Employers skill survey : case study : health and social care

"This report examines the relationship between service delivery strategies and processes, and the deployment of skills, recruitment problems and skill gaps within selected sub-sectors of health and social care. The sub-sectors within health are physiotherapy and radiography. Within social care the focus is on care of the elderly (both residential and domiciliary care). Although subject to similar drivers and associated pressures, the two sub-sectors of health and social care display markedly different characteristics, particularly in terms of service delivery strategies, qualification frameworks and utilisation of skills. In simple terms, the health and social care subsectors considered within this report may be thought of as being situated at opposite poles of the ‘skills spectrum’: with radiography and physiotherapy characterised by high level skills, while care of the elderly is traditionally associated with low level skills. Hence, the two sub-sectors are discussed separately throughout this report. The greater complexity and range of skills required in the two health sub-sectors is reflected in the comparative length of the two sections of the report" - page 9

Revealing What Recidivism Hides: Punishment, Surveillance, and Bias in Evaluating Adult Drug Court in Maine

This thesis evaluates Adult Drug Court in Maine through Foucauldian and carceral state perspectives. The expansion of the U.S. penal system through key political events including the 1960s War on Crime and the 1980s War on Drugs fueled the rise of the “carceral state.” This punitive turn in American governance has created serious problems of mass incarceration, bias in criminal justice, and societal and political marginalization of ex-offenders, especially in connection with drug crime. Adult Drug Court was first adopted in the United States in 1989 as an alternative to incarceration for drug-addicted offenders and has since spread to every state and territory. It is a drug treatment program led by a team of legal and treatment professionals and has been reported as a success largely in terms of reducing recidivism. Determining whether drug court is an alternative to traditional incarceration, however, requires evaluating its relationship to the carceral state and whether it reproduces or counteracts core problems of punishment, surveillance, and bias. This thesis gauges the relationship of Adult Drug Court to the carceral state in Maine through interviews with drug court and traditional criminal justice professionals as well as direct observations of the program. I conclude that drug court in Maine is an improvement upon carceral state conceptions of punishment and surveillance as well as success and effectiveness. However, it is another vehicle of carceral state development in that it relies on the threat of punishment and does not fully address important structural obstacles to reintegration

Role of the heat shock transcription factor, Hsf1, in a major fungal pathogen that is obligately associated with warm-blooded animals

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Does childbirth experience affect infant behaviour? Exploring the perceptions of maternity care providers

Objective - High levels of childbirth interventions are known to increase risk of health complications for mother and infant, alongsidehaving a negative impact upon maternal wellbeing. However less is understood about how childbirth experience may affect infant behaviour(e.g. how calm or unsettled an infant is). This study explores maternity care provider perceptions of how and why childbirth experience may affect infant behaviour.Design - A qualitative semi-structured interview study.Setting - Bristol, Swansea and West Wales, UK.Participants - 18 maternity care providers.Measurements and findings - A semi-structured interview schedule was developed to explore maternity care providers' perceptions of howmaternal experience of childbirth could influence infant behaviour. Findings highlighted how maternity care providers perceived childbirthexperience to sometimes impact positively or negatively on infant behaviour. A calmer birth and postnatal experience was believed to leadto a calmer infant, whilst physical and emotional stress was associated with more challenging infant behaviours such as crying and beingunsettled. Pathways were perceived to be direct (pain and stress during birth might physiologically affect the infant) and indirect (birth wasperceived to affect maternal wellbeing and subsequently her interactions with her baby). However, postnatal factors such as skin to skin,postnatal environment and emotional support were believed to mediate these impacts.Key conclusions - Birth experience was considered to affect infantbehaviour. Promoting as positive a birth experience as possible,including postnatal care, was viewed as significant in supportingpositive infant behaviours. Maternity care providers believed this couldhelp facilitate bonding, attachment, and mother-infant wellbeing in thepostnatal period.Implications for practice - The findings highlight maternity care providers' views concerning supporting normal birth and protectingemotional wellbeing during birth and postnatally. Where interventions are necessary, ensuring a calm environment, and enabling normal postnatal behaviours such as skin to skin and breastfeeding were perceived as important. Midwives, it was claimed, need time to nurture mothers alongside providing physical care.Limitations - Participants were self-selecting and might therefore have been biased