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This paper sets out to look at social inclusion among users within services, asking the questions is there a general measure of agreement about what social inclusion means to people, and is there an accepted way of measuring these views? The initiative was funded by the NIHR Research Methods programme now part of the Health Technology Assessment group at Southampton. Nine focus groups explored what people understand by ‘social inclusion’ and concept mapping was used to try and define the term. The research methods are reported here, along with plans for the future.

The concept of social inclusion features prominently in current policy and practice developments in mental health services. The Social Exclusion Unit (2006) highlighted the need for mental health day services to promote inclusion and participation, by integrating with the wider community, and by supporting and encouraging users to access opportunities in the local community. The Leeds i3 (inspire, improve, include) project aimed to modernise local mental health day services accordingly. The aim of our study was to develop and validate a measure of social inclusion to be used in mental health day services in Leeds. The underlying assumption was that recent changes in mental health day service provision would substantially improve social inclusion of the service users.The social inclusion questionnaire was developed through extensive iterative consultation with mental health service users and staff, and its reliability was proven using test‐retest statistics. It was shown to be a simple, inexpensive, user‐friendly and repeatable measure that could be used routinely by mental health day services. Factor analysis of the questionnaire showed that social inclusion had seven important components. We suggest that these components form a useful basis for discussion with service users, as well as for planning and evaluating services.

The transfer to partnership in public sector management has created significantly new modes of service delivery, and is suggested to be the best means of ensuring that disadvantaged groups are socially included. The purpose of this paper is to examine New Leisure Trust (NLT) structures in public leisure provision relative to direct, in‐house managed facilities and privately run Leisure Management Contractor (LMC) facilities. In particular, NLTs receive significant government funds and subsidies through tax breaks that are not forthcoming to rivals, which raises questions as to whether NLTs deserve such aid for delivering upon the social inclusion agenda of the government.

The research involved a national survey questionnaire to 1,060 public leisure service providers in England. Empirical testing through multiple analysis of variance and regression analysis was applied to the dataset.

The authors find that NLTs do not follow social orientation strategies to any significantly greater degree than rivals, nor seem to create social inclusion to any greater degree. Further, NLTs have the least to gain in terms of business performance from creating social inclusion, whilst in‐house (in particular) and LMC facilities stand to gain the most.

Though each approach to provision examined places a considerable strategic emphasis on being socially oriented, they are not effective at increasing the social inclusion of recreationally disadvantaged groups.

This paper calls for the current public leisure management playing field to be levelled in a rebalance of opportunity and investment through the removal of anti‐competitive measures.

Understanding disabled people as gray-collar workers who are under-paid, under-valued and under-employed is recognized as in urgent need of attention but remains unaddressed. Based on 30 semi-structured interviews with disabled people, observations and document analysis, the authors argue that the disabled gray-collar workers in the performing arts provide a context and socio-cultural perspective on how gray-collar workers can attain dignity through social inclusion. Building on a novel framework of four dimensions of social inclusion theory – access, participation, representation and empowerment – the authors identify social interactions portrayed in the performing arts in order to deconstruct the processes that normalize and reinforce exclusion and inequality. The authors demonstrate how social inclusion can be “enabled” which has implications for theory, policy and practice.

Since the 1994 regime change many South African public libraries have been destroyed by the communities they were serving which raises questions about how communities perceive these libraries. With the loss of activist library organizations, few insights are gained from activists or critical librarianship on how to respond. In this context, the chapter examines public library social inclusion and poverty alleviation initiatives, and government conditional grants to public libraries.

Using a transformative paradigm, a qualitative approach and thematic analysis, the chapter examines recent literature on public libraries and social inclusion, and local annual and parliamentary reports. A mini-survey yields case study material.

The findings augment the scarce store of recent evidence on South African public libraries. Most provinces had built new libraries, upgraded others, and installed information and communication infrastructure to enhance access. Problems included governance, fund wastage, and staffing. The libraries have great potential to improve their relevance for local communities.

The poor survey response rate and lack of a comprehensive national database on public libraries limits the research. Annual reports are uneven in comprehensiveness, making comparison difficult.

The chapter recommends (i) creating a national information system to monitor service delivery via the grants and enable rigorous investigation of their impact and (ii) increased government support for public library social inclusion initiatives.

First hand evidence from local librarians and official reports demonstrates the grants’ effect on public library promotion of social inclusion and shows what is possible in a situation of historical inequities.

The present paper analyzes the implementation of Open Digital Television (Televisión Digital Abierta or TDA) in Argentina. It takes up a sociotechnical standpoint and considers TDA as a public policy designed to foster social inclusion.

The ideas presented in this paper are derived from a sociotechnical perspective, both at a theoretical and at a methodological level. The main postulates of this perspective are based on constructivist criteria; they explain outcomes as a result of the constant interplay of technical and social realities. Thus, this relation is intrinsic and continuous. We work with the concept of technology in its broadest sense. That is to say, TDA is not seen as just a mass communication infrastructure, but as a technology which involves knowledge, production practices, and content broadcasting, as a result of the interrelation of cultural, political, social, economic, scientific, and technological factors. The study of TDA in Argentina as a public policy for social inclusion shows how the constant sociotechnical interrelations have to be taken into account (technical standard, antenna features, social actors involved, produced content, etc.) throughout the whole process, from the conception and design of public policies to their implementation, but mainly at the stage of results analysis.

