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This paper is an evaluated case study of the Wellbeing Coordinator (WBC) service in Cheshire, UK. WBCs are non-clinical members of the GP surgery or hospital team who offer advice and support to help people with long-term conditions and unmet social needs remain independent at home. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

A mixed method design assessed the outcomes of care for recipients and carers using interviews, diaries and validated wellbeing measures. Service utilization data, interviews and observations of WBC consultations enabled investigation of changes in processes of care. Data were analysed using simple descriptive statistics, established instrument scoring systems and accepted social science conventions.

The WBC complements medical approaches to supporting people with complex health and social care problems, with support for carers often a key service component. Users reported improvements in their wellbeing, access to social networks, and maintenance of social identity and valued activities. Health and social care professionals recognized the value of the service.

The WBC concept relieves the burden on health and social care professionals as the social elements of ill-health are addressed. A shift in thinking from ill-health to wellbeing means older people feel more able to regain control over their own lives, being less dependent on consulting professionals.

The WBC is a new service focussing on the individual in their health, social and economic context. Process and outcomes evaluations are rare in this field.

Social engagement is important for healthy ageing but may be challenging for residents of disadvantaged urban communities. For older residents of one such community, this project aimed to examine levels of social engagement and its link with wellbeing and community attachment.

The project introduced activities to promote social engagement and used a survey to assess participants' wider involvement in local activities and their feelings of wellbeing and community attachment.

Sixty five people completed the survey: most lived alone (over 69 per cent) but had contact at least monthly with family, friends and neighbours (over 70 per cent) and made regular use of local amenities (over 79 per cent). Only 34.7 per cent were classified as “not lonely” and participants' mean health related quality of life score was lower than the national average. However, over 65 per cent of participants rated their generic quality of life as good or better and over 67 per cent had a positive sense of community attachment. Statistically significant associations were identified between a person's feelings of loneliness and generic quality of life and their level of contact with relatives, neighbours and friends and their sense of community attachment.

Results confirm the need for strategies to promote the social engagement of older people. The link between community attachment and wellbeing also demonstrates that community wide strategies are required. The importance of maintaining the “corner shop” was evident.

Analysis of Information Options offers new tools for evaluating investments in research, mineral exploration, logistics, energy transmission, and other information operations. With Information Options, the underlying assets are information assets and the rules governing exercise are based on the realities of the information realm (infosphere). Information Options can be modeled as options to “purchase” information assets by paying the cost of the information operations involved. Information Options arise at several stages of value creation. The initial stage involves observation of physical phenomena with accompanying data capture. The next refinement is to organize the data into structured databases. Then bits of information are selected from storage and synthesized into an information product (such as a management report). Next, the information product is presented to the user via an efficient interface that does not require the user to be a field expert. Information Options are similar in concept to real options but substantially different in their details, since real options have physical objects as the underlying assets and the rules governing exercise are based on the realities of the physical world. Also, while exercising a financial option typically kills the option, Information Options may include multiple exercises. Information Options may involve high volatility or jump processes as well, further enhancing their value. This chapter extends several important real option applications into the information realm, including jump process models and models for valuing options to synthesize any of n information items into any of m output assets.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

This study aims to compare the aptitude of pine as a softwood and beech as a hardwood, regarding their different retention and antimicrobial performances as compared to polyethylene.

Four sets of tests were carried out: recovery, cleaning, remobilization and survival experiments. For all experiments wood and control blocks or chippings were spiked with bacteria and tested at set intervals for bacterial counts using standard procedures.

Overall, wood performed at least as good as polyethylene. Polyethylene is not as easy to clean. The problematic cleansing capabilities of wood are compensated by its open structure. Pine exerted antimicrobial abilities faster than beech and showed better performance than both beech and polyethylene. The differences between beech and polyethylene were only marginal.

The findings may help along with further research to re‐establish the value of wood in some food processing settings and in the home. However, only new materials were used so that no statement on the performance of used wood and plastic utensils can be made. Besides, only two types of woods and one type of plastic were used in this study.

This article is written with the expertise of the authors and will be of interest to those in the field.

Britain's planemakers are flushed with confidence as orders pick‐up and expanding production lines remove the redundancy spectre of recession days. But Roger Eglin questions this new‐found optimism, pointing out that European collaboration is an urgent—but as yet unresolved—issue to counter US competition.

Product developers continue to be plagued by the high incidence of new product failure. This monograph presents the results of a two‐phase empirical study designed to shed some light on approaches which might improve the process.Phase I focuses on a large sample of such failures and reveals that industrial product firms suffer from an inward orientation. The main reasons for failure were found to be a lack of understanding of customers, competition and the market environment. A review of the many activities involved on the new product process showed that market oriented activities consistently fared the worst when compared to technical, production and financial evaluation. Finally, a lack of marketing research personnel and skills was thought to have contributed more to industrial product failure than any other resource deficiency.Phase II of the research presents three case histories of exceptionally successful and well‐executed industrial new product ventures. They reveal that the development of new products is a sequential and goal‐oriented process, each stage involving information acquisition activity followed by evaluation and decision. Incremental commitment is identified as an effective route to risk reduction. The case histories demonstrate that market orientation in industrial product development is not only feasible but highly desirable.

Earliest localism was sited on a tree or hill or ford, crossroads or whenceways, where people assembled to talk, (Sax. witan), or trade, (Sax. staple), in eggs, fowl, fish or faggots. From such primitive beginnings many a great city has grown. Settlements and society brought changes; appointed headmen and officials, a cloak of legality, uplifted hands holding “men to witness”. Institutions tend to decay and many of these early forms passed away, but not the principle vital to the system. The parish an ecclesiastical institution, had no place until Saxons, originally heathens, became Christians and time came when Church, cottage and inn filled the lives of men, a state of localism in affairs which endured for centuries. The feudal system decayed and the vestry became the seat of local government. The novels of Thomas Hardy—and English literature boasts of no finer descriptions of life as it once was—depict this authority and the awe in which his smocked countrymen stood of “the vicar in his vestry”. The plague freed serfs and bondsmen, but events, such as the Poor Law of 1601, if anything, revived the parish as the organ of local government, but gradually secular and ecclesiastical aspects were divided and the great population explosion of the eighteenth century created necessity for subdivision of areas, which continued to serve the principle of localism however. The ballot box completed the eclipse of Church; it changed concepts of localism but not its importance in government.

Index by subjects, compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals: Facilities Volumes 8‐17; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐17; Property Management Volumes 8‐17; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐17.