Peer support for discharge from inpatient to community mental health services: Study protocol clinical trial (SPIRIT Compliant).

INTRODUCTION: In the period shortly after discharge from inpatient to community mental health care, people are at increased risk of self-harm, suicide, and readmission to hospital. Discharge interventions including peer support have shown potential, and there is some evidence that community-based peer support reduces readmissions. However, systematic reviews of peer support in mental health services indicate poor trial quality and a lack of reporting of how peer support is distinctive from other mental health support. This study is designed to establish the clinical and cost effectiveness of a peer worker intervention to support discharge from inpatient to community mental health care, and to address issues of trial quality and clarity of reporting of peer support interventions. METHODS: This protocol describes an individually randomized controlled superiority trial, hypothesizing that people offered a peer worker discharge intervention in addition to usual follow-up care in the community are less likely to be readmitted in the 12 months post discharge than people receiving usual care alone. A total of 590 people will be recruited shortly before discharge from hospital and randomly allocated to care as usual plus the peer worker intervention or care as usual alone. Manualized peer support provided by trained peer workers begins in hospital and continues for 4 months in the community post discharge. Secondary psychosocial outcomes are assessed at 4 months post discharge, and service use and cost outcomes at 12 months post discharge, alongside a mixed methods process evaluation. DISCUSSION: Clearly specified procedures for sequencing participant allocation and for blinding assessors to allocation, plus full reporting of outcomes, should reduce risk of bias in trial findings and contribute to improved quality in the peer support evidence base. The involvement of members of the study team with direct experience of peer support, mental distress, and using mental health services, in coproducing the intervention and designing the trial, ensures that we theorize and clearly describe the peer worker intervention, and evaluate how peer support is related to any change in outcome. This is an important methodological contribution to the evidence base. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study was prospectively registered as ISRCTN 10043328 on November 28, 2016

A very modern professional: the case of the IT service support worker

The IT profession has retained a reputation as a ‘privileged area of the labour market’ (Webster, 2005, p.4; Bannerji, 2011). Workers practicing IT skills have been at the forefront of the competitive drive for innovation and efficiency gains promoted by a neoliberal enterprise ideology (Blackler et al, 2003). In the last two decades, as systems thinking (e.g. Ackoff, 1999) and customer-centric practices (e.g. Levitt, 2006) have converged in a globally powerful IT service management (ITSM) ‘best practice’ discourse (Trusson et al, 2013), the IT service support worker has emerged to be a worker-type of considerable socio-economic importance. Aside from keeping organizational information systems operative, when such systems fail these workers are called upon to rapidly restore the systems and thus head-off any negative commercial or political consequences. Yet these workers are acknowledged only as objectified resources within the ITSM ‘best practice’ literature (e.g. Taylor, Iqbal and Nieves, 2007) and largely overlooked as a distinctive contemporary worker-type within academic discourse. This paper, through analysis of salary data and qualitative data collected for a multiple case study research project, considers the extent to which these workers might be conceived of as being ‘professionals’. The project approached the conceptual study of these workers through three lenses. This paper focuses on the project’s consideration of them as rationalised information systems assets within ‘best practice’ ITSM theory. It also draws upon our considerations of them as knowledge workers and service workers. We firstly situate the IT service support worker within a broader model of IT workers comprising four overlapping groupings: managers, developers, technical specialists and IT service support workers. Three types of IT service support worker are identified: first-line workers who routinely escalate work; second-line workers; and ‘expert’ single-line workers. With reference to close associations made with call centre workers (e.g. Murphy, 2011) the status of IT service support workers is explored through analysis of: (i) salary data taken from the ITJOBSWATCH website; and (ii) observational and interview data collected in the field. From this we challenge the veracity of the notion that the whole occupational field of IT might be termed a profession concurrently with the notion that a profession implies work of high status. Secondly, the paper explores two forces that might be associated with the professionalization of IT as an occupation: (i) rationalisation of the field (here promoted by the British Computer Society); and (ii) formalisation of IT theoretical/vocational education. A tension is identified, with those IT service support workers whose work is least disposed to rationalisation and whose complex ‘stocks of knowledge’ (Schutz, 1953) have been acquired through time-spent practice laying claim to greater IT professional status. Thirdly, consideration is given to individuals’ personal career orientations: occupational, organizational and customer-centric (Kinnie and Swart, 2012). We find that whilst organizations expect IT service support workers to be orientated towards serving the interests of the organization and its clients, the most individualistically professional tend towards being occupationally orientated, enthusiastically (re)developing their skills to counter skills obsolescence in an evolving technological arena (Sennett, 2006)

