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The purpose of this research paper is to describe quantitative methods that assist police administrators with evaluating current staffing and justifying to local governing bodies the size of the patrol workforce required to meet performance benchmarks.

A discrete-event simulation model is developed to analyze various staffing levels and alternative scheduling scenarios. Input distributions are based on computer-aided dispatch (CAD) data from an urban police department. The results can be used to estimate the size of the patrol force needed to meet performance objectives.

The simulation model produces an estimate of the number of officers required to staff the department in order to meet benchmark goals. The output also indicates when and where patrol officers need to be added and shows performance plateaus where staffing increases only marginally improve performance. Observations on the trade-offs between meeting budget (via staffing) and benchmark goals are also provided.

Assuming that the quality of CAD data is reliable, our model requires data for one year to generate the distributions needed for the simulation. The computation of staffing estimates requires a shift-relief factor, calculated by the department to account for times when officers cannot be scheduled.

This study suggests that the department should hire additional patrol officers or increase overtime hours in order to meet performance benchmarks.

In contrast to previous modeling approaches, our simulation does not rely on the assumption that the policing system is static or in a steady state.

The purpose of this paper is to look at the implications of the increasing use of Assisted Living Technology in the social care sector and to assess the implications for the workforce in terms of job roles, skills, knowledge, training, and support.

A mixed methods approach was used, through a quantitative electronic survey of staff working in social care (as well as some health care) organisations in England, and three qualitative case studies of local authorities.

The research shows that the organisations involved in delivering Assisted Living Technology, the types of Assisted Living Technology being introduced, and the way in which it is being delivered, have implications for job roles and the skills and knowledge needed by staff. The associated training and workforce development similarly varies across the social care sector; it is ad hoc, disparate, and provided primarily by individual employers or by suppliers and manufacturers.

There is a need for a standardised Assisted Living Technology workforce development approach which can be used across the social care sector.

The varied nature of Assisted Living Technology providers and delivery models presents a challenge to the development and implementation of a standardised programme of workforce development.

This paper presents the results of new empirical research arising from a quantitative and qualitative study of the workforce development implications of Assisted Living Technology in the English social care sector.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the findings of the first stage of a project seeking to evaluate and overcome inter-professional barriers between health and social care staff within a single, co-located, integrated community team. The project seeks to answer the following questions: first, Do inter-professional barriers to integrated working exist between health and social care staff at the interface of care delivery? Second, If inter-professional barriers exist, can joint health and social care assessments help to overcome them? The paper develops the current evidence base through findings from a staff questionnaire and the initial findings of a pilot study of joint health and social care assessments aimed at overcoming inter-professional barriers to integration.

The first stage of the project involved running an anonymous, online questionnaire with health and social care staff within a single, co-located community adult health and social care team. The questionnaire aimed to explore staffs’ perceptions of inter-professional collaboration when assessing the health and care needs of service users with a high degree of complexity of need. The second element of the study presents the initial findings of a small pilot of joint health and social care assessments. A second staff survey was used in order to provide a “before and after” comparative analysis and to demonstrate the effect of joint assessments on staffs’ perceptions of inter-professional collaboration at the interface of care delivery.

Health and social care staff value joint working as a means of improving quality of care. However, they also felt that inter-professional collaboration did not occur routinely due to organisational limitations. Staff members who participated in the pilot of joint assessments believed that this collaborative approach improved their understanding of other professional roles, was an effective means of enabling others to understand their own roles and helped to better identify the health and care needs of the most complex service users on their caseloads. Initial findings suggest that joint assessments may be a practical means of overcoming inter-professional barriers related to a lack of communication and lack of understanding of job roles.

The questionnaires highlighted the need for integration strategies that are aimed at facilitating collaborative working between staff of different professions, in order to achieve the aims of integration, such as a reduction in duplication of work and hand-offs between services.

To date, few studies have explored either staff perceptions of collaborative working or the effectiveness of joint assessments as a means of overcoming inter-professional barriers. This paper adds new data to an important area of integration that legislators and researchers increasingly agree requires more focus. Although the findings are limited due to the small scale of the initial pilot, they provide interesting and original data that will provide insight into future workforce integration strategies.

This article will provide an overview of the national child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) workforce planning programme 2006‐7, which used early implementer sites in each of the eight English regions to produce a specialist CAMHS workforce plan and explores the potential transferable learning from the CAMHS experience to workforce planning across a range of other settings.

