Jumped or pushed: what motivates NHS staff to set up a social enterprise?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the motivations behind public sector spin outs, focusing on the Right to Request policy, which enabled NHS staff to set up their own social enterprises to deliver healthcare services.\ud \ud Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on empirical data gathered from 16 in-depth interviews with individuals who had led a Right to Request proposal.\ud \ud Findings – Motivations to spin out of the NHS into a social enterprise were often “empathetic” in nature, built around the good of the service for staff and users. Alongside this, some felt “pushed” out of the NHS as a result of government restructuring policy, with social enterprise offering the only hope to survive as an organisation.\ud \ud Research limitations/implications – The study captures a particular point in time and there may be other perspectives that have not been included.\ud \ud Social implications – The paper is of use to academics, policy makers and practitioners. It provides an important contribution in thinking about how to motivate public sector staff, especially those from a health profession, to consider spinning out into social enterprises.\ud \ud Originality/value – The paper is the first to look at the motivations of healthcare spin outs through the Right to Request programme. The findings are related to previous literature on social entrepreneurship within public sector settings.\u

Let Me Give You My Card : A Study of Evolving Business Protocols in the Information Age

Non peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Determining Income Eligibility in Children's Health Coverage Programs: How States Use Disregards in Children's Medicaid and SCHIP

Outlines how and why states disregard or deduct certain earnings and expenses in determining eligibility for Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program to help cover low-income working families. Summarizes a survey of state policies

Triple Threat: My Journey as a Black Lesbian Athlete in Search of Additional Black Lesbian Student-Athletes

Black lesbian women experience a triple threat based on three components of their identity – race, gender, and sexual orientation – places them on the lower ranks of the totem pole of U.S. social hierarchy. With this in mind, the purpose of this study was to explore how Black lesbian student-athletes negotiate three components of their identity – race, sexual orientation, and being a female NCAA Division I student-athlete – through semi-structured interviews in order to provide these student-athletes with a mechanism to have a voice and express their individual experiences. Since I experienced difficulty in obtaining participants that met the criteria, I have included myself as a co-participant in order to tell my journey of researching a population I identify with – one who has been forced to the margins of society along with the black community

Treatment of severe self-injurious behavior among the institutionalized retarded using a combination of overcorrection, contingent restraint, and increased interaction

Three severely developmentally delayed institutionalized adolescent individuals were treated for severe self-injurious behavior over a three month period. Treatment consisted of positive practice overcorrection, restraint delivered as a reinforcer for an absence of self-injury, and increased interaction during task training sessions. Treatment was faded for two of the individuals in successive steps involving decreased restraint and interaction. Self-injurious behavior was reduced in all cases. Prosocial behaviors increased with reductions in self-injurious behavior

Metabolic and morphologic differentiation in Escherichia coli and Clostridium beijerinckii

The focus of the studies is the relationship of the growth rate and differentiation in bacterial genera. The first system is a division mutant of Escherichia coli which produces chromosome-less cells only after a mass doubling time of 20 h is reached. I determined that this unique growth-rate dependent division phenotype is caused by a mutation mapping within 1 min of the minB operon. This mutation is proposed to be in the topologic regulator of MinE activity. We also conclude that guanosine tetraphosphate interacts with this regulator to inhibit MinE activity at the cell poles. The second system was Clostridium beijerinckii. Differentiation from acidogenesis to solventogenesis and its link to sporulation were investigated using a recycling fermentor. This unique growth system with its 100% cell recycle allows of the study of bacteria as their growth-rate slows. We determined that the shift from acidogenesis to solventogenesis did not occur at a single mass doubling time, but as a series of events. The rate of acetic acid production decreased immediately after the fermentor was switched from chemostat to recycle mode, whereas the rate of butyric acid production did not change. Propanol was detected 4.5 h after the switch, followed 44.5 h later by an increase in the rates of ethanol and propanol production and the detection of propionic acid. An increase in the rate of butanol production occurred 9 h later, as also did the appearance of phase-dark forespores. This sequence of events did not require elevated levels of guanosine tetraphosphate to occur. An acidogenic recycling fermentor culture stimulated to sporulate and monitored using both phase contrast and electron microscopy produced only butanol as phase-dark forespores were formed. This would suggest a link between sporulation stage III and butanol production in C. beijerinckii