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While the top-down approach to design and implement post-disaster resettlement programmes are often influenced by spatial factors such as land availability and access to infrastructure facilities, failure to recognise socio-economic and cultural sensitivities of resettling communities have been noted as a common reason for unsuccessful resettlement programmes. Since these socio-economic and political issues are not mutually exclusive from spatial factors, the aim of this research is to develop a framework to assist the design and implementation of better post-disaster resettlement programmes through better coordination between spatial and socio-economic/cultural factors.

An initial theoretical framework was developed through a comprehensive literature review followed by a validation through a case study approach.

During the theoretical framework development, the differentiating priorities of policy maker's viewpoint and resettling community's viewpoints have been established as key theoretical constructs, within the emergency, transitional, and potential development phases of post-disaster resettlement programmes. Further, spatial analysis has been identified as an effective technique that can be used to investigate the interdependencies between the spatial, socio-economic and cultural factors within the post-disaster resettlement programmes. The case study findings confirmed that spatial analysis indeed can be used effectively to evaluate the above mentioned interdependencies within the context of post-debris flow event disaster resettlement programmes.

It is expected that the developed framework can be used by authorities and policy makers who are designing and implementing resettlement programmes to evaluate how the spatial design of the programme can be used to minimise socio-economic and cultural issues of settling communities.

The land resettlement programme in Zimbabwe was undertaken not just as a land redistribution exercise but as a carefully planned and managed development programme. Despite the problems of adjusting government institutions to independence, an organisational framework was successfully established to plan and implement resettlement. This owed much to the fact that implementing resettlement was consistent with each institution′s objectives. On the other hand, the early economic success of the programme has become increasingly jeopardised as the institutions′ requirement for programme operation has not been matched by that for planning and implementation. An understanding of the organisational objectives of individual institutions can go some way to explain this. The experience of resettlement in Zimbabwe may not be unique and the experience will add to the increased emphasis being given in agricultural development to the establishment of appropriate farmer‐oriented institutions at the local level.

Resettlement programmes provide support for young offenders during their custodial sentence and for approximately nine months after release. This article describes how the costs and benefits of providing an effective service of this kind were estimated based on the ‘RESET’ programme, published evidence on the costs of crime and the likely reduction in offending due to an intensive support programme. The cost of crime has been estimated at £46,459 per year (after allowing for a reduction due to the time spent in custody), plus prison custody at an average of £30,475 and emergency accommodation at an average of £1,106, making a total of £78,040 for each offender. Using a fairly modest assumption that good support in resettlement could lead to approximately a 35% reduction in frequency and a 10% reduction in seriousness of offending, a saving of £20,407 per offender per year could be achieved. These savings would more than offset the average cost of a good quality resettlement service of £8,074. The scheme would break even if the frequency of offending were reduced by only 20%.

This paper aims to conduct a qualitative needs assessment to explore the effectiveness of Houston’s refugee resettlement efforts in the areas of employment, health care and education.

Using referral sampling, the authors identified refugee community leaders and staff members at the five refugee resettlement agencies in Houston. The authors conducted 29 qualitative interviews with these contacts from February–August 2017.

Recently resettled refugees may struggle to find and maintain employment in Houston due to difficulty accessing public transportation. Refugees seeking medical care in Houston often have difficulty navigating the complexities of the health-care system and communicating with their physicians due to language barriers. Finally, refugee children may have trouble adapting to Houston public schools, sometimes because they have limited experience with formal education. This study provided insights into the challenges Houston refugees face during resettlement and these barriers can be mitigated with policies designed specifically to address them.

The authors recommend decreasing public transportation fees for refugees, supporting programs that donate used vehicles to refugees, expanding access to English as a Second Language classes for refugee children and adults and giving refugees designated time to learn English upon arrival.

Houston welcomes more resettled refugees than any other American city. However, few studies have explored the barriers refugees face during the resettlement process.

Post-disaster population resettlement is a complicated process, during which the restoration of livelihood and lifestyle plays a critical role in achieving a successful resettlement outcome. This paper attempts to examine how recovery policies and relocation approaches influence people's livelihood recovery and perception of wellbeing. It specifically investigates the role of farmland in producing a livelihood and maintaining a rural lifestyle among displaced people.

Through face-to-face questionnaire surveys and in-depth interviews with rural residents displaced from their villages after the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan, China, this study presents both quantitative and qualitative evidence to investigate how post-disaster policies and particularly the availability of farmland influence people's recovery and their satisfaction with the post-resettlement life.

Data suggest that availability of farmland, in spite of the size, makes big differences in post-disaster recovery because farmland provides resettled people with not only a livelihood to secure basic living but also a guarantee to maintain a rural lifestyle.

More samples are needed for analyzing factors that significantly influence disaster-displaced farmers' recovery and wellbeing post resettlement.

This study can be used as an important reference for making plans for post-disaster recovery and population resettlement programs in other disaster-prone countries across the world.

Land-based relocation is proposed as a desirable approach to addressing challenges of livelihood restoration amongst the resettled population in rural areas of developing countries.

Reports on an inter‐agency initiative in Wakefield that used a needs‐led case management approach for the resettlement of 32 former users of long‐term hospital mental health services. Reviews the programme using headings provided by the values which underpinned local mental health services, namely, that services should endeavour to be appropriate, acceptable, accessible, effective/efficient and equitable for service users. The main objective of the programme was achieved – 32 former users of hospital mental health services were resettled. Issues were, however, raised concerning the extent to which the programme could be described as needs‐led. Concludes that there is still much to learn about the application of case management within the British health context.

Knowledge of what makes for quality in adult learning disabilities services does not cascade directly down into grassroots practice. It is instead severely filtered and variously diluted through layers of national policy, local strategy and administrative complexity. In the current difficult climate, quality is not obtained without exposure to the strains and stresses inherent in the dynamics of the health and welfare bureaucracies and their attempts at partnership. Following a largely chronological and descriptive account of attempts to change and develop services in the Greater Glasgow area in the mid‐1990s, consideration is given to the effect of these ‘filters’ in the context of the Greater Glasgow Joint Learning Disability Project.

THE RE‐EMERGENCE OF THE public health agenda and the continued high level of scrutiny of the outcomes of activities in the public sector have created the need to try and work towards agreement on what a ‘healthy housing policy’ might look like. This in turn leads to a requirement for broad agreement on the mechanisms to be used to measure the impact of operational policies in this area. The paper explores the background to these shifts in social policy and offers some thoughts on healthy housing policies for practitioners to consider.

In order to investigate the potential of refugee resettlement programmes as mental healthpromoting settings, this study examines resettlement staff's constructions of refugees' health in everyday episodes within the resettlement programme. Everyday episodes relating to refugees' health were collected through individual and group interviews with 28 members of staff, and analysed using grounded theory methodology. The constructions of health in these episodes focused on mental health, the latter understood as a concept stressing the dynamic fit between person, programme and external environment. If a comprehensive strategy focusing on creating mental health among refugees through inter‐sectoral co‐ordination is developed, resettlement programmes can probably be developed into mental health‐promoting settings. The model proposed in this paper could be a good starting point to further this programme and policy development.