Federal agencies are relying increasingly on contractors to perform their missions. With hundreds of billions of tax dollars spent each year on goods and services, it is essential that federal acquisition be handled in an efficient, effective, and accountable manner. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), however--as well as other accountability organizations, inspectors general, and the agencies themselves--continue to identify systemic weaknesses in key areas of acquisition. In fact, the acquisition function at several agencies has been on GAO's high-risk list, which identifies areas in the federal government with greater vulnerability to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. In January 2005, we added interagency contracting to this list. Far too often, the result of poor acquisitions has been an inability to obtain quality goods and services on time and at a fair price. We can no longer afford such outcomes. Given current fiscal demands and the fiscal challenges we are likely to face in the 21st century, the federal government must improve its ability to acquire goods and services in a cost-effective manner. GAO developed this framework to enable high-level, qualitative assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of the acquisition function at federal agencies. Such assessments can help senior agency executives identify areas needing greater management attention, and enable accountability organizations (including GAO) to identify areas requiring more focused follow-up work. The framework consists of four interrelated cornerstones that our work has shown are essential to an efficient, effective, and accountable acquisition process: (1) organizational alignment and leadership, (2) policies and processes, (3) human capital, and (4) knowledge and information management. The framework supports an integrated evaluation approach, but each of these cornerstones can stand alone so users of this framework may tailor evaluations to an agency's specific needs.

The focus of this paper is to consider the findings of a survey, which aims to identify the types of training that acute mental health staff could access, in relation to workforce development and substance misuse issues in acute mental health care.

An electronic survey was developed and distributed using work email lists to all clinicians who worked in acute mental health services across a region in England. Not all NHS organisations agreed to participate.

A total of 89 clinicians responded to the survey, some failed to indicate their consent, therefore the results of the 77 that did are presented. The main finding was that most acute care staff had only accessed mandatory training such as risk assessment. Many staff had not been trained in the use of psychosocial approaches. Drug and alcohol specific activities were performed on the whole only “sometimes”.

It was not possible to determine the total number of potentially eligible staff who were sent the survey, therefore, response rates cannot be calculated. It is possible that the findings may not be generalisable to other services. There may be bias in those who choose to respond to an electronic email, in terms of those who had access to a computer or who were more IT literate. In addition, the survey did not specifically set out to examine substance misuse issues as its main focus.

Acute care staff work with service users with increasingly complex needs. Creative and cost effective ways of facilitating access to training and support must be found as a priority to ensure that staff have the competencies to identify and manage substance users effectively in acute mental health settings.

The findings reinforce previous studies highlighting the deficit in access to psychosocial interventions training for acute care staff.

This paper explores the workforce development issues that arose in the course of an Australian repeat pilot study. The aim of the pilot study was to introduce, within a different setting, a planned approach to the assessment of, and interventions in, emotional states of service users that may lead to episodes of behavioural disturbance within psychiatric units. The pilot study necessitated training of staff in the use of an assessment tool. During the course of the study, a novel element was encountered with regard to staff understanding of service user involvement in treatment. This element, presented here as 'integral self‐intervention', emerged in conjunction with the development of two wall charts: an acute arousal management process chart for staff, and a patient safety chart for service users. The paper will outline the collaborative process towards the partial realisation of this element of integral self‐intervention, and associated workforce development issues.

The impetus for this paper was the recognition, based on recent surveys and our own experiences, that organizations face special challenges when designing and validating selection procedures for information technology (IT) workers. The history of the IT industry, the nature of IT work, and characteristics of IT workers converge to make the selection of IT workers uniquely challenging. In this paper, we identify these challenges and suggest means of addressing them. We show the advantages offered by the modern view of validation that endorses a wide spectrum of probative information relevant to establishing the job relatedness and business necessity of IT selection procedures. Finally, we identify the implications of these issues for industrial/organizational psychologists, human resource managers, and managers of IT workers.

This paper aims to provide an evidence assessment and narrative synthesis of literature regarding the key characteristics of older people living in service-integrated housing (SIH) facilities and their “accommodation journey”.

A rapid evidence assessment was conducted: 22 research publications met the inclusion criteria and were analysed using narrative synthesis.

The quality of studies in this area is low, but consistency across components of the results of studies included in the review is apparent. Results suggest key characteristics of older people that drive moves into SIH are a decline in health, increased dependency, increased health service use and carer burden. Suggested key characteristics of SIH residents are high levels of health problems, dependency and health service use, but high self-reported health and well-being. Results indicate that the key driver for older people leaving SIH is a lack of workforce competency to manage further declines in health and dependency status.

Current policy may not realise or account for the complex health and care needs of SIH residents. Investment into integrated care, robust community health services and workforce development to facilitate a comprehensive assessment approach may be required to support residents to remain in SIH and live well. Further longitudinal studies are required to map the progression of SIH residents’ health status in detail over time to provide an understanding of preventative and enablement support, development of care pathways and workforce planning and development requirements.

This evidence assessment is the first to consider the accommodation journey of older people residing in SIH.

The trend now in many organizations is to decentralize operations, giving greater responsibility to employees in the form of empowerment. Getting rid of a whole layer of management may sound wonderful to the company accountant and also to many employees, but where does this leave the majority of aspiring young workers who expect to have a career ahead of them? By eradicating middle management, the chain to the highest echelons of the company are dramatically reduced. This can of course be a very good policy in that people have quicker and better contact with the decision‐making people, but this can also leave a vacuum of promotional uncertainty owing to the flattening in the hierarchical chain. Many people like the extra responsibility that empowerment brings, but they must also be able to see that they also have a future within the organization.