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People with dementia are prone to persistent walking (also known as ‘wandering’). Walking can bring physical and psychological benefits, but people with dementia also walk because of anxiety or confusion. People with dementia are at risk of becoming lost or involved in accidents, and this raises concerns for them and their carers. Electronic surveillance and tracking, as a form of safer walking technology, can be used to monitor people's whereabouts and is being used in dementia care. The technology raises a number of practical and ethical issues. This article reviews the key themes and arguments surrounding its use, with a view to raising issues for further debate. The article shows the need to carefully balance people's freedom and rights, including the right to take risks, with care and safety concerns.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the extent to which Taiwan's current policy agenda is moving towards an improved system of integrated health and social services. The paper informs debates about integrated care internationally.

The case study draws on existing literature and policy documents to analyse the progress of integrated care in Taiwan, with wider implications identified internationally.

For many years Taiwan's health care and social services were separated, however, there is growing momentum for integrated care in politics, policy and practice. There are, however, a number of critical issues that need to be addressed if Taiwan is to realise its ambitions for a truly integrated system.

This is a small case study and overview, with the limited aim of exploring Taiwan's progress in an international context.

The paper contributes to an emerging body of literature on integrated care in Taiwan (some only available in Chinese), which will be of interest to policy makers and planners, not only in East Asia but internationally.

Clinical outcome measures are used in clinical audit to monitor the quality of care provided to patients. As information technology (IT) is increasingly being integrated into the delivery of health care, computerising the use of clinical outcome measures has been proposed. However, little is known about the attitudes of health professionals towards this. Aims to understand professionals’ views on adapting one clinical outcome measure – the palliative care outcome scale (POS) – for use on hand‐held computers. Concludes that these results reinforce existing research on clinical outcome measures and IT in health care; identify special palliative care issues when considering the use of computerised clinical outcome measures with patients; and highlight the need for further research.

Quality has an established history in health care. Audit, as a means of quality assessment, is well understood and the existing literature has identified links between audit and research processes. This paper reviews the relationships between audit and research processes, highlighting how audit can be improved through the principles and practice of social research.

The review begins by defining the audit process. It goes on to explore salient relationships between clinical audit and research, grouped into the following broad themes: ethical considerations, highlighting responsibilities towards others and the need for ethical review for audit; asking questions and using appropriate methods, emphasising transparency in audit methods; conceptual issues, including identifying problematic concepts, such as “satisfaction”, and the importance of reflexivity within audit; emphasising research in context, highlighting the benefits of vignettes and action research; complementary methods, demonstrating improvements for the quality of findings; and training and multidisciplinary working, suggesting the need for closer relationships between researchers and clinical practitioners.

Audit processes cannot be considered research. Both audit and research processes serve distinct purposes.

Attention to the principles of research when conducting audit are necessary to improve the quality of audit and, in turn, the quality of health care.

NHS reforms in England led to the establishment of Local Education and Training Board (LETBs) to ensure the future supply of staff. LETBs have an important role in addressing health and social care integration. This paper aims to stimulate debate, ideas and opportunities to improve integrated workforce planning, practice and policy.

This is a thought leadership article which presents a distillation of key policy and strategy, drawing out implications for policy makers and workforce planners at a strategic level.

The paper describes and critically appraises the role of LETBs in supporting integration between health and social care. The key messages include: ensure social care and public health representation on the board, track education and training decisions against commissioning priorities, focus on outcomes and transition points, build health‐related skills in social care, support providers and use performance measures of integration.

LETBs need to demonstrate an open and transparent approach to workforce education and planning. All partners need to engage including social care and public health service commissioners and providers.

There is a substantial body of literature on integration, although much less is devoted to examining workforce. This article will be of particular interest to LETB leaders, those responsible for reviewing and assessing the performance of LETBs as well as social care leaders and workforce planners. In addition the article will be of interest to those supporting integrated workforce planning and development across the UK and internationally.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and review the leadership challenges in workforce planning, paying special reference to adult social care primarily in England (UK) whilst raising leadership issues that have international resonance.

This is a viewpoint which presents a distillation of key issues, challenges and relevant literature spanning workforce planning, human resources and social care.

The paper finds that growing demands on services, rising expectations for personalised care and support, together with the provision of safe and effective joined up care are some of the key drivers facing social care and wider public services. Leaders need to ensure a robust data and evidence base, sound interpretation of intelligence as well as building integrated approaches to workforce planning both within and between services.

Workforce leadership provides the bedrock to ensuring social care builds the workforce required for the future. As services undergo redesign and transformation the workforce planning task is more important now than ever and is a key responsibility for every organisation's leadership, including chief executives, commissioners and workforce specialists.

Workforce planning in social care is afforded relatively little attention and the analysis presented in this paper provides the stimulus for debate.