Discretion and accountability in social work: A study of a professional bureaucracy

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.A literature review showed that social services departments use the traditional bureaucratic methods of formalisation and centralisation to control their social workers, and that social workers report this as a source of dissatisfaction. Organisation theorists identify the professional bureaucracy as an alternative organisational model, but there is no study of a social services department operating in this way. A department was found where the social workers stated that there were few rules or procedures governing their practice, and where they expressed satisfaction with their decision making powers. A research programme was designed in order to examine the department's organisation in more detail. Interviews were conducted with 27 social workers and 23 managers, up to and including the director. Detailed transcriptions were prepared and validated by the respondents as an accurate record of their views about their practice and the workings of the department. Analysis of these transcriptions revealed that the department was a variant of the professional bureaucracy model. The thesis explores the practice of the social workers and managers in detail. Whilst the social workers expressed considerable satisfaction with their freedom from rules and procedures and with their decision making powers, a number of concerns about the model are highlighted and discussed. The thesis also examines how a department organised on these professional lines dealt with the issue of accountability, and shows that there is no inevitable conflict between professional discretion and the need for accountability

Troca de sabor em extensões do modelo padrão.

A troca de sabor nas correntes neutras (Flavor Changed Neutral Currents ) surge naturalmente no modelo 3 − 3 − 1 com neutrinos de mão direita, referido na literatura como 331 RHN, mediadas por um bóson de gauge não padrão Z. Seguindo trabalhos anteriores nós calculamos estas fontes e derivamos novas fontes de FCNC mediadadas por escalares com CP-par e CP-impar que aparecem devido a suas interações não diagonais com os quarks físicos padrão. Além disso, usando uma textura de quatro zeros para as matrizes de massa dos quarks, derivamos os termos de diferença de massa para os sistemas de mésons neutros K0−¯K0, D0−¯D0e B0−¯B0 e mostramos que embora a contribuição doZ seja a mais relevante para propósitos de oscilação de mésons, as contribuições escalares tem um papel importante nestes processos e por tanto ´e necessário investigar-los. Em particular, estudando o sistema B0−¯B0 nos establecemos os vinculos MZ′ & 4.2 TeV e MS2, MI3 & 7.5 TeV.ivated framework called 3-3-1 with right-handed neutrinos model, 331RHN for short, mediated by an extra neutral gauge boson Z. Following previous works we calculate these sources and in addition we derive new ones coming from CP-even and -odd neutral scalars which appear due to their non-diagonal interactions with the physical standard quarks. Furthermore, by using 4 texture zeros for the quark mass matrices, we derive the mass difference terms for the neutral mesons systems K 0 − ¯ K 0 , D 0 − ¯ D 0 and B 0 − ¯ B 0 and show that, though one can discern that the Z ′contribution is the most relevant one for mesons oscillations purposes, scalars contributions play a role also in this processes and hence it is worthwhile to investigate them and derive new bounds on space of parameters. In particular, studying the B0−¯B0 system we set the bounds MZ ′ & 4.2 TeV and MS2 , MI3 & 7.5 TeV in order to be consistent with the current measurements.Cape

Morphology-Induced Collective Behaviors: Dynamic Pattern Formation in Water-Floating Elements

Complex systems involving many interacting elements often organize into patterns. Two types of pattern formation can be distinguished, static and dynamic. Static pattern formation means that the resulting structure constitutes a thermodynamic equilibrium whose pattern formation can be understood in terms of the minimization of free energy, while dynamic pattern formation indicates that the system is permanently dissipating energy and not in equilibrium. In this paper, we report experimental results showing that the morphology of elements plays a significant role in dynamic pattern formation. We prepared three different shapes of elements (circles, squares, and triangles) floating in a water-filled container, in which each of the shapes has two types: active elements that were capable of self-agitation with vibration motors, and passive elements that were mere floating tiles. The system was purely decentralized: that is, elements interacted locally, and subsequently elicited global patterns in a process called self-organized segregation. We showed that, according to the morphology of the selected elements, a different type of segregation occurs. Also, we quantitatively characterized both the local interaction regime and the resulting global behavior for each type of segregation by means of information theoretic quantities, and showed the difference for each case in detail, while offering speculation on the mechanism causing this phenomenon

Plastid Transcript Editing across Dinoflagellate Lineages Shows Lineage-Specific Application but Conserved Trends.

Dinoflagellates are a group of unicellular protists with immense ecological and evolutionary significance and cell biological diversity. Of the photosynthetic dinoflagellates, the majority possess a plastid containing the pigment peridinin, whereas some lineages have replaced this plastid by serial endosymbiosis with plastids of distinct evolutionary affiliations, including a fucoxanthin pigment-containing plastid of haptophyte origin. Previous studies have described the presence of widespread substitutional RNA editing in peridinin and fucoxanthin plastid genes. Because reports of this process have been limited to manual assessment of individual lineages, global trends concerning this RNA editing and its effect on the biological function of the plastid are largely unknown. Using novel bioinformatic methods, we examine the dynamics and evolution of RNA editing over a large multispecies data set of dinoflagellates, including novel sequence data from the peridinin dinoflagellate Pyrocystis lunula and the fucoxanthin dinoflagellate Karenia mikimotoi. We demonstrate that while most individual RNA editing events in dinoflagellate plastids are restricted to single species, global patterns, and functional consequences of editing are broadly conserved. We find that editing is biased toward specific codon positions and regions of genes, and generally corrects otherwise deleterious changes in the genome prior to translation, though this effect is more prevalent in peridinin than fucoxanthin lineages. Our results support a model for promiscuous editing application subsequently shaped by purifying selection, and suggest the presence of an underlying editing mechanism transferred from the peridinin-containing ancestor into fucoxanthin plastids postendosymbiosis, with remarkably conserved functional consequences in the new lineage

