Community development finance institutions and the ‘poverty trap’: social and fiscal impact.

This paper examines the current and potential ability of `community development financial institutions´ – institutions aimed at reducing the incidence of financial exclusion at the bottom end of the capital market – to reduce poverty, and the fiscal implications of this process. It seeks to connect the growing literature on labour supply functions for the self-employed with the literature on poverty and measures to escape from it, generating in the process a `poverty exit function´ which is then estimated against data (at this stage, a pilot sample of 45 self-employed households only, plus their employees) for three UK cities. Our model, by analogy with the `poverty trap´ models sometimes used in developing countries, has potentially self-reinforcing features, in which in the presence of certain parameter values efforts to get out of poverty only make the problem worse; but this, to our knowledge, is the first application of such a model to an industrialised country. The quantitative analysis indicates a negative role, in escaping from the poverty trap, for uninsured shocks. It indicates a positive role for formal education and for institutional measures which protect against risk; indeed, some of independent variables such as training are significant only if interacted with protection against risk, implying that simple injections of inputs are insufficient as a support policy for the sector. We make a preliminary investigation of the fiscal savings arising from investment in the CDFI sector, of which the upper bound is about £350 million a year or about 1.5 per cent of the total social social security budget; these impacts, however, are sensitive to variations in the policies of both CDFIs and the various levels of government support for the sector. The qualitative part of the analysis, in addition, suggests a positive role for `integrated support´ to microentrepreneurs which combines finance, mentoring and training. We have observed that many escapes from the poverty trap are achieved by employees rather than by entrepreneurs, which draws attention to the importance of growing along a labour-intensive production function, which ironically was in our sample secured better by small-to-medium firms than by start-up enterprises. Finally, a key variable in the exit-from-poverty process is the `regeneration multiplier´: the extent to which benefits provided by CDFIs remain within, or leak outside, target areas of high social deprivation. This multiplier varied greatly across our samples, being highest in Glasgow and lowest in Sheffield. We surmise (and proper analysis of this parameter is an important agenda for future research) that the regeneration multiplier varies negatively with the wage level and positively with the level of human capital inside regeneration areas. Diversification of financial products, and accompanying expenditure in support of regeneration areas by incentives to source labour and materials locally, could be a useful addition to this policy agenda.

Road traffic offending and an inner-London magistrates’ court (1913-1963)

This article examines the impact of the growing number of prosecutions for road traffic offences at Clerkenwell Court in central London. The average number of cases heard in each courtroom remained stationary and additional traffic prosecutions were accommodated by reductions in prosecutions for drunkenness or disorderly behaviour and for regulatory offences. This change in police prosecution policy impacted on the court’s proceedings and increased the court’s workload because motorists were more likely than drunks to argue their cases and to employ legal representatives. Sentencing patterns, the memoirs of magistrates and court clerks and other published documents indicate that the court staff viewed traffic offending as essentially ‘regulatory’ and distinguished it from ‘serious crime’ except when somebody was killed or a court order was ignored. The court prioritised its own resources to deal with ‘serious crime’ at the expense of traffic prosecutions. The results of this study support Howard Taylor’s thesis that resource constraints had an important influence on police prosecution policies, but show that not only police resources but also court resources and the discretionary powers of individual magistrates were important factors in prosecution patterns

Initiating Change of People With Criminal Justice Involvement Through Participation in a Drama Project: An Exploratory Study

Introduction: Innovative and interdisciplinary approaches are needed to improve mental health and psychosocial outcomes of people with criminal justice involvement and their families. Aim of the study was to assess effects of the participation in a theatre project on the mental health problems of people with criminal justice involvement and relatives. Methods: We conducted structured diagnostic interviews and in-depth qualitative interviews with five participants performing Shakespeare's Richard III in Chile. Three participants had been imprisoned prior to the project, and two were the parents of a person who died in a prison fire. Qualitative interviews followed a topic guide. Data were transcribed, and a six-phase approach for thematic analysis of the data was used. Results: Substance use disorder or major depression was identified in all the participants. Participation in the theatre project was experienced by the respondents as having a positive effect on the mental health conditions. The research registered the positive experiences of role identification, emotional expression, commitment with group processes, improved skills to socially interact, to be heard by the general public and society, and positive perceptions of the audience (including relatives). Discussion: The study raises the possibility that there may be improvements of depression and substance use problems through the participation of people with criminal justice involvement in a drama project. Wider scale research is recommended on the possible effects. The approach may be an alternative to psychotherapy and medication for some individuals

