Search results

This rapid evidence assessment (REA) study aims to synthesise what is known about food refusal within male prison populations to aid a better understanding of why this occurs. By looking at the various functions of food refusal for this population, it is hoped that professionals can better support prisoners’ needs in this area.

A rapid review of available data within the published literature was completed. Searches were conducted on two databases (PsychInfo and MedLine), and a total of 328 articles were screened using a three-stage process. This resulted in 13 articles being identified for the final sample, which were reviewed and synthesised into themes by looking for commonalities.

Five themes were identified: “to protest”, “to achieve goals or demands”, “to manage interpersonal difficulties with prison/custodial staff”, “to end life” and “mental health and personality disorder”. The findings appear to suggest that food refusal in this context may be predominantly driven by a need to communicate or gain control.

To help prevent and cease food refusal, it will be beneficial for prison staff to use approaches that support prisoners feeling a sense of fairness, transparency, control and autonomy, as well as problem-solving skills and establishing a sense of purpose and motivation.

This REA confirmed there is a lack of good-quality research into the functions of food refusal among prisoners in the UK. Future research should involve contact with prisoners who have engaged in food refusal to understand motivations firsthand.

In order to mitigate the effects of climate change, the UK government has set a target of achieving net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. Agricultural GHG emissions in 2017 were 45.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e; 10% of UK total GHG emissions). Farmland hedgerows are a carbon sink, storing carbon in the vegetation and soils beneath them, and thus increasing hedgerow length by 40% has been proposed in the UK to help meet net zero targets. However, the full impact of this expansion on farm biodiversity is yet to be evaluated in a net zero context. This paper critically synthesises the literature on the biodiversity implications of hedgerow planting and management on arable farms in the UK as a rapid review with policy recommendations. Eight peer-reviewed articles were reviewed, with the overall scientific evidence suggesting a positive influence of hedgerow management on farmland biodiversity, particularly coppicing and hedgelaying, although other boundary features, e.g. field margins and green lanes, may be additive to net zero hedgerow policy as they often supported higher abundances and richness of species. Only one paper found hedgerow age effects on biodiversity, with no significant effects found. Key policy implications are that further research is required, particularly on the effect of hedgerow age on biodiversity, as well as mammalian and avian responses to hedgerow planting and management, in order to fully evaluate hedgerow expansion impacts on biodiversity.

This paper aims to present issues of deterrence related to stalking.

The authors have combined recent mixed method research findings and existing general deterrence literature with their practitioner experiences of working with this population, to provide a novel viewpoint paper intending to influence advancements in knowledge in this area.

Recent qualitative research investigating the function of stalking in a small sample (see Wheatley et al., 2020a) noted the participants’ focus on the lack of deterrence. For example, participants described feeling emotionally stuck in their pursuits, experiencing poor access to help and support, being ignorant of the potential custodial consequences of their offending and even stating that imprisonment provided a harsh yet necessary moment of reality.

This novel discussion paper reviews these findings in relation to both the available research based on deterrence generally and deterrence related to stalking and the experience of working with stalking cases in clinical practice. This paper explores what we know about the motivations that underlie stalking behaviour and how that relates to the effectiveness of deterrence, including the role of traditional criminal justice approaches to this type of offending.

Globally, urban planners and decision makers are pursuing place-based initiatives to develop and enhance urban infrastructure to optimise city performance, competitiveness and sustainability credentials. New discourses associated with big data, Building Information Modelling, SMART cities, green and biophilic thinking inform research, policy and practice agendas to varying extents. However, these discourses remain relatively isolated as much city planning is still pursued within traditional sectoral silos hindering integration. This research explores new conceptual ground at the Smart – Natural City interface within a safe interdisciplinary opportunity space. Using the city of Birmingham UK as a case study, a methodology was developed championing co-design, integration and social learning to develop a conceptual framework to navigate the challenges and opportunities at the Smart-Natural city interface. An innovation workshop and supplementary interviews drew upon the insights and experiences of 25 experts leading to the identification of five key spaces for the conceptualisation and delivery at the Smart-Natural city interface. At the core is the space for connectivity; surrounded by spaces for visioning, place-making, citizen-led participatorylearning and monitoring.The framework provides a starting point for improved discussions, understandings and negotiations to cover all components of this particular interface. Our results show the importance of using all spaces within shared narratives; moving towards ‘silver-green’ and living infrastructure and developing data in response to identified priorities. Whilst the need for vision has dominated traditional urban planning discourses we have identified the need for improved connectivity as a prerequisite. The use of all 5 characteristics collectively takes forward the literature on socio-ecological-technological relationships and heralds significant potential to inform and improve city governance frameworks, including the benefits of a transferable deliberative and co-design method that generates ownership with a real stake in the outcomes.

