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The purpose of this paper is to provide an account of a comprehensive and independent study of 1,029 older people who receive home care in Wales. The study aims to expand knowledge on the views of older people, a group who traditionally have struggled to make their voices heard. It asked older people about six specific components of home care: being listened to; having trained, knowledgeable and skilled care workers; having enough time to be cared for; receiving care from as few different workers as possible; receiving quality care; and being signposted to other sources of information.

After an initial literature review and period of analysis, a thematic framework for home care was developed which contained the six components described above. A questionnaire was subsequently designed and distributed via the post to all home care services over 65 years old in four local authorities across Wales. A sample response rate of 26.7 per cent was achieved.

The paper provides evidence on the levels of satisfaction (or otherwise) with the home care received by older people in Wales. Overall, nearly 85 per cent of older people are either “satisfied” or “very satisfied”, and given the sample size these data are significant (within appropriate confidence intervals) for the whole of the 25,000 people who receive home care in Wales. However, it is difficult to contextualise these findings given that there are no effective comparator data.

Given the chosen research approach, the results may lack a certain depth of understanding. That said, the size of the sample does provide commissioners and providers of services with certainty about the general population view.

This paper offers a unique independent analysis of home care in Wales, and provides the reader with detailed insights into the views of older people who rarely get a chance to be heard.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the preventable harm created by the adoption of austerity measures in 2010, added to the welfare reforms introduced in 2008 which, collectively, have negative implications for population mental health in the UK.

A critical reflection of published research papers and key policy documents in this area.

Negative mental health consequences of the combined impact of welfare reforms and austerity measures in the UK since 2010 are identified when relating to disability benefit assessments, and to the increased punitive conditionality applied to disability benefit claimants, as those in greatest need now live in fear of making a claim for financial support from the state or of losing benefits to which they are entitled.

This paper identifies the creation of preventable harm by social policy reforms, commonly known as “welfare reforms”. The implications for social scientists are the disregard of academic peer-reviewed social policy research by policymakers, and the adoption of critically challenged policy-based research as used to justify political objectives.

The negative mental health impact of UK government social policy reforms has been identified and highlights the human consequences of the adoption of the biopsychosocial model of assessment.

Reducing the numbers of sick and disabled people claiming long-term disability benefit has increased the numbers claiming unemployment benefit, with no notable increase in the numbers of disabled people in paid employment and with many service users in greatest need living in fear of the next enforced disability assessment.

This paper demonstrates the preventable harm created by the use of a flawed disability assessment model, together with the adoption of punitive conditionality and the increased suicides linked to UK welfare reforms which are influenced by American social policies.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect critically upon current debates and tensions in the governance of research in the UK and more widely, particularly the imperative that social science research should demonstrate impact beyond the academy.

Drawing implicitly upon the Bevir’s theory of governance, the paper positions discourses about “research excellence and research impact” as elite narratives that are rooted genealogically in forms of managerial audit culture which seek to govern the practices of social science academics. The paper reviews relevant literature, draws upon key contributions that have shaped debate and refers to the author’s own research and experiences of “research impact”.

Initiatives such as the UK’s “Research Excellence Framework” can be understood as a form of governance that further enables already present neo-liberalising tendencies in the academy. The “impact agenda” has both negative (e.g. it can distort research priorities and can lead to overstatement of “real world” effects) and positive potential (e.g. to provide institutional space for work towards social justice, in line with long-standing traditions of critical social science and “public sociology”).

There is a need for more critical research and theoretical reflection on the value, threats, limitations and potential of current forms of research governance and “impact”.

To date, there are very few article-length, critical discussions of these developments and issues in research governance, even fewer that connect these debates to longer-standing radical imperatives in social science.

People After acting as a section head in BLR&DD since the summer of 1984 John Burchell has been officially promoted to this post. His particular responsibilities include dissemination, user education and professional education. Sue Howley, BLR&DD project officer responsible for information policy, has been promoted to the post of Head of Central Services, Science Reference and Information Service (formerly Science Reference Library). Dr Richard Snelling, the project officer responsible for social science information, has transferred to Western Manuscripts in the British Library's Special Collections directorate.

The authors aimed to explore how involvement in a creative development accelerator impacted participants. In particular, the authors considered the role of suffering in the acceleration process.

The authors conducted an ethnography of a rapid prototyping program in video game development. Data collection included participant observation (162 h before, 186 during and 463 h after the main prototyping), interviews (23 formal and 35 informal) and artifact analysis (presentations, documents, games).

Acceleration led to individual suffering via burnout, lack of sleep, overwork and illness. In turn, participants required varying periods of recovery after participation and diverged in their longer-term reaction to the experience. The authors make two contributions. First, the authors deepen empirical understanding of the embodied impact of participation in an organizational accelerator. Second, the authors develop a theoretical process model of suffering in an accelerator program based on time and initiation.

This paper focused on a single iteration of a program based out of an incubator in the United Kingdom (UK) Suffering was discovered as part of a larger study of the program.

Business and technology accelerators are becoming a popular way to organize work. This research suggests that accelerator structures might lead to unintended and negative participant experiences.

This research challenges the assumption that accelerators always benefit, or at least not hurt, participants. The authors add to the limited attention paid to suffering in organizations. The authors conclude the impact of an accelerator is more complex than usually portrayed.