The Early Childhood Workers Union: An Analysis of Collective Consciousness and Praxis

This article discusses the problems of forming a union and raising union consciousness among women working in childcare centres. The article also discusses social attitudes to childcare and childcare workers and the problems this poses in union organisation

Letter from Helen Cook to Maud Shore

Helen Cook writes about her teaching job and mentions the having rain that day.https://scholars.fhsu.edu/tj_ks_territorial_docs/1040/thumbnail.jp

Participatory Research Into Inclusive Practice: Improving Services for People With Long Term Neurological Conditions.

People with long-term conditions are intensive users of health services as well as being long term users of social care and community services. In the UK, the Department of Health has suggested that the development of a more inclusive approach to services could furnish benefits to people with long-term conditions and financial savings for service providers. Researchers with a varied set of expertise and experience (users of neuro-rehabilitation services, staff working in services, people working with third sector agencies and university academics) adopted a participatory research approach to work together to explore what inclusion might look and feel like for people who are long term users of health services. The element of critique and mutual challenge, developed within the research process, disturbed current presentations of inclusion and inclusive practice. It revealed that the more usually expected components of inclusion (trust, respect and shared responsibility) whilst necessary for inclusive practice, are not necessarily sufficient. Inclusion is revealed as a complex and challenging process that requires the active construction of a critical communicative space for dialectical and democratic learning for service development

Patients' knowledge of new medicines after discharge from hospital: What are the effects of hospital-based discharge counseling and community-based medicines use reviews (MURs)?

YesBackground Interventions to reduce medicines discontinuity at transitions during and reinforced after discharge are effective. However, few studies have linked hospital-based counseling with onward referral for community pharmacy-based follow-up to support patients' medicines use. Objective To determine the effects of targeted hospital pharmacist counseling on discharge or targeted community pharmacy medicines reviews post-discharge on patients' knowledge of newly started medication. Methods The study was a controlled trial of targeted medicines discharge counseling provided by hospital pharmacists or follow-up post-discharge medicines review provided by community pharmacists compared with usual care (nurse counseling). Outcomes measured using a structured telephone survey conducted at two and four weeks after patients were discharged from hospital. Results Patients who received hospital pharmacist counseling were significantly more likely to report being told the purpose of their new medicine and how to take it versus those receiving usual care. Fewer than half of the patients who were allocated to receive a community pharmacy medicines review received one. Conclusions Patient knowledge of medicines newly prescribed in the hospital was increased by targeted counseling of hospital pharmacists. The findings suggest the need to improve the consistency of the information covered when providing counseling, perhaps by the implementation of a counseling checklist for use by all disciplines of staff involved in patient counseling. The potential of community pharmacy follow-up medicines review is currently undermined by several barriers to uptake.The full-text of this article will be released for public view at the end of the publisher embargo on 14 May 2017

Total or Partial Knee Arthroplasty Trial - TOPKAT : study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A Cloth of Sounds

A collection of poetry exploring how life might have been for the workers and their families in the woollen mill towns and villages of Ceredigion. Inspired by the Victorian mill in my valley and the lives of the people who once lived in my mill worker's cottage

Advancing alcohol research in low-income and middle-income countries: a global alcohol environment framework.

Alcohol-related harm has gained increased attention in high-income countries (HICs) in recent years which, alongside government regulation, has effected a reduction in alcohol consumption. The alcohol industry has turned its attention to low-income and middle-income country (LMIC) markets as a new source of growth and profit, prompting increased consumption in LMICS. Alcohol use in LMICs is also increasing. There is a need to understand particularly in LMICs the impact of industry strategy in shaping local contexts of alcohol use. We draw on conceptualisations from food systems research, and research on the commercial determinants of health, to develop a new approach for framing alcohol research and discuss implications for alcohol research, particularly in LMICs, focusing on South Africa as an illustrative example. We propose a conceptualisation of the 'alcohol environment' as the system of alcohol provision, acquisition and consumption-including, critically, industry advertising and marketing-along with the political, economic and regulatory context of the alcohol industry that mediates people's alcohol drinking patterns and behaviours. While each country and region is different in terms of its context of alcohol use, we contrast several broadly distinct features of alcohol environments in LMICs and HICs. Improving understanding of the full spectrum of influences on drinking behaviour, particularly in LMICs, is vital to inform the design of interventions and policies to facilitate healthier environments and reduce the harms associated with alcohol consumption. Our framework for undertaking alcohol research may be used to structure mixed methods empirical research examining the role of the alcohol environment particularly in LMICs

Perceptual Enhancement for Arabic Reading: An Intervention to Support Fluency and Automaticity in Grade One

This study, conducted in the United Arab Emirates, piloted a curriculum to increase early grade reading fluency. A curriculum with enhanced perceptual features, such as font size and spacing was used with grade one students in four schools to detect any significant difference in students’ reading speed and reading accuracy after one year. Three hundred forty-five grade one students participated in the pilot—174 in the intervention group and 171 in the control group (ds= 0.33 0.47). At the end of the year, students in the intervention group read more letters and words correctly on average in one minute (p < .01) and in an entire text (p < .01 for letters; p < .001 for words) than those in the control group. These results suggest that curriculum with perceptual enhancement may be useful in facilitating early Arabic reading fluency

Transport and environmental innovation

Transport gives rise to considerable C02 emissions, which are rising with little policy effect. Transport policy is a socio-technical regime ordered around the state funding large transport capital projects. This is supported by a professional skills and information structure that serves the logic of this regime. However, an innovative form of transport planning practice has tentatively emerged. Instead of the state implementing measures, it shifts to a supporting and enabling role with the devolution of responsibility to transport users. This is a very different rationale about what constitutes transport policy and its structures. This can be understood as a policy niche within the existing regime. This paper reports research on two areas that seek to apply this niche approach: travel planning and the Milton Keynes electric vehicle project. These research suggest that rather than the ‘new’ transport policy niche leading to regime transformation, it is appears to be migrating to other policy regime structures that are more compatible to its approach