How can we develop an increased awareness of equality & diversity issues amongst our staff

This paper charts a service development initiative, which consisted of a valuing diversity pathway including awareness training days for NHS staff in one Mental Health and Learning Disability Trust. The purpose of the training days was to give staff and service users the opportunity to explore each other’s perspectives, beliefs, values, knowledge and behaviours to better prepare them to tackle inequalities and improve access to services. The main aim of a valuing diversity awareness pathway as stated in this paper is to give staff and service users the opportunity to ensure that staff working in all care services are better prepared to tackle inequalities and to improve access to services for vulnerable groups of people such as those with a learning disability and others with mental health issues requiring treatment. It is recognised that to meet diverse needs both staff and service users need to recognise the value of their differences. The South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SWYPFT) and the University of Huddersfield worked together to produce the pathway. Both of these organisations are committed to valuing diversity and they have a strong history of partnership working. The following paper provides background information, an overview of the innovative approach taken to develop the pathway and a more detailed account of the design, delivery and evaluation of the training days

Factors affecting general practice collaboration with voluntary and community sector organisations.

Collaborative working between general practice (GP) and voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations is increasingly championed as a means of primary care doing more with less and of addressing patients' "wicked problems". This paper aims to add to the knowledge base around collaborative practice between GPs and VCS organisations by examining the factors that aid or inhibit such collaboration. A case study design was used to examine the lived-experience of GPs and VCS organisations working collaboratively. Four cases, each consisting of a GP and a VCS organisation with whom they work collaboratively, were identified. Interviews (n = 18) and a focus group (n = 1) were conducted with staff within each organisation. Transcribed data were analysed thematically. Whilet there are similarities across cases in their use of, for example, Health Trainers and social prescribing, the form and function of GP-VCS collaborations were unique to their local context. The identified factors affecting GP-VCS collaboration reflect those found in previous service evaluations and the broader literature on partnership working; shared understanding, time and resources, trust, strong leadership, operational systems and governance and the "negotiation" of professional boundaries. While the current political environment may represent an opportunity for collaborations to develop, there are issues yet to be resolved before collaboration-especially more holistic and integrated approaches-becomes systematically embedded into practice

Competing Ideas of Social Justice and Space: Locating Critiques of Housing Renewal in Theory and in Practice

This article considers the experience of the English government's policy of Housing Market Renewal from the perspective of spatial justice. The paper first proposes an analytical framework that situates competing notions of territorial social justice within a space of complex sociospatial relations. The dialectic of two formulations of social justice is first set up, comparing 'procedural' or deontological forms of justice and the distributional justice of outcomes. Soja's formulation of spatial justice is advanced as an appropriate balance between spatial and socio-historic contexts for the justice question. Drawing on the literature on sociospatial relations, concrete critiques and justifications of HMR are then positioned in terms of the intersection of structuring principles and policy fields. The role of demolition in urban restructuring programmes is used to explore the differential spatialities involved in different justicial perspectives. It is concluded that 'gentrification' critiques of HMR are only partial in their evaluation of justice and lack normative power. Some practical implications for the design of urban restructuring policies are offered

Strategic green infrastructure planning in Germany and the UK: a transnational evaluation of the evolution of urban greening policy and practice

The evolution of Green Infrastructure (GI) planning has varied dramatically between nations. Although a grounded set of principles are recognized globally, there is increasing variance in how these are implemented at a national and sub-national level. To investigate this the following paper presents an evaluation of how green infrastructure has been planned for in England and Germany illustrating how national policy structures facilitate variance in application. Adopting an evaluative framework linked to the identification of GI, its development and monitoring/ feedback the paper questions the impacts on delivery of intersecting factors including terminology, spatial distribution and functionality on effective GI investment. This process reviews how changing policy structures have influenced the framing of green infrastructure policy, and subsequent impact this has on the delivery of green infrastructure projects

Erratum to: 36th International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s13054-016-1208-6.]

South Yorkshire Historic Environment Characterisation Project

The South Yorkshire Historic Environment Characterisation project was undertaken by South Yorkshire Archaeology Service (SYAS), with funding from English Heritage. The project aimed to map and record the Historic Character of the districts of Barnsley, Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster, which make up the former county of South Yorkshire. The project is a further development upon the HLC studies that have been undertaken across the country since 1992. Rather than just work on the rural landscape, the HEC project worked on rural and urban areas simultaneously. The project aimed to better understand the formation processes within South Yorkshire and to document and better understand the character of the existing landscape. The project also aimed to develop a flexible tool that could be used to facilitate informed decision making by planners and developers so that managed change takes place within the urban and rural landscapes

Romans on the Don

Romans on the Don was an educational community outreach project funded by English Heritage through the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund. A number of important Iron-Age and Romano-British cropmark sites have recently been investigated in Doncaster Metropolitan Borough, in advance of aggregates quarrying. The project aimed to raise awareness amongst communities living locally to these aggregate sites about the Iron age to Romano-British historic environment of their area and to promote the work of quarry operators in preserving these sites by record