health monitoring, the author constructs an ethical checklist and an ethical matrix. The author carries out a brief conceptual analysis and discusses the implications.

The ethical checklist consists of three types of values: practical values that a technical product in personal health monitoring must have, quality of life values to be promoted by the development and use of the product, and moral values to be respected in this development and use. To give guidance in practice, the values in the checklist must be interpreted and balanced. The ethical matrix consists of the values in the checklist and a number of stakeholders.

The overall ambition is to suggest a way of categorizing values that can be useful for stakeholders in personal health monitoring. In order to achieve this, the study takes empirical studies as a starting-point and includes a conceptual analysis. This means that the proposals are founded on practice rather than mere abstract thinking, and this improves its usability.

Considering the views of service users is important to identify their needs as this helps providers to develop appropriate and responsive services. For older people receiving home care, recognising their needs is the first step towards supporting them to maintain independence and promote wellbeing. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A systematic review was conducted in 2014 to explore the personal experiences of older people in England about the care and support they received at home. Studies published between 2004 and 2013 were identified from bibliographic databases and websites. A total of 17 studies satisfied the inclusion criteria. Data were extracted using a standardised coding tool and narratively synthesised. Study quality was evaluated.

Nine themes were identified. Older people valued an approach that was person centred, flexible and proactive to respond to their changing needs and priorities, focusing on what they can or would like to do to maintain their independence. Allowing time to build trust between older people and their care workers helped to realise older peoples’ aspirations and goals. Practical help to promote choice and reduce social isolation was perceived to be as important as personal care.

Evidence from this review contributed to the development of a social care guideline on home care, and informed key practice recommendations for care providers in England.

This review highlighted the value older people place in person-centred care incorporating practical help both inside and outside the realm of personal care.

This study distinctively explores the firm-level and national-level determinants of audit committee effectiveness (ACE) in the Libyan banking sector (LBS).

A mixed-methods approach has been employed to enhance the quality of the collected data and reduce the risk of bias. Five groups of actors in the Libyan banking sector were surveyed, including board members, AC members, executive managers, internal auditors and external auditors, further to interviewing a representative sample of these groups. In total, 218 survey responses were gathered, and 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted.

The study results show that AC authority, financial expertise and diligence are positively and significantly attributed to ACE, although AC independence and resources are not significantly related to ACE. The authors find that the legal and regulatory environment, government intervention, and the accounting and auditing environment are perceived as important and associated with ACE regarding national-level factors. These findings are strongly supported by semi-structured interviews and suggest that both firm-level and national-level factors are essential in understanding ACE in Libya's banking sector.

The study’s evidence reiterates the vital need for more concentrated work to integrate governance, legislative and regulatory reforms to ensure the effectiveness of ACs as a key corporate governance (CG) mechanism in developing economies.

This study extends the literature relating measures of AC inputs and outputs by examining the perception of stakeholders to understand both the firm-level and national-level factors that affect ACE in a single institutional setting. Additionally, this work adds to the limited number of recent studies examining the role of ACs in the banking sector in developing economies.

Managing operational change using a whole‐systems approach will be the key to re‐engineering services, including intermediate care and rehabilitation for older people. This article outlines an approach used in Sheffield which is based on eight categories of need.

The purpose of this paper is to illuminate from the perspective of an older person (Harriet) the factors that support and jeopardise mental well-being in the fourth age.

The paper is based on unstructured narrative interviews with an older woman who was originally interviewed for a previous research study 15 years ago. At that time she was aged 82; she is now aged 97. This paper explores themes of change and continuity in her experience of ageing with a view to re-evaluating the model of sustaining the self-developed in the earlier study and comparing the findings with current conceptions of the fourth age.

Harriet’s previous efforts to remain independent have been replaced by an acceptance of dependency and diminished social relationships and activity. However, she retains significant threads of continuity with her earlier life and employs cognitive strategies that enable contentment. Her experience of advanced old age fits conceptions of neither the third nor fourth age, indicating the need for more sophisticated and nuanced understandings.

The paper is original in exploring the lived experience of someone in advanced age across a 15 year time period. Its value lies in rendering visible the factors that have promoted and/or undermined her mental well-being and in generating insights that can be applied more generally to experiences of advanced age.

This study examined the impact of a brief seminar series on positive parenting (Selected Triple P) on behavioural and emotional problems in pre‐adolescent children and on inter‐parental conflict, parenting style, relationship quality, parental adjustment and parental confidence. Two hundred and forty‐four parents with children aged four to seven years were assigned to one of three conditions: (a) partial exposure condition involving attendance at a single introductory seminar; (b) full exposure (attendance at all three seminars); or (c) a waitlist control group. Analyses were completed for the 109 participants for whom full data were obtained. There was a significant reduction in parental reports of problem child behaviour and dysfunctional parenting styles with the introductory seminar alone. However, exposure to all three seminars was associated with significant improvements in all dysfunctional parenting styles and in the level of inter‐parental conflict. There were no significant differences between conditions at post‐intervention on parental reports of depression, anxiety, stress, relationship quality or parental confidence. This study provides preliminary support for the efficacy of a brief universal parenting intervention in improving child behaviour and parenting variables associated with the development and maintenance of child conduct problems. The findings also offer preliminary support for the notion that positive outcomes for both parents and children can be achieved through the delivery of brief preventive parenting interventions that require minimal time commitments from parents.