Are Police-Led Social Crime Prevention Initiatives Effective?: A Process and Outcome Evaluation of a UK Youth Intervention

Police-led interventions with ‘at risk’ young people, raise a number of debates around policing in society including the allocation of resources at a time of fiscal austerity, the extent to which the police should prioritise the safety and wellbeing of young people, and the role that the police should take in preventing youth crime. This article explores the impact and effectiveness of a police-led social crime prevention initiative in England. It adopts the QUALIPREV approach by Rummens et al (2016) on behalf of the European Crime Prevention Network to analyse the data allowing for a detailed and replicable analysis of core aspects including police engagement, risk management, offending rates and police-community relations. Drawing on comparisons between the UK case study and previous studies on police-led social crime prevention projects in Australia and Canada, the article identifies a number of common challenges for schemes of this nature including problems with multi agency working, developing a clear project identity, unequal resources across different locations, and the difficulty in recruiting and retaining volunteers. However, there were also significant benefits to such schemes, including positive impacts on offending rates, engagement of at risk young people, and wider benefits to the communities within which the young people live, including participation, volunteering and reduction in risks of community harm. A cost-benefit analysis also shows such scheme have the potential to offer significant savings to the criminal justice system as a whole

Literacy in lockdown: learning and teaching in COVID-19 school closures

Across the globe, children have been away from schools and their teachers, but literacy learning has continued. In many countries, children’s literacy proficiency is often measured against high-stakes assessment tests. However, such tests do not make visible children’s literacy lives away from formal learning settings and thus children are positioned as task-responders, rather than as agentive readers and writers. This article explores the fluidity and diversity of literacy events and practices for students, children and their teachers observed during the recent period of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions

Understanding the National Student Survey: investigations in languages, linguistics and area studies

This report is a summary of interviews and focus groups with around 100 students and 50 members of academic staff in departments of languages, linguistics or area studies at nine universities in the UK. In recent years, concerns have been expressed about the ambiguity of some of the statements which students are asked to respond to in the National Student Survey (NSS). This project set out to get a better understanding of how students and staff understand the questions. The interviews and focus groups were carried out by members of academic staff at the nine institutions who each then wrote an individual report of their findings. This summary is designed to enable wider distribution of these findings without identifying individual staff, institutions `or departments

An age-old problem or an old-age problem? A UK survey of attitudes, historical use and recommendations by healthcare professionals to use healthcare apps

Background: The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated barriers to accessing face-to-face care. Consequently, the potential for digital health technologies (DHTs) to address unmet needs has gained traction. DHTs may circumvent several barriers to healthy independent living, resulting in both socioeconomic and clinical benefits. However, previous studies have demonstrated these benefits may be disproportionately realised among younger populations while excluding older people. Methods: We performed a prospective survey using the One Poll market research platform among 2000 adults from the United Kingdom. To mitigate against self-selection bias, participants were not informed of the topic of the survey until they had completed recruitment. We compared willingness to use and historical use of health-apps, in addition to recommendations to use health-apps from healthcare professionals; comparing outcomes across all age groups, including a reference group (n = 222) of those aged 18-24. Outcomes were analysed using multivariate logistic regression and reported as odds ratios (OR) with respondent age, ethnicity, gender, and location as covariates. Results: Willingness to use health-apps decreased significantly with age, reaching a minimum (OR = 0.39) among those aged 65 and over compared to the reference group of 18-24 year olds. Despite this, more than 52% of those aged 65 and over were willing to use health-apps. Functions and features most cited as useful by older populations included symptom self-monitoring and surgery recovery assistance. The likelihood of never having used a health-app also increased consistently with age, reaching a maximum among those aged 65 and over (OR = 18.3). Finally, the likelihood of being recommended health-apps by a healthcare professional decreased significantly with age, (OR = 0.09) for those aged 65 and over. In absolute terms, 33.8% of those aged 18-24, and 3.9% of those aged 65 and over were recommended health-apps by their healthcare professionals. Conclusion: Although absolute utilisation of health-apps decreases with age, the findings of this study suggest that the gap between those willing to use health-apps, and those being recommended health-apps by healthcare professionals increases with age. Given the increasing availability of evidence-based health-apps designed for older populations, this may result in entirely avoidable unmet needs, suggesting that more should be done by healthcare professionals to recommend health-apps to older persons who are generally positive about their use. This may result in considerable improvements in healthy and independent ageing

Understanding acceptability of and engagement with web-based interventions aiming to improve quality of life in cancer survivors: A synthesis of current research

Purpose. This review sought to summarize existing knowledge in order to inform the development of an online intervention that aims to improve quality of life after cancer treatment. Methods. To inform our intervention, we searched for studies relating to web-based interventions designed to improve QoL in adults who have completed primary treatment for breast, prostate and colorectal cancer (as these are three of the most common cancers and impact a large number of cancer survivors). We included a variety of study designs (qualitative research, feasibility/pilot trials, randomised trials, and process evaluations) and extracted all available information regarding intervention characteristics, experiences, and outcomes. Data were synthesised as textual (qualitative) data and analysed using thematic analysis. Results. Fifty-seven full text articles were assessed for eligibility and 16 papers describing nine interventions were analysed. Our findings suggest that cancer survivors value interventions that offer content specific to their changing needs and are delivered at the right stage of the cancer trajectory. Social networking features do not always provide added benefit, and behaviour change techniques need to be implemented carefully to avoid potential negative consequences for some users. Conclusions. Future work should aim to identify appropriate strategies for promoting health behaviour change, as well as the optimal stage of cancer survivorship to facilitate intervention delivery. Clinical Implications. The development of web-based interventions for cancer survivors requires further exploration to better understand how interventions can be carefully designed to match this group’s unique needs and capabilities. User involvement during development may help to ensure that interventions are accessible, perceived as useful, and appropriate for challenges faced at different stages of the cancer survivorship trajectory

So many filters, so little time : the development of a search filter appraisal checklist

Objectives: The authors developed a tool to assess the quality of search filters designed to retrieve records for studies with specific research designs (e.g., diagnostic studies). Methods: The UK InterTASC Information Specialists' Sub-Group (ISSG), a group of experienced health care information specialists, reviewed the literature to evaluate existing search filter appraisal tools and determined that existing tools were inadequate for their needs. The group held consensus meetings to develop a new filter appraisal tool consisting of a search filter appraisal checklist and a structured abstract. ISSG members tested the final checklist using three published search filters. Results: The detailed ISSG Search Filter Appraisal Checklist captures relevance criteria and methods used to develop and test search filters. The checklist includes categorical and descriptive responses and is accompanied by a structured abstract that provides a summary of key quality features of a filter. Discussion: The checklist is a comprehensive appraisal tool that can assist health sciences librarians and others in choosing search filters. The checklist reports filter design methods and search performance measures, such as sensitivity and precision. The checklist can also aid filter developers by indicating information on core methods that should be reported to help assess filter suitability. The generalizability of the checklist for non-methods filters remains to be explored.The work of InterTASC members, including the ISSG, is funded through the UK National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment Programm