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Reviews antenatal and early childhood screening programmes to assess the impact of guidance from the National Screening Committee (NSC). Develops methods to investigate local practice (questionnaires and telephone interviews) and summarises best practice guidance from authoritative sources. Reviews 23 antenatal and 15 early childhood programmes, of which 22 and eight respectively are in place locally. Different types of authoritative sources varied in the aspect of screening on which they commented. Guidance from authoritative sources differed and local practice variations reflected this. In three programmes these variations needed to be addressed. Elsewhere, the NSC’s “watch and wait” stance was confirmed. Limitations to local quality assurance were also identified. Programmes are for the most part following authoritative guidance, but variations in authoritative guidance are a significant issue. Robust audit is required to ensure that the local programmes are achieving optimal health gain.

Objective. To report on the patterns of substance use in newly admitted male and female South Australian prisoners using the WHO‐ASSIST screening tool (Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test) and observe the feasibility of using the ASSIST and associated Brief Intervention in this population. Data sources. Results of the first 518 prisoners screened using ASSIST in South Australian reception prisons. Results. In the first 10 months of the implementation of the WHO ASSIST, 518 clients were assessed in the 3 metropolitan intake prisons in Adelaide, Australia. This represents 31% of all male and 35% of all female prisoners admitted over this period. Injecting drug use was reported in the previous 3 months by 55% of men and 51% of women. The six most common substances used at high and moderate risk levels, in order of prevalence (from high to low) in males were tobacco, cannabis, amphetamines, opiates, alcohol, and sedatives. In women the order was tobacco, amphetamines, cannabis, opiates and sedatives equal, and alcohol. Fifty percent of men and 33% of women were using four or more substances. Overall rates of substance use related risk amongst men coming into prison are slightly greater than for women. Accessing prisoners for screening within the first few days is difficult with 55% already being released or at court or other external appointments.

The purpose of this paper is to review the evidence of alcohol use disorders within the different stages of the criminal justice system in the UK. Furthermore it reviewed the worldwide evidence of alcohol brief interventions in the various stages of the criminal justice system.

A rapid systematic review of publications was conducted from the year 2000 to 2014 regarding the prevalence of alcohol use disorders in the various stages of the criminal justice system. The second part of the work was a rapid review of effectiveness studies of interventions for alcohol brief interventions. Studies were included if they had a comparison group. Worldwide evidence was included that consisted of up to three hours of face-to-face brief intervention either in one session or numerous sessions.

This review found that 64-88 per cent of adults in the police custody setting; 95 per cent in the magistrate court setting; 53-69 per cent in the probation setting and 5,913-863 per cent in the prison system and 64 per cent of young people in the criminal justice system in the UK scored positive for an alcohol use disorder. There is very little evidence of effectiveness of brief interventions in the various stages of the criminal justice system mainly due to the lack of follow-up data.

Brief alcohol interventions have a large and robust evidence base for reducing alcohol use in risky drinkers, particularly in primary care settings. However, there is little evidence of effect upon drinking levels in criminal justice settings. Whilst the approach shows promise with some effects being shown on alcohol-related harm as well as with young people in the USA, more robust research is needed to ascertain effectiveness of alcohol brief interventions in this setting.

This paper provides evidence of alcohol use disorders in the different stages of the criminal justice system in the UK using a validated tool as well as reviewing the worldwide evidence for short ( < three hours) alcohol brief intervention in this setting.

Internal audit student internship programmes are an integral part of the curriculum for Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) target schools of US universities. The internship concept is explored ‐ how it is implemented, its characteristics, and its advantages and disadvantages – at six target schools. It is concluded that the benefits, to the items, employers and academic institutions, outweigh the potential disadvantages.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the learning from the multi-agency evaluation of the Leeds Dual Diagnosis Care co-ordination protocol undertaken by the Leeds Dual Diagnosis (DD) Project in 2013. The evaluation aimed to identify the prevalence of people with DD accessing network member services, and to identify the standard of care network members provided for people with DD in relation to the Leeds Care Co-ordination Protocol.

The evaluation adopted a service evaluation methodology and included features of real world research. Two standardised self-completion questionnaires were administered using Survey Monkey™ software.

The majority of service could provide prevalence data however the quality of data provided was significantly impacted by the limitations of client management systems. Completion of specific DD training beyond basic awareness was generally low and many participants were confused about the different levels of training available. Standards of care varied, a substantial amount of joint working was taking place via informal pathways which relied on established relationships and trust between practitioners and services. Jointing working was often informal when people were not under the Care Programme Approach.

Due of the methodological choices the evaluation cannot be considered impartial. The prevalence data gathered lacks robustness and does not reflect the number of people who meet clinical threshold for DD as valid screening tools were not used by all services. The standards of care identified only reflect practitioner's personal views and do not provide a definitive answer to the standard of care being delivered. The response rate in relation to standards of care was low with large amounts of missing data negatively impacting the external validity of data gathered.

The completion of this evaluation demonstrates that it is extremely challenging to undertake a multi-agency evaluation with limited resources. It has highlighted key challenges and areas for future development locally in relation to DD. The themes explored are likely to be of interest to commissioners, service managers, DD consultant nurses and anyone involved in the strategic development of DD.

The evaluation has generated information which is of practical significance to local commissioners and Leeds DD Network Members. The knowledge and learning from this evaluation has subsequently been used by the Leeds DD Strategy Group to inform the new action plan for the DD Project, the re-commissioning of substance misuse services and the new mental health framework being developed for Leeds.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of joint liability in improving the repayment performance of a microfinance program.