Young offender mentoring programmes aim to support young people’s desistance from offending, but despite the importance, there remains limited exploration into mentor experiences of supporting the young people. This study aims to explore how a community-based mentoring intervention supports desistance in young offenders by understanding the mentor's experiences, with a specific reflective focus on facilitators and barriers to their work.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven mentors from Northumbria Coalition against Crime, a youth and community service. Interview transcripts were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis, with external auditing conducted by the research supervisor.

Two superordinate themes resulted: “Factors for engagement” and “Personal experiences”, with participant disclosures reflecting professional reward and a sense of success. This was interwoven with “burnout”, emotional investment and challenges linked to barriers to effectiveness. Challenges included the young people having external negative influences, multiple individuals involved in a person’s care and the barrier of in person activities during the coronavirus pandemic. The clinical importance of mentoring programmes, implications for future working practice and research limitations are considered.

The clinical importance of mentoring programmes, implications for future working practice and research limitations are considered.

These findings contribute to understanding mentors’ experiences of working with young people in the community, offering critical insight into the mentorship and wider service dynamics. Furthermore, it provides an inaugural evaluation of the Northumbria Coalition against Crime services.

Given the importance of growth-oriented entrepreneurship in the context of economic development and the need to understand how rural communities can be developed, the purpose of this research paper is to determine how the drivers of growth expectations differ between urban and rural settings.

The methodology is threefold: firstly, a descriptive analysis with non-parametric testing is conducted; then pooled regression model is used to analyse the predictors of growth expectations in both contexts, and finally, coarsened exact matching is used to identify possible self-selection bias.

In contrast to mainstream entrepreneurship theory, it is found that entrepreneurs’ intrinsic knowledge, skills and abilities are not significant in the rural-specific model. The only exception is entrepreneurs’ educational level, the importance of which is emphasised as a pivotal factor in increasing high-growth ventures in rural communities. Additionally, when self-selection is eliminated, rurality worsens growth intentions.

There is evidence that some growth-oriented entrepreneurs self-select into rural communities. Because the high-growth entrepreneurial dynamics in rural areas are unique, public policies should target purpose-driven entrepreneurial education. This includes encouraging “lifestyle entrepreneurship” (e.g. retirees returning to rural areas to become entrepreneurs), preventing entrepreneurial brain drain in rural areas and attracting highly educated urban entrepreneurs to exploit opportunities in rural areas.

This research attempts to contribute to the ongoing debate regarding the factors that drive high-growth entrepreneurs in rural areas by analysing rural entrepreneurs in the high-growth context of a developing economy. The focus is on Chile – a country that is rarely investigated compared to the USA or Europe – to extend the literature on high-growth ventures and entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Through association with a family member who uses substances, stigma and shame can be experienced by children and young people whose parents use substances. Such stigma and induced shame can lead to fear of being treated unfairly and for some young people the experience of bullying and discrimination from peers, adults, and practitioners. Within my research, young people often described feeling that they had ‘survived’ within their experiences of parental substance use, rather than ‘thrived’, leaving them feeling lonely and isolated from support. Stigma played a role in this survival. By understanding the stigma experienced by young people whose parents use substances, we can move beyond young people only surviving their experiences to supporting them to thrive. Within this chapter, experiences of delivering interactive workshops and teaching practitioners about the lived experiences of children and young people whose parents use substances are reflected upon. Young people who experience parental substance use want practitioners and learners to have four key takeaways when supporting or working with young people: realisation and awareness of the impacts on young people, recognition of ways young people cope, responding in ways of understanding, and resisting further stigmatisation and isolation of young people.

