Families who volunteer together : report on the state of family volunteering in the UK

This report uses nationally representative data from the United Kingdom Time Use Survey (UKTUS) 2014/2015 to examine –for the first time nationally and internationally - the extent and patterns of the household engagement in formal family volunteering. Family volunteering here is defined as two of more members of the same family and household volunteering together in a formal/organisational/group setting. It explores three critical aspects of family volunteering in the UK: the extent to which different family members volunteer together, separately or not at all, the relationships between family composition and volunteering, and the composition of family volunteering at the national level

Agency workers and zero hours : the story of hidden exploitation

This report highlights the extent and experiences of workers on temporary agency and zero-hours contracts.Using interviews with the workers themselves and data from the Annual Population Surveys it examines the impacts of hidden exploitation. It makes a number of recommendations to tackle the harsh and imposed regimes of temporary agency work and zero-hours contracts

Analysis of the profile, characteristics, patient experience and community value of community hospitals : a multimethod study

Background: Community hospitals have been part of England’s health-care landscape since the mid-nineteenth century. Evidence on them has not kept pace with their development. Aim: To provide a comprehensive analysis of the profile, characteristics, patient experience and community value of community hospitals. Design: A multimethod study with three phases. Phase one involved national mapping and the construction of a new database of community hospitals through data set reconciliation and verification. Phase two involved nine case studies, including interviews and focus groups with patients (n = 60), carers (n = 28), staff (n = 132), volunteers (n = 68), community stakeholders (n = 74) and managers and commissioners (n = 9). Phase three involved analysis of Charity Commission data on voluntary support. Setting: Community hospitals in England. Results: The study identified 296 community hospitals with beds in England. Typically, the hospitals were small (<30 beds), in rural communities, led by doctors/general practitioners (GPs) and nurses, without 24/7 on-site medical cover, providing step-down and step-up inpatient care, with an average length of stay of <30 days and a variable range of intermediate care services. Key to patients’ and carers’ experiences of community hospitals was their closeness to ‘home’ through their physical location, environment and atmosphere and the relationships that they support; their provision of personalised, holistic care; and their role in supporting patients through difficult psychological transitions. Communities engage with and support their hospitals through giving time (average = 24 volunteers), raising money (median voluntary income = £15,632), providing services (voluntary and community groups) and giving voice (e.g. communication and consultation). This can contribute to hospital utilisation and sustainability, patient experience, staff morale and volunteer well-being. Engagement varies between and within communities and over time. Community hospitals are important community assets, representing direct and indirect value: instrumental (e.g. health care), economic (e.g. employment), human (e.g. skills development), social (e.g. networks), cultural (e.g. identity and belonging) and symbolic (e.g. vitality and security). Value varies depending on place and time. Limitations: There were limitations to the secondary data available for mapping community hospitals and tracking charitable funds and to our sample of case study respondents, which concentrated on people with a connection to the hospitals. Conclusions: Community hospitals are diverse but are united by a set of common characteristics. Patients and carers experience community hospitals as qualitatively different from other settings. Their accounts highlight the importance of considering the functional, interpersonal, social and psychological dimensions of experience. Community hospitals are highly valued by their local communities, as demonstrated through their active involvement as volunteers and donors. Community hospitals enable the provision of local intermediate care services, delivered through an embedded, relational model of care, which generates deep feelings of reassurance. However, current developments, including the withdrawal of GPs, shifts towards step-down care for non-local patients and changing configurations of services, providers and ownership may undermine this. Future work: Comparative studies of patient experience in different settings, longitudinal studies of community support and value, studies into the implications of changes in community hospital function, GP involvement, provider-mix and ownership and international comparative studies could all be undertaken

Cut hours, not people : no work, furlough, short hours and mental health during COVID-19 pandemic in the UK