Torture and the UK’s “war on asylum”: medical power and the culture of disbelief

When the now ‘iconic’ images of shackled, humiliated and dehumanised detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison complex in Iraq were broadcast globally, in the mid-2000s, the relationship between medical power and torture in the “war on terror” was also thrust sharply into focus. Graphic images of coalition troops photographing and posing in front of hooded, naked prisoners forced into a “human pyramid”, and of people made to wear animal collars, indicated a regime in which degradation had a defining role. The photograph of a soldier gloating over the corpse of a man who had died as a result of torture was just one picture of a network of interrogation camps in which detention by coalition forces could be fatal. Yet if there were any expectations that the presence of medical personnel may have checked this violence, these were shattered by the fact that clinicians – in some cases at least – were integral to its practice. «It is now beyond doubt that Armed Forces physicians, psychologists, and medics were active and passive partners in the systematic neglect and abuse of war on terror prisoners», wrote Steven Miles in 2009 (Miles 2009, X). And as he continued, this involved providing interrogators «with medical information to use in setting the nature and degree of physical and psychological abuse during interrogations». It involved monitoring «interrogations to devise ways to break prisoners down or to keep them alive». It involved pathologists holding back death certificates and autopsy reports in order to minimise the number of fatalities or cover up torture-related deaths as deaths by natural causes (Ibid). Procedures including «cramped confinement, dietary manipulation, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding» were among the practices that were «at times (…) legally sanctioned due to medical supervision» in the context of the “war on terror”, according to Hoffman (2011, 1535). He continued to suggest that doctors are not just important to «modern torture methods», they are «irreplaceable». In this context, the “war on terror” is no aberration. As the revolutionary psychoanalyst and philosopher Frantz Fanon documented in 1959, for example, certain medical practitioners had an integral role in the military occupation of Algeria, and «There are, for instance, psychiatrists … known to numerous prisoners», he suggested, «who have given electric shock treatments to the accused and have questioned them during the waking phase, which is characterized by a certain confusion, a relaxation of resistance, a disappearance of the person's defences.» (Fanon 1959/1965, 138). Indeed, in his analysis of the Algerian revolution, he discussed how resistance to and struggles over the meanings of medical power were integral to the revolution itself. However, while the role of medical power in the practice of torture has been subjected to sustained critique in the context of the “war on terror”, what follows examines the relationship between medical power and torture in the context of what has been depicted – metaphorically – as another (although to some extents related) “war”: the “war” on asylum. According to the UNHCR (2017, 3), between 5 and 35 per cent of those asylum seekers who have been granted refugee status have survived torture. And focusing on the UK as a case study, this chapter examines the institutional and legal structures prohibiting torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, particularly as they apply to those subject to immigration control in this context. But further, it also examines the ideological and political conditions within which claims by those seeking asylum that they have been subjected to torture prior to arrival can be (and have been) ignored, downplayed and denied. It examines how medical expertise has frequently been undermined in the asylum process when this expertise is utilised to add weight to asylum seekers’ claims to have experienced torture. It examines how there have been attempts to narrow the definition of torture in ways which exclude people from the protections to which torture survivors are entitled. But it also explores the ways in which segments of the medical profession have been complicit in riding roughshod over existing safeguards to prevent further harm to those who have experienced torture, thus potentially compounding its effects. In particular, it examines claims that in certain contexts clinicians have administered dangerous “care” in order to ensure the removal of people from the UK, despite them claiming that they – or their family members – face serious harm and persecution on arrival as a result of this. In a historical discussion of medical involvement in torture, Giovanni Maio (2001, 1609) has noted that from its earliest incarnations one of the features of torture has been its use as an «oppressive instrument used in the preservation of power». Furthermore, whilst methods of torture have certainly «developed», and continue to do so, he argues, this «function» of torture is «especially relevant today». This chapter argues that the (mis)treatment of those in the UK who say they have been tortured, preserves and is bound up with a particular manifestation of state power: the aims, rationale and dictates of immigration control. Its claims are perhaps much more mundane than the forms of direct medical complicity in torture alluded to above. But they are nonetheless important. For it is argued that the acts of omission and commission documented in this chapter expose the tensions between the rights of certain “categories” of migrants to be afforded adequate clinical care on the one hand, and the goals and aims of immigration control itself on the other. This poses profound questions about the functions of clinical care and the ethical duties, responsibilities and obligations of clinicians, it is suggested. But as this chapter also crucially explores, this is a form of power that many within the medical profession have historically challenged, and continue to do so