The current review aims to focus on how risk and protective factors for self-harm in secure mental health hospitals are captured in the literature.

Fifty-seven articles were included in a systematic review, drawn from an initial 1,119 articles, post duplicate removal. Databases included Psycinfo, Psycarticles, Psycnet, Web of Science and EBSCO host. A thematic analysis was used, which included a meta-ethnographic approach for considering qualitative papers.

There was a clear focus on risk factors, with eight identified (in order of occurrence): raised emotional reactivity and poor emotion regulation; poor mental health; traumatic experiences; personality disorder diagnosis and associated traits; increased use of outward aggression – dual harm; constraints of a secure environment and lack of control; previous self-harm and suicide attempts; and hopelessness. Protective factors featured less, resulting in only three themes emerging (in order of occurrence): positive social support and communication; positive coping skills; and hope/positive outlook.

This includes a proposal to move focus away from “risk” factors, to incorporate “needs”, in terms of individual and environmental factors. There is also a need for more attention to focus on developing high quality research in this area.

The research captures an area where a synthesis of research has not been comprehensively undertaken, particularly with regards to capturing protective as well as risk factors.

Hyperfocus (HF) is characterised by an intense state of concentration/focus. The purpose of this study is to explore in what ways HF has been found to contribute towards offending behaviour and what treatments have been found to be efficacious to reduce offending behaviour where HF was a contributing factor.

The systematic review was performed according to the recommendations of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. Papers were screened for quality appraisal and risk of bias. The initial search yielded 9,446 articles. Fifty-seven papers were deemed as meeting the inclusion criteria.

HF was noted to act as a vulnerability factor for aggression, sexual offending, radicalisation and stalking. HF was also observed in clients with psychopathy, autism, mental illness and those without a diagnosis. Thus, HF was not found to be offence or diagnosis specific. Furthermore, HF was found across males and females and adults and adolescents. The results identified themes in relation to the mechanisms by which HF may contribute to offending and suggested interventions for HF and offending.

Practitioners working with clients with HF currently lack evidence on the extent to which this contributes towards offending and recidivism and how HF could be addressed in interventions. Future research is needed to establish the role of HF in offending behaviour. Ideally, this should involve longitudinal data collection, retrospective analysis of data and sophisticated statistical analysis. This should also include exploration of the ways in which HF may be interconnected with offence risks/need factors which contribute towards offending. Research could inform the development of formal measurement tools for HF which are validated with norms for adult and adolescent offender samples. Practitioners should use case formulation to explore if HF represents a treatment need for clients they are working with.

This review noted that although HF has been postulated as being an important contributing factor to offending behaviour, few studies have tested this directly. From the limited studies available, HF was found to be relevant across different types of offences. HF was noted to contribute to offending due to neuropsychological mechanisms linked to executive functioning deficits and positive rewards associated with offending behaviour. Reasons for the lack of HF research are noted and recommendations for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the level of nurses’ competencies while providing care to COVID-19 patients.

A descriptive, correlational design was used to collect data from nurses who were providing care to COVID-19 patients at four public hospitals.

A total of 377 nurses (64.5% females) aged 23–50 consented to participate and completed the survey. The mean score of nurses’ competencies in providing care to COVID-19 patients was 2.5 (SD = 0.81). The results of correlation coefficient tests disclosed a significant positive correlation between reported competence level and sex r_pb (377) = 0.18, p < 0.01; working area r_pb (377) = 0.2, p < 0.01; disaster experience r_pb (377) = 0.16, p < 0.01; disaster education r_pb (377) = 0.25, p < 0.01; and disaster training r_pb (377) = 0.31, p < 0.01.

The COVID-19 pandemic response heavily relied on nurses. However, they had a gap in clinical competencies that indicates an urgent need to incorporate disaster management courses in basic nursing education and to update training in hospitals based on nurses’ needs to improve their capabilities in dealing with COVID-19 pandemic.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that investigated the perceived level of Jordanian nurses’ competencies in providing care to COVID-19.