Feral pig management in Australia: implications for disease control

Feral pigs (Sus scrofa) were introduced to Australia following European settlement and are now widely distributed in a variety of habitats. High-density populations are found particularly in north-eastern Australia. Feral pigs are commonly viewed as a valued hunting or commercial resource, occasionally as an important cultural resource, but overwhelmingly as a devastating agricultural and environmental pest. Their wide-ranging impacts demand intervention through control programs on many production and conservation lands. Feral pigs also carry pathogens of human health significance and contribute to the persistence and transmission of a range of endemic diseases or pathogens of livestock and wildlife. Feral pigs are the invasive species of most concern in Australia as potential vectors of exotic diseas

Plotting the motivation of student volunteers in sports-based outreach work in the North East of England

This paper examines the evolution of student volunteers’ motivation during their participation in a sports-based outreach project and how their experiences during the programme serve to influence their commitment and retention to it. The Sport Universities North East England (SUNEE) project is a university-led community outreach initiative that provides the region's student volunteers with vast opportunities to gain both experience and qualifications as sports coaches, mentors and leaders by working with a range of hard-to-reach groups. This work draws on qualitative data generated from semi-structured interviews (n = 40) and describes a sequence of motivational transitions undergone by student volunteers over the course of their involvement in the project. In order to illustrate this, the paper applies the socio-psychological framework of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to not only index the type of motivations that compel students to volunteer on the SUNEE project, but to also track motivational adaptation and reveal the features occurring within the project, which serve to either facilitate volunteer motivation or retention (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000). By using the example of the SUNEE project, this research demonstrates how students’ motivation to volunteer changes from the extrinsic (i.e., instrumental reasons such as enhancing one's employability profile) to the intrinsic (i.e., enjoying the experience) motivations the longer the person has taken part in the project. The findings demonstrate the utility of the SDT as a framework with which to understand student motivation to volunteer within a university-led sports-based community outreach setting. The theoretical contributions of the study to the literature on student volunteering are outlined, and implications are drawn for practice and future research

The organizational embeddedness of social capital: a comparative case study of two voluntary organisations

Social capital is a popular, but contested concept. It draws attention to the way in which social relations and constructed forms of social organization can produce outcomes on individual and collective levels. However, it is often founded on individualistic, rational-choice models of human behavior that neglect its embeddedness. I explore the embeddedness of social capital through a comparative case study of two voluntary sport organizations in the UK. Through close analysis of in-depth interviews and longitudinal observation, I look at the processes of social capital development and at how socio-organizational context and identity shape these processes

How can we better engage Homo sapiens to manage Sus scrofa?

Feral pigs have been a declared pest in Queensland since the 1930s - and yet as feral pig management facilitators and practitioners, we still often struggle to engage landholders to actively control pigs. Even last year, with great community concern about Foot and Mouth Disease in neighbouring countries, many of our graziers were still asking - “What is the government going to do to control the feral pigs on my land?” So how do we get these primary integral stakeholders to take ownership and to proactively manage pigs

Examining the existing knowledge base for enablers of family recovery in mental health: a protocol for a scoping review of national and international literature

Introduction Recovery-oriented services in mental health are becoming an accepted approach across much of the globe. While the development of recovery-oriented approaches has focused mainly on people accessing mental health services, families of those accessing services also need to be included under the discussions of mental health recovery within mental health service provision. It is important that service providers understand what support families require in order to facilitate their recovery journeys. To that end, this review will seek to ascertain what evidence exists on the enablers of family recovery from national and international literature.Method and analysis This proposed scoping review aims to investigate the family recovery enablers within a mental health context. A Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis compliant scoping review is proposed, based on Arksey and O’Malley’s framework. Search terms are stated and a variety of databases (CINAHL, JSTOR, Ovid SP, PsycINFO, PubMed, RCNi, Science Direct, Web of Science and Wiley Online Library) and repositories (Google, Google Scholar and ResearchGate) will be consulted to examine papers based on a predetermined inclusion/exclusion criteria. The search range is from 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2022.Ethics and dissemination As this paper presents a protocol for a scoping review of the literature into family enablers in mental health, no ethical approval is required. The preprint protocol was added to OSF Registries on 29 October 2021 where it is freely available. The registry will be updated once this paper has been published. The resulting scoping review will be distributed through peer-reviewed publication in a high impact journal

Feral pig management in Australia: implications for disease control

Feral pigs (Susscrofa) were introduced to Australia following European settlement and are now widely distributed in a variety of habitats. High-density populations are found particularly in north-eastern Australia. Feral pigs are commonly viewed as a valued hunting or commercial resource, occasionally as an important cultural resource, but overwhelmingly as a devastating agricultural and environmental pest. Their wide-ranging impacts demand intervention through control programs on many production and conservation lands. Feral pigs also carry pathogens of human health significance and contribute to the persistence and transmission of a range of endemic diseases or pathogens of livestock and wildlife. Feral pigs are the invasive species of most concern in Australia as potential vectors of exotic diseas

Social Work, Mental Health, Older People and Covid19

In this commentary, we will explore the work of social work in Ireland in addressing the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on older people in general, and older people who have an enduring mental illness

Evaluating the Performance Improvement Preferences of Disability Service Managers: An Exploratory Study Using Gilbert's Behavior Engineering Model

Background: Front-line managers play an important role in managing the performance of staff working in services for people with intellectual disability, but little is known about the practices they prefer to use to improve staff performance and whether these align with what research has shown to be effective. Method: This study comprised two phases. First, the present authors tested the validity and reliability of a short questionnaire designed to evaluate managers’ preferences for performance improvement practices. Then, the present authors collected and analysed responses from 175 managers working in disability services in Queensland, Australia. Results: The questionnaire demonstrated good content validity, concurrent validity and test–retest reliability. The participants believed strategies related to changing employee individual characteristics to be more effective than strategies aimed at improving environmental factors. Conclusions: This study provides important considerations regarding the professional development needs of front-line managers working in organizations that provide services to people with intellectual disability

A systematic review of interventions for improving the work performance of direct support staff

An important focus of disability services is optimising the work performance of their staff members. A substantial body of literature is available to those who are responsible for ensuring that staff perform their roles adequately. The aim of this study was to systematically review this literature to determine the most effective approaches to improving staff work performance. Literature published between 1974 and 2013 was reviewed and 77 studies that met the criteria for inclusion were categorised according to type of outcome measure employed, intervention focus, and results. The findings suggest that interventions that focus solely on changing individual staff characteristics are less effective than approaches that seek to address problems in the work environment, often in combination with staff development. The present study provides important considerations for those responsible for improving the work performance of direct support staff