DEFRA Clothing Action Plan

As part of Defra’s Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) programme, a voluntary clothing industry initiative was co-ordinated by Defra with the aim to improve the environmental and ethical performance of clothing. The Sustainable Clothing Roadmap aims to improve the environmental and social performance of clothing, building on existing initiatives and by co-ordinating action by key clothing supply chain stakeholders. Although organisations in the clothing supply chain have already taken significant steps to reduce adverse environmental and social impacts, further industry-wide co-operation and agreed commitments will enable that process to accelerate. That is the rationale behind the collaborative nature of the roadmap. The DEFRA initiative is now a WRAP (Waste Resources Action Plan) initiative. Centre for Sustainable Fashion participate on the WRAP steering group and the sub groups on design and recycling. Dilys Williams advised this report's lead author

Organisational commitment among software developers

If software developers are to be taken as prototypes of the new knowledge worker, we need look no further for working hypotheses about their attachment to their work and their employing organization than those contained in the human resource management agenda. For the diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as the supposed base of the knowledge economy has been synchronous with the launch and promotion of human resource management (HRM) as the new orthodoxy in employment practice and many of the assumptions and values within each model are shared. Indeed, HRM is often portrayed as if it were in some way a reflection of the shift to non-adversarial work relationships in the new information-based service society (Baldry 2003)

Needing a new programme : why is union membership so low among software workers?

In terms of employee characteristics, software workers represent a particularly fascinating and important group of workers to explore in terms of their behaviour towards unions. They represent an expanding cohort of so-called knowledge workers in the UK and other countries, many possessing considerable latent power through their proximity to and involvement with electronic means of production and accumulation. An early study of technical workers' unionism by Smith (1987) provides evidence that computer personnel possess at least some of Batstone et al's (1978) four potential sources of industrial power, namely: skill scarcity, strategic position, immediate impact on production, and potential to create uncertainty (Smith 1987: 104). Other writers, however, have hinted that software workers are no less immune to management pressures to routinise and Taylorise their work than are any other group of skilled workers (Kraft and Dubnoff 1986; Beirne et al 1998). Software workers also enjoy familiarity with information technology, an increasingly effective tool in organising union membership both in the USA (Fiorito et al 2002) and the UK (Diamond and Freeman 2002)

Professional performance evaluation within the Romanian administrative system

The current economic crisis, manifested in the entire world, highlights the need for sustained involvement of the local and regional authorities in each country, in conceiving and implementing Community policies (which already exist at European level) having an essential role in implementing the economic plans achievement. This view was shared by all European Union Member States, of which Romania is part, since 2007. Therefore, the economic crisis which is reflected in the Romanian society today, requires prompt and sustained intervention by the authorities in the execution of the economic recovery plan, implying the community strategies, due to sharply budgetary expenses cut, which is found in all European countries. In order to achieve this major objective, the Romanian authorities should have qualified and properly motivated personnel through an adequate remuneration, according to the training, skills, responsibilities and especially individual performance obtained at each position, as it happens in most developed countries of the European Union. In this context, this study approaches the issues related to the performance evaluation of the public sector’s employees. Considering the fact that strengthening and developing the human resources segment is a strategic goal of the Romanian administration for the period 2008 - 2013, which will lead to modernizing it and making it more efficient (at both central and local level), the personnel performance evaluation, at the organizational level represents a fundamental activity from the human resources’ management perspective.performance evaluation, performance indicators’ system, human resources management, Romanian administration.

The Group Methodology of Using Cloud Technologies in the Training of Future Computer Science Teachers

The development of cloud computing resources and their implementation in university education require an increase in the ICT-competence of future computer science teachers. The article considers the use of project method as an effective tool of encouraging students’ cooperation while solving practical problems and as a means of developing their essential professional skills. The following pedagogical approaches and techniques were used: partnership of group members, development of group work skills, heterogeneous grouping, combined use of individual and peer assessment, teacher’s monitoring of the students’ work, focus on the task and group work skills, chance for every member to be a leader, essential feedback. The authors suggest using private and public cloud technologies to support the implementation of group methodology in the teaching process. One of such technologies is academic cloud based on the Apache CloudStack platform. This cloud environment is deployed in Physics and Mathematics Department of Ternopil V. Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University. The suggested method has been verified experimentally by using Wilcoxon signed-rank test