This is a systematic review of the theoretical and empirical literature.

The theoretical literature has shown, using models of peer selection, peer monitoring and peer pressure, that joint liability overcomes both the informational and enforcement failures present in credit markets for the poor. However, the empirical literature does not yield a clear answer on how much of the success of microfinance programs can be attributed to the effect of joint liability alone without considering the effect of other instruments used by microfinance programs. Further, it is seen that joint liability does not work in isolation, but its effect is dependent on social, cultural and economic environment.

An important future research agenda could be to study the roles of different overlapping mechanisms in group lending and to look at their interactions.

The concept of joint liability works well both in the rural and urban areas, but different social, cultural and economic factors should be analyzed before initiating a microfinance program. In developed regions, focus should be on strengthening peer selection and peer monitoring, as information problems are prevalent. In underdeveloped regions, the major problem is of strategic default, so the focus should be on strengthening social sanctions.

Findings can be used for optimal design of credit contracts for the poor.

The paper reviews the existing literature on – “whether and how” – joint liability lending works in inefficient credit markets and comes up with practical implications for the microfinance sector.

This paper revolves around the usage of data analytics in the Qur’an and Hadith through a new text mining technique to answer the main research question of whether the activities and the data flows of the Murabaha financing contract is compatible with Sharia law. The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough and comprehensive database that will be used to examine existing practices in Islamic banks’ and improve compliancy with Islamic financial law (Sharia).

To design a Sharia-compliant Murabaha business process originated on text mining, the authors start by identifying the factors deemed necessary in their text mining techniques of both texts; using a four-step strategy to analyze those text mining analytics; then, they list the three basic approaches in text mining used for new knowledge discovery in databases: the co-occurrence approach based on the recursive co-occurrence algorithm; the machine learning or statistical-based; and the knowledge-based. They identify any variation and association between the Murabaha business processes produced using text mining against the one developed through data collection.

The main finding attained in this paper is to confirm the compatibility of all activities and the data flows in the Murabaha financing contract produced using data analytics of the Quran and Hadith texts against the Murabaha business process that was developed based on data collection. Another key finding is revealing some shortcomings regarding Islamic banks business process compliance with Sharia law.

Given Murabaha as the most popular mode of Islamic financing with more than 75% in total transactions, this research has managed to touch-base on an area that is interesting to the vast majority of those dealing with Islamic finance instruments. By reaching findings that could improve the existing Islamic Murabaha business process and concluding on Sharia compliance of the existing Murabaha business process, this research is quite relevant and could be used in practice as well as in influencing public policy. In fact, Islamic Sharia law experts, Islamic finance professionals and Islamic banks may find the results of this study very useful in improving at least one aspect of the Islamic finance transactions.

By using a novel, fresh text mining methods built on recursive occurrence of synonym words from the Qur’an and Hadith to enrich Islamic finance, this research study can claim to have been the first of its kind in using machine learning to mine the Quran, Hadith and in extracting valuable knowledge to support and consolidate the Islamic financial business processes and make them more compliant with the i.

This paper presents a systematic literature review, including content and bibliometric analyses, of the impact of blockchain technology (BT) in auditing, to identify trends, research areas and construct an agenda for future research.

The authors include studies from 2010 to 2020 in their structured literature review (SLR), using accounting journals on the Scopus database, which yielded 40 articles with blockchain and auditing at its core.

One of the contributions of the authors’ analyses is to group the prior research, and therefore also the agenda for future research, into three main research areas: (1) Blockchain as a tool for auditing professionals to improve business information systems to save time and prevent fraud; (2) Smart contracts enabling Audit 4.0 efficiency, reporting, disclosure and transparency; (3) Cryptocurrency and initial coin offerings (ICOs) as a springboard for corporate governance and new venture financing. The authors’ findings have several important implications for practice and theory.

The results of this study emphasise that (1) the disruption of blockchain in auditing is in a nascent phase and there is a need for compelling empirical studies and potential for the involvement of practitioners; (2) there may be a need to reconsider audit procedures especially suited for digitalisation and BT adoption; (3) standards, guidelines and training are required to pivot towards and confront the challenge BT will represent for auditing; and (4) there are two sides to the BT coin for auditing, enthusiasm about the potential and risk upon implementation. These practical implications can also be seen as a template for future research in a quest to align theory and practice.

The authors’ SLR facilitates the identification of research areas and implications, forming a useful baseline for practitioners, professionals and academics, as they draft the state of the art on the disruption of blockchain in auditing, highlighting how BT is changing auditing activities and traditions.

This paper aims to examine the impact of a number of audits on clinical practice within a large mental health NHS trust. It aims to consider all audits that had been reaudited by psychiatry trainees and to compare the adherence to various standards before and after reaudit.

The authors examined all available clinical audits undertaken by psychiatry trainees that had been reaudited within Mersey Care NHS Trust. The results were analysed using SPSS version 16.0 for Windows. Differences between the results before and after reaudit were tested for using Pearson chi‐squared and Fisher's exact tests, both two‐tailed.

Significant improvements were noted in five of the 35 standards compared before and after reaudit. Only one reaudit, that of the assessment of physical health and of metabolic and cardiovascular risk in inpatients in Ashworth Hospital, showed significant deteriorations in adherence to the standards which was seen in seven of the nine parameters.

The reaudits demonstrated only a limited improvement in practice. This highlights the need for a more structured approach to involvement of junior doctors in clinical audit and more robust methods of dissemination and implementation of recommendations.