Social Cooperatives' Ways of Operation Activity in Poland — Some Features of Theory and Practice

The paper is composed of three parts. Its first part contains deliberations about the concept itself and objectives of the social cooperative. They are presented against a wider background of human and social capital creation by enterprises. The second part deals with social and economic characteristics of the social cooperative. Finally, the third part contains fragmentary findings of empirical studies focused on the operation of social cooperatives in Poland. These findings cannot be treated, however, as sufficient to consider them a satisfactory recapitulation, and for this reason they should be treated as a preliminary diagnosis of analyzed problems accompanying the operation of social cooperatives in Poland.Opracowanie składa się z trzech części. Pierwsza zawiera rozważania na temat samego pojęcia i celów spółdzielni socjalnej. Są one przedstawione w szerszym kontekście zasobów ludzkich i tworzenia kapitału społecznego przez przedsiębiorstwa. Druga część poświęcona jest społecznej i gospodarczej roli spółdzielni socjalnych. Ostatnia część zawiera fragmentaryczne wyniki badań empirycznych nad działalnością spółdzielni socjalnych w Polsce. Zaprezentowane rezultaty badań nie mogą być jednakże traktowane jako wystarczające. Należy traktować je jako wstępne rozpoznanie analizy problemów towarzyszących działalności spółdzielni socjalnych w Polsce

Helping people to help themselves : policy lessons from a study of deprived urban neighbourhoods in Southampton

The aim of this paper is draw out some policy lessons from a study of self-help activity amongst 200 households in deprived urban neighbourhoods of Southampton. Commencing with a critique of the popular prejudice that promoting self-help should be opposed in case it leads to a demise of formal welfare provision, the paper then interrogates the empirical evidence to understand and explain the nature and extent of such work in deprived neighbourhoods. Finding that self-help is a crucial component of household coping practices, but that no-earner households are unable to benefit from this work to the same extent as employed households, the paper proposes both bottom-up and top-down solutions to tackle the barriers to participation in self-help amongst unemployed households. In particular, it calls for a modification to Working Families Tax Credit and the creation of Community Enterprise so as to recognise and value much of the self-help activity that currently takes place but remains unrecognised and unvalued

A randomized controlled trial of training in Motivational Interviewing for child protection.

There has been interest in developing more evidence-based approaches to child and family social work in the UK in recent years. This study examines the impact of a skills development package of training and supervision in Motivational Interviewing (MI) on the skills of social workers and the engagement of parents through a randomized controlled trial. All workers in one local authority were randomly assigned to receive the package (n = 28) or control (n = 33). Families were then randomized to trained (n = 67) or untrained (n = 98) workers. Family meetings with the worker shortly after allocation were evaluated for MI skill. Research interviews gathered data including the WAI. Follow-up interviews 20 weeks later repeated the WAI, and other outcome measures including Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) and rating of family life. Between group analysis found statistically significant difference in MI skills, though these were not substantial (2.49 in control, 2.91 MI trained, p = .049). There was no statistically significant difference between groups in any other outcome measures. The package of training and supervision did not create sufficient increase in MI skills to influence engagement or outcomes. Implications for understanding the relationship between skills, engagement and organizational change are discussed

The State-of-the-Art of Set Visualization

Sets comprise a generic data model that has been used in a variety of data analysis problems. Such problems involve analysing and visualizing set relations between multiple sets defined over the same collection of elements. However, visualizing sets is a non-trivial problem due to the large number of possible relations between them. We provide a systematic overview of state-of-the-art techniques for visualizing different kinds of set relations. We classify these techniques into six main categories according to the visual representations they use and the tasks they support. We compare the categories to provide guidance for choosing an appropriate technique for a given problem. Finally, we identify challenges in this area that need further research and propose possible directions to address these challenges. Further resources on set visualization are available at http://www.setviz.net

Monitoring and evaluation of family interventions (Information on families supported to March 2010) RR044

Josie Dixon, Vera Schneider, Cheryl Lloyd, Alice Reeves, Clarissa White, Wojtek Tomaszewski, Rosie Green and Eleanor Irelan