Professional boundaries: research report

In 2008 the General Social Care Council (GSCC) published Raising standards: Social work conduct in England 2003-2008. This constituted the GSCC’s first report covering the work undertaken to uphold standards and protect people who use social care services. The GSCC’s analysis revealed that a considerable proportion of conduct cases, some 40%, involved allegations of 'inappropriate relations'. In the light of this finding, and the release by the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE) of sexual boundaries guidance for healthcare workers at the beginning of this year (Halter et al, 2009), the GSCC committed itself to exploring the possibility of producing professional boundaries guidance for social workers. To begin this exploration, the GSCC commissioned a study in early 2009.This is the report of that study. There were two main purposes. First, to establish what professional boundaries1 guidance currently exists for social workers, or for sections of the workforce that includes social workers in the United Kingdom, and the content of any such guidance. Secondly, to identify and discuss a number of other examples of professional boundaries guidance to act as points of reference for the GSCC’s project. The aim was to identify and discuss examples relevant to the GSCC’s project

Complexity and control: how do they work in PPPs?

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The impact of central government steering and local network dynamics on the performance of mandated service delivery networks: the case of the Primary Health Care networks in Flanders

This paper focuses on the impact of central – local relations on the performance of local service delivery networks set up by central government. Analyzing network literature leaves us with some questions about the impact of coordination strategies of central government as a possible determinant of network-level effectiveness for this type of network and the possible interaction between central government coordination (as part of the network context) and internal network dynamics and the combined effects hereof on the effectiveness of mandated service delivery networks in particular. Our analysis shows that both levels are important to explain the outcomes of the Primary Health Care networks in Flanders. Our study also leads to some important observations about the meaning of ‘central government coordination’ in this context

A practical approach to goal modelling for time-constrained projects

Goal modelling is a well known rigorous method for analysing problem rationale and developing requirements. Under the pressures typical of time-constrained projects its benefits are not accessible. This is because of the effort and time needed to create the graph and because reading the results can be difficult owing to the effects of crosscutting concerns. Here we introduce an adaptation of KAOS to meet the needs of rapid turn around and clarity. The main aim is to help the stakeholders gain an insight into the larger issues that might be overlooked if they make a premature start into implementation. The method emphasises the use of obstacles, accepts under-refined goals and has new methods for managing crosscutting concerns and strategic decision making. It is expected to be of value to agile as well as traditional processes

Transnational governance in global finance - the principles for stable capital flows and fair debt restructuring in emerging markets

This paper analyses and assesses the track record and effectiveness of the so-called “Principles for Stable Capital Flows and Fair Debt Restructuring in Emerging Markets”,which have emerged as an important instrument for crisis prevention and crisis resolution in the international financial system. The paper argues that, notwithstanding their low profile, the Principles which were jointly agreed between sovereign debtors and their private creditors in 2004 have proved to be an effective instrument in spite of their voluntary and nonbinding nature. Indeed, an increasing number of sovereign debtors and private creditors have adopted the Principles’ recommendations on transparency and the timely flow of information, close dialogue, “good faith” actions and fair treatment. Two elements have been critical to the success of the Principles: (i) their specific design feature as a soft mode of governance agreed by a transnational public-private partnership and (ii) the “hardening” after their launch in terms of precision and delegation, thus moving them somewhat along the continuum of soft law and hard law towards the latter. The paper also makes the case that the Principles and their design features can provide some lessons for the current international policy debate on codes of conduct in global financial regulation.. JEL Classification: F34, F51, F53, G15, G18.Crisis prevention, debt restructuring, sovereign default, soft law, transnational public-private partnership, global financial governance.

Maximizing Foundation Effectiveness: Aligning Program Strategy, Organizational Capacity, Strategic Planning, and Performance Assessment to Achieve Success

This paper outlines a framework for increasing the philanthropic performance of an organization by focusing on strategic planning and development of tight logic models for the organization's programs. Strategic planning gets broken down into five steps: meta-planning, evaluation of the internal/external environment, establishment of priorities and vision, development of the strategic plan, and implementation/refinement. Though this paper stresses evaluation and meticulous planning, it finishes by imploring organizations to "allow room for serendipity, improvisation, and intuition in the process, too.

Investigating Decision Support Techniques for Automating Cloud Service Selection

The compass of Cloud infrastructure services advances steadily leaving users in the agony of choice. To be able to select the best mix of service offering from an abundance of possibilities, users must consider complex dependencies and heterogeneous sets of criteria. Therefore, we present a PhD thesis proposal on investigating an intelligent decision support system for selecting Cloud based infrastructure services (e.g. storage, network, CPU).Comment: Accepted by IEEE Cloudcom 2012 - PhD consortium trac