The Quantified Indices for Compensatory Patterns for Low Back Pain and Outcome Measures

The quantification of balance stability is valuable to a number of populations, including older adults with low back pain (LBP). Investigations into postural stability and one‐leg standing should be performed to integrate balance performance using kinematic and kinetic indices. The comparison of postural control between older adults with LBP and healthy older adults might contribute to a further understanding of postural adaptations, especially when considering visual condition. The one‐leg standing test would highlight the differences in kinematic and kinetic stabilities between groups. Because the eyes‐closed condition results in significantly decreased spinal stability, the normalized kinematic and kinetic indices could be utilized to compare postural integration as well as proprioceptive responses. Older adults with LBP demonstrated higher lumbar spine stability in the eyes‐open condition, which might be due to a possible pain avoiding strategy from the standing limb. Clinicians need to consider both kinetic and kinematic indices and visual condition when addressing lumbar spine stability. Quantified indices for compensatory patterns might provide further understanding of optimal injury prevention and rehabilitation strategies for individuals with LBP

Avian Community Response to Seasonal and Successional Changes

2012 S.C. Water Resources Conference - Exploring Opportunities for Collaborative Water Research, Policy and Managemen

Impact of Teamwork on the Achievement of Targets in Organisations in Kenya: A Case of SOS Children’s Villages, Eldoret

Effective teamwork has a positive influence on the performance of organizations. Organizations worldwide are striving to improve the effectiveness of their teams in order to be globally competitive. The study was carried out in SOS Children’s Villages in Eldoret, Uasin Gishu County. The purpose and objective of this study therefore was to establish the impact of teamwork on achievement of organizational targets in Kenya. This study adopted descriptive research design. The target population for this study was 111, comprising of management and all other employees of SOS Children’s Village, Eldoret. Using the Morgan and Krejcie Table for determining Sample Sizes, a sample size of 92 respondents was drawn from each of the category of management and the general employees using stratified random sampling technique. Stratified random sampling was used to identify respondents. The researcher used questionnaires, interviews, document reviews and observation techniques to collect data. Statistical Package for Social Scientist (SPSS) was used to analyze the data. From the findings, job descriptions were found to be ambiguous and that there was responsibility overlaps in most cases, creating confusion and disagreements between employees. The study also established also that job satisfaction was to be achieved through recognition of achievement, promotions, good working environments and fair rewards and remunerations. This was to impact team performance if it was done correctly. The study also established that the employees at SOS Children’s Village in Eldoret were qualified for the various responsibilities assigned and that most had undergone extra training within and without SOS. In conclusion, there was no effective teamwork at SOS despite employees being aware of how much they can achieve by working together in teams. Clear job descriptions should be made at the point of employment and clear demarcations set for employees to know their boundaries and responsibilities. Managers of SOS equally noted that among the strategies they have in formation of teams, were to produce greater levels of performance, build reputation of the organization and offer quality services to customers in enhancing achievement of organizational targets. They felt that internal staff training on importance of teamwork, appraisal and remuneration should be conducted regularly to sensitize employees. The study suggests that research on employee – manager relationship should be carried out to verify its impact on performance. Also the study suggests research into the impact of managers’ roles on career development of employees as a form of motivation. Keywords: Teamwork, Achievement, Targets, Organizations, skills and qualifications job satisfaction, job description

Balancing accuracy and computation burden - an evaluation of different sensitivity analysis methods for urban scale building energy models

Urban-scale building energy models capitalise on the increasing accessibility of large-scale urban data sets and allow the rapid evaluation of competing policy options, making them a vital tool for urban responses to the climate emergency. However, the vast number of different inputs required to model a complex urban environment makes it impossible to precisely quantify all inputs and the complex energy flows within models must be simplified to achieve tractable solutions, as a result, the outputs of these models inevitably have a significant range of variation. Without understanding these limits of inference resulting policy advice is inherently defective. Uncertainty Analysis (UA) and Sensitivity Analysis (SA) offer essential tools to determine the limits of inference of a model and explore the factors which have the most effect on the model outputs. Despite a wellestablished body of work applying UA and SA to models of individual buildings, very limited work has been done to apply these tools to urban scale models. This study presents a systematic comparison of three different sensitivity analysis methods for a high resolution, dynamic thermal simulation at the neighbourhood scale. Accuracy, processing time and complexity of application of each method is evaluated to provide guidance which can inform the application of these methods to other urban and large-scale building energy models. The results highlight the importance of considering both model form and input parameter scale when selecting an appropriate method. In this case, the elementary effects method (EER) offers good performance at relatively low simulation cost