‘That so Ancient a City Should Have Elected a Woman as Mayor Is a Sign of the times’: Women and Local Government in Worcester before 1939

This article explores women’s experiences of local government in Worcester between 1907 and 1939. The city saw a limited suffrage movement, and to date has never elected a female MP. Yet while women in Worcester arguably played little role in ‘national’ politics, they were active in local government, first through wartime local authority committees, and then, in the interwar years, when seeking election as Labour, Liberal, Conservative or Independent candidates, with Conservative women being most successful. Drawing on city council records and local newspaper reporting, the article considers the ways in which women made an impact on Worcester’s government, particularly as elected councillors. Some women were also involved with more ceremonial – and consequently more visible – roles in local government, though these were generally the preserve of elite women. As such, the article contributes to wider debates about the changing nature of women’s political activism post-enfranchisement

Pilot study to evaluate the use of remote patient monitoring to guide the timing of valve intervention in patients with severe asymptomatic aortic stenosis (APRAISE-AS): study protocol for a randomised controlled trial delivered in two tertiary cardiac centres in the UK.

Aortic stenosis (AS) is common affecting >13% of adults over the age of 75 years. In people who develop symptoms, without valve replacement, prognosis is dismal with mortality as high as 50% at 1 year. In asymptomatic patients, the timing of valve intervention is less well defined and a strategy of watchful waiting is recommended. Many, however, may develop symptoms and attribute this to age related decline, rather than worsening AS. Timely intervention in asymptomatic severe AS is critical, since delayed intervention often results in poor outcomes. Proactive surveillance of symptoms, quality of life and functional capacity should enable timely identification of people who will benefit from aortic valve replacement. There are no data however, to support the clinical and cost effectiveness of such an approach in a healthcare setting in the UK. The aim of this pilot trial is to test the feasibility of a full-scale randomised controlled trial (RCT) to determine the utility of proactive surveillance in people with asymptomatic severe AS to guide the timing of intervention. APRAISE-AS is a multi-centre, non-blinded, two-arm, parallel group randomised controlled trial of up to 66 participants aged >18 years with asymptomatic severe AS. Participants will be randomised to either standard care or standard care supplemented with the APRAISE-AS intervention. Primary outcomes will capture; adherence to and participant acceptability of the intervention, recruitment and retention rates, and completeness of data collection. The findings will be used to inform the sample size and most appropriate outcome measure(s) for a full-scale RCT and health economic evaluation. Ethical approval was granted by the Black Country REC, reference: 22/WM/0214. Results will be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals and disseminated at local, regional and national meetings where appropriate. ISRCTN19413194 registered on 14.07.2023. [Abstract copyright: © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.

CSP2023: 212 NHS Early Rehabilitation Gym Strength Class: MSK-HQ Changes, Patient Satisfaction and Ongoing Self-Management for Mixed Ages and Musculoskeletal Conditions

Part of special issue: Abstracts from the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) 2023 Annual Conferenc

Political Women: Fifteen Campaigns that Shaped Twenty-First-Century Britain

The lives of women changed immeasurably during the twentieth century, not just because of technological and economic advances, but as a result of a multiplicity of small and large, local, national and international political campaigns by women. The activities of the Edwardian suffrage campaigns are the most well-known example of this, but in less well-known, political struggles women fought with equal tenacity, sacrifice, and inventiveness, to demand, for example, equal pay, analgesics for women and childbirth, an end to virginity testing at airports or wages for housework. This book focuses on 15 such campaigns and the thousands of women who sought to influence decision making, exercise and challenge power in the twentieth century. These political activities were sometimes small-scale and short-lived or seemingly unsuccessful but together they helped to bring about immeasurable changes in women’s lives during the twentieth century. With limited financial resources and hefty domestic responsibilities, women have often chosen to pick their political battles very carefully. Some fought for workers’ rights or the right to education, some prioritised stopping male violence on the streets, in the home or between nations, others like Radcliffe Hall campaigned so women could define their own sexuality. Women organised self-help childcare, rape crisis centres and peace camps. They set up birth control clinics and women’s refuges. Ordinary women took on exploitive landlords, immigration officers, international companies, local councils, the media and successive governments. A few of the hundreds of thousands of these political women, like Maggie Wintringham and Nancy Astor, were MPs; others became local councillors. However, women’s access to traditional areas of political power was limited, even when Britain had its first woman prime minister in 1979, she was one of only 19 women MPs in parliament. Consequently, women sought other spheres of activity through which to fight for change, using all the resources and imagination at their disposal to challenge injustice and abuse. They employed deeds and words, petitions and protests, legal and illegal devices, peaceful and violent strategies to further their political aims. Their motivations and contributions were varied, many made sacrifices to be involved in political battles, but this book seeks to celebrate some of these unsung heroines who tried to make a difference

Enabling purpose-driven ethical leadership via The Platinum Leadership Award

How the United Nations initiative ‘Principles for Responsible Management Education’ underpins a collaboration between the University of Worcester Business School and the University of Worcester Careers & Employability Service The University of Worcester Careers & Employability Service has run the Worcester Award for students to further personal and professional skill sets. These efforts have aimed to optimise individual efficacy for employability. The Worcester Award has offered four levels: Bronze; Silver; Gold and Platinum; giving access to differentiated skill-centric opportunities. https://www2.worc.ac.uk/careers/worcesterawardstudents.html https://firstpoint.blog/2022/10/10/firstpoints-five-points-about-the-worcester-award-2022-23/ Over the life of the Award, staff from the Careers Service have combined efforts with like-minded colleagues from across the University’s various Schools and Institutes to make for diverse involvements at each designated award level. The objective has been to help students better ‘stand out from the crowd’ when seeking employment. https://firstpoint.blog/2017/09/25/get-the-worcester-award-stand-out-from-the-crowd-2/ In this example of such a collaborative endeavour, the University of Worcester Careers & Employability Service and the Worcester Business School pull together for the Platinum Leadership Award. It is dedicated to the much celebrated and now retired Rose Watson of the Careers Service. Rose's constancy in making the best conditions to extend student-centred insight was as much attributable to her diligence in presiding over the high quality of the much acclaimed Worcester Award, as to her unwavering commitment to its realisation and belief in the capable student candidates. Thank you Rose

Uniting Teachers Through Critical Language Awareness: a Role for the Early Career Framework?

In this paper, we make initial advances towards building an argument for the inclusion of Critical Literacy Awareness within the new Early Career Framework in England. Using illustrative examples from recent research projects, we argue that post-2010 education policy has discursively divided practitioners, structuring relationships between different groups of teachers in schools as hierarchical and competitive, rather than collegial and supportive. We argue that such hierarchies may be a contributing factor to the teacher retention crisis, given that research indicates teachers working in schools with a collegial culture are more likely to remain committed and motivated. We propose that engagement with CLA may enable early career teachers to critique and resist dominant discourses which differentiate and hierarchically divide them from their colleagues, and therefore, the utility of CLA should be explored within future iterations of the Early Career Framework

The role of automatic pollen and fungal spore monitoring across major end‑user domains

The advent of automatic pollen and fungal spore monitoring over the past few years has brought about a paradigm change. The provision of real-time information at high temporal resolution opens the door to a wide range of improvements in terms of the products and services made available to a widening range of end-users and stakeholders. As technology and methods mature, it is essential to properly quantify the impact automatic monitoring has on the different end-user domains to better understand the real long-term benefits to society. In this paper, we focus the main domains where such impacts are expected, using Europe as a basis to provide qualitative estimates and to describe research needs to better quantify impacts in future. This will, in part, also serve to justify further investment and help to expand monitoring networks