The unprecedented shock to the UK economy inflicted by government measures to contain the Coronavirus (COVID-19) risked plunging millions of workers into unemployment as businesses were forced to close or scale back activity. To avoid that cliff edge, and the predictable damage to both workers mental health and to the viability of the closed down businesses, the government also introduced the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) that allowed for the furloughing of workers. Even so the number of people claiming benefits as unemployed has soared above 2 million for the first time since 1996 and others have been working significantly reduced working hours. The first wave of Understanding Society COVID-19 Study provides an early opportunity to examine how far these changes in employment status, work hours and involvement in furlough job retention scheme are related to the likelihood of having mental health problems, measured by 12-item General Health Questionnaire. Our findings confirm that leaving paid work is significantly related to poorer mental health, even after controlling for the household income and other factors. In contrast having some paid work and/or some continued connection to a job is better for mental health than not having any work at all. Those who remain part-time employed before and during the COVID-19, those who are involved in furlough job retention scheme or transition from full-time to part-time employment are all found to have similar levels of mental health as those who continued to work full-time. The patterns are similar for men and women. Both short working hours and furlough job retention schemes can thus be seen to be effective protective factors against worsening mental health. However, the key issue is now how to move beyond the furlough scheme. A v-shaped bounce back is not on the horizon and many sectors will at most move into partial activity. So, the need to avoid a huge further leap in unemployment is just as vital with all the risk to mental health that that would entail. These findings point to the need to move towards sharing work around more equitably, including introducing a shorter working week for all ( except in those sectors under extreme pressure) in order to minimize the risk to mental health and well-being if those on furlough are now pushed into unemployment

An exploration of the multiple motivations for spending less time at work

Funder: Cambridge Political Economy Society TrustThis article makes a significant empirical contribution to our understanding of why people in the United Kingdom without childcare responsibilities actively reduce or limit the amount of time they spend in paid employment. We show how the negative aspects of employment (push factors) and the desire to spend time in more varied and enjoyable ways (pull factors) interact to produce decisions to enact working time reductions (WTRs). The push factors include excessive workloads and difficult or tedious tasks which can result in stress and mental exhaustion. For people working non-standard schedules, their lack of control over hours can make it difficult to enjoy the free time that is available. The pull factors we have identified include traumatic experiences such as illness or the early death of a loved one which can lead to an increased awareness of the salience of time. Also important was the desire to develop skills and subjectivities unrelated to work-time identities. An overarching theme in the interviews was the idea that full-time work leads to a loss of autonomy, and a reduction in hours is a route to greater freedom. These motivations are contrasted with understandings of WTRs present in the empirical and predominantly quantitative literature which highlight the structural constraints that often force women in particular into part-time work as a result of childcare responsibilities. An exploration of the motivations of short-hour workers is pertinent, given increasing concern that long hours of work exacerbate multiple social, economic and environmental problems. We suggest that a deeper understanding of why individuals want to work less could help facilitate ‘priming’ campaigns aimed at increasing demand for WTRs more generally.</jats:p

Gender segregation, underemployment and subjective well-being in the UK labour market

This article argues that gender segregation influences patterns of underemployment and the relationships that underemployment has with the subjective well-being of men and women. Previous studies have paid little attention to how gender segregation shapes underemployment, an increasingly prominent feature of the UK and European labour markets since the economic crisis of 2008. Using data from the UK Annual Population Surveys, this article examines time-related underemployment: people working part time because they cannot find a full-time job. The article asks whether there are gender differences in underemployment trends and in the links between underemployment and subjective well-being. The results suggest that the probability of underemployment is growing at a faster rate among women rather than men and that underemployment is most common in the jobs that women are more likely to perform, namely in femaledominated occupations, the public sector and small organizations. Underemployment is least common in male-dominated occupations and industries and in the private sector. Moreover, for employees with longer tenures, underemployment has more negative relationships with the subjective well-being of women than with that of men. These findings imply that gender segregation in labour markets is a crucial factor to consider when researching underemployment and its consequences