We concluded that throughout the implementation of the TDA public policy, a determinist view of technology prevailed. This can be seen in relation to both the role of television as a medium for social inclusion and the actions regarding the role of the user. The idea of viewer in the traditional sense prevailed over the idea of an active user. This stage provides significant data to assess the range and the limitations of the current public policy, and to think of improvements to implement in the future. These observations suggest a new challenge lying on the horizon: to construct a new concept of television; that is, to analyze TV as a social actor that is crucial for social inclusion rather than simply a medium of mass communication.

The sociotechnical perspective sheds light on the actors involved in the development, implementation, and production of a public policy designed for social inclusion. It focuses both on the government plan and the usage practices of the users themselves. The approach we propose for the study of the relation between technology and public policy is consistent with the notion of an active government.

The value of this paper lies in its theoretical and methodological approach, since a sociotechnical analysis grounded on relativism is a different view to the one that is dominant in studies in the field of communication and public policies. This view offers innovative insights into the problems regarding TDA by exploring the interrelations between actors and the power relations embedded in the public policy.

Social inclusion is a critical success factor for achieving community integration. An ideal outcome of social inclusion is that people can fully participate in the economic, social, and political life of their villages. This research identifies key aspects of community collaboration in setting up a telecommunication network in rural Mexico.

Under the perspective of a social business modeling view the research carried out 39 semi-structured interviews with residents of the Mexican village of Nochixtlán who benefited from a not-for-profit rural telecom initiative. The interviews helped to identify the main drivers of community collaboration.

Two barriers to the telecom initiative were found: public policies and market competition. Policy barriers included ambiguous government goals, unreliable delivery timeframes, and weak governance. Market barriers included lack of private suppliers, insufficient incentives to attract commercial providers, and lack of funds to set up proprietary infrastructure.

The application of face-to-face interviews with a relatively small number of individuals may restrain the generalizability of empirical findings. Yet, the use of analytical techniques, such as focus groups, might increase reliability for future studies.

Rural telephony does not simply depend on technical expertise to connect disperse towns and villages because strong social capital is also needed. Therefore, stakeholders should engage in active participation through the planning and operation of the network.

The chapter discusses how social inclusion and social capital can help to overcome technical and market barriers that deter the deployment of rural telecom networks. Community involvement is devised as a tool for assisting policy-makers in pushing social initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors which influence refugee migrants’ adoption of digital technology and its relevance to their social inclusion in Australia.

This research developed a conceptual framework keeping the “use” of digital technology as the centre-piece of the digital divide. The empirical data were derived from a series of focus group discussions with refugee migrants in an Australian regional city, Toowoomba in Queensland.

There is a digital divide among refugee migrant groups and it is based on inequalities in physical access to and use of digital technology, the skills necessary to use the different technologies effectively and the ability to pay for the services. The opportunities to use digital technology could support the social inclusion of refugee migrant groups in the broader Australian community.

Further research is required to examine whether this digital divide is unique in the regional context or common to Australian society and to confirm factors that might contribute significantly to refugee migrants’ social inclusion.

This paper determined the role digital technology can play in building social capital and hence social inclusion among refugee migrant groups. Many of the factors identified as influencing refugee migrants’ use of digital technology can inform the Australian government and the information and communication technology industry in devising supportive policies and plans to reduce the risk of social exclusion, alienation and marginalisation among refugee migrant groups.

This study aims to elucidate the value creation process within a culturally diversified museum (CDM), which aims to achieve social inclusion, i.e. bridging the social divide between mainstream and minority communities, through the integration of CDM’s and visitors’ resources. Using service logic (SL) theory as the theoretical lens, we aim to unveil the CDM’s unique service provider and customer (visitor) resources, the corresponding resource integration process that explains value co-creation and co-destruction and the resultant value outcomes for social inclusion.

A case study of an Australian CDM is used, involving various qualitative data sources, including depth interviews, focus groups, visitor book content analysis, on-site observation and participation in the CDM’s events and forums.

The findings provide insights into the unique CDM and visitor resources that are integrated to achieve value outcomes that foster social inclusion. However, the results suggest that alongside value co-creation, co-destruction can unfold, causing a (mis)alignment with the aim of the CDM to bridge the social divide between mainstream and minority communities.

This study’s findings offer salient implications for CDMs and similar service providers that enables social inclusion and policymakers.

This study contributes to the service domain by highlighting the importance of the alignment between provider and customer resources to co-create value within a culturally diversified context. That is, CDMs can learn from the misalignment of their resources and those of their visitors to improve their resource offerings and achieve greater social inclusion outcomes in the future.

This study aims to examine the social inclusiveness of slum dwellers by focusing on three key institutions which are social relations, government and the labour market. The literature emphasises the activities of these three institutions as indicators of social inclusion. Also, they accurately describe the social interactions of slum inhabitants at different levels.

Three large slums (Makoko, Ilaje and Iwaya) in Lagos State were purposively selected for this study. Using a multi-stage sampling technique, there was the first level of cluster sampling across the communities and second-level random sampling of household heads in the clusters. In all, 400 respondents were sampled but 388 valid responses were used for the analysis.

The study found minimal levels of inclusion in many of the indicators. However, Makoko had a higher degree of inclusion with respect to social relations and political participation compared to the other locations. Due to the poor level of governance, the resilience of slum dwellers has waned.

The study was limited to three of the largest slums in Lagos State. Moreover, due to threats of eviction in recent times, many respondents were reluctant to provide adequate answers to some of the questions asked. However, the responses gotten were adequate to provide appropriate awareness and relevant recommendations.

The use of primary data made it possible for novel results to be generated on social inclusiveness in selected slums. The study extends the frontier of knowledge on social inclusion.