The information worlds of a disadvantaged community

Information seeking in context is a developing area of research, which explores the subject in settings ranging from high schools to legal practices to health organisations. Relatively little research, however, has been devoted to information behaviour in disadvantaged communities from a non-library perspective, particularly within a UK context. This study contributes to this field of research by exploring the information worlds — the everyday lives and information behaviour — of people living on a disadvantaged estate in Northeast England. The project was firmly rooted within the qualitative paradigm and employed a combination of ethnographic data collection methods to explore information behaviour including episodic narrative and extended participant observation. Interviews were carried out with 21 estate residents and with 13 key workers. The study discovered that everyday life on the estate was difficult and complex, a fact mirrored in the participants' information needs and in their information seeking behaviour. Cognitive information needs stemmed from everyday life issues such as debts, employment and health problems and were often met only with affective support from informal networks of family, friends and trusted on-estate regeneration workers. Trust was a major factor in information seeking owing to the insular nature of the estate and the participants' need for confidentiality and privacy. Participants often used the term information to indicate what was happening on the estate in terms of gossip and local news, but they also found the term a worrying one, associating it with intrusive questioning and with formal institutions. Formal, off-estate information providers were used for health reasons or in crisis situations, and the public library was not considered as an information source. In order to overcome the many barriers to information seeking, information providers need to focus on working in ongoing partnership with other agencies and on developing trusting relationships with people within their communities

The information worlds of a disadvantaged community

Information seeking in context is a developing area of research, which explores the subject in settings ranging from high schools to legal practices to health organisations. Relatively little research, however, has been devoted to information behaviour in disadvantaged communities from a non-library perspective, particularly within a UK context. This study contributes to this field of research by exploring the information worlds — the everyday lives and information behaviour — of people living on a disadvantaged estate in Northeast England. The project was firmly rooted within the qualitative paradigm and employed a combination of ethnographic data collection methods to explore information behaviour including episodic narrative and extended participant observation. Interviews were carried out with 21 estate residents and with 13 key workers. The study discovered that everyday life on the estate was difficult and complex, a fact mirrored in the participants' information needs and in their information seeking behaviour. Cognitive information needs stemmed from everyday life issues such as debts, employment and health problems and were often met only with affective support from informal networks of family, friends and trusted on-estate regeneration workers. Trust was a major factor in information seeking owing to the insular nature of the estate and the participants' need for confidentiality and privacy. Participants often used the term information to indicate what was happening on the estate in terms of gossip and local news, but they also found the term a worrying one, associating it with intrusive questioning and with formal institutions. Formal, off-estate information providers were used for health reasons or in crisis situations, and the public library was not considered as an information source. In order to overcome the many barriers to information seeking, information providers need to focus on working in ongoing partnership with other agencies and on developing trusting relationships with people within their communities.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

The information worlds of a disadvantaged community

Information seeking in context is a developing area of research, which explores the subject in settings ranging from high schools to legal practices to health organisations. Relatively little research, however, has been devoted to information behaviour in disadvantaged communities from a non-library perspective, particularly within a UK context. This study contributes to this field of research by exploring the information worlds — the everyday lives and information behaviour — of people living on a disadvantaged estate in Northeast England. The project was firmly rooted within the qualitative paradigm and employed a combination of ethnographic data collection methods to explore information behaviour including episodic narrative and extended participant observation. Interviews were carried out with 21 estate residents and with 13 key workers. The study discovered that everyday life on the estate was difficult and complex, a fact mirrored in the participants' information needs and in their information seeking behaviour. Cognitive information needs stemmed from everyday life issues such as debts, employment and health problems and were often met only with affective support from informal networks of family, friends and trusted on-estate regeneration workers. Trust was a major factor in information seeking owing to the insular nature of the estate and the participants' need for confidentiality and privacy. Participants often used the term information to indicate what was happening on the estate in terms of gossip and local news, but they also found the term a worrying one, associating it with intrusive questioning and with formal institutions. Formal, off-estate information providers were used for health reasons or in crisis situations, and the public library was not considered as an information source. In order to overcome the many barriers to information seeking, information providers need to focus on working in ongoing partnership with other agencies and on developing trusting relationships with people within their communities.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Towards climate resilient and environmentally sustainable health care facilities

The aim of building climate resilient and environmentally sustainable health care facilities is: (a) to enhance their capacity to protect and improve the health of their target communities in an unstable and changing climate; and (b) to empower them to optimize the use of resources and minimize the release of pollutants and waste into the environment. Such health care facilities contribute to high quality of care and accessibility of services and, by helping reduce facility costs, also ensure better affordability. They are an important component of universal health coverage. Action is needed in at least four areas which are fundamental requirements for providing safe and quality care: having adequate numbers of skilled human resources, with decent working conditions, empowered and informed to respond to these environmental challenges; sustainable and safe management of water, sanitation and health care waste; sustainable energy services; and appropriate infrastructure and technologies, including all the operations that allow for the efficient functioning of a health care facility. Importantly, this work contributes to promoting actions to ensure that health care facilities are constantly and increasingly strengthened and continue to be efficient and responsive to improve health and contribute to reducing inequities and vulnerability within their local settings. To this end, we propose a framework to respond to these challenges

Ripe to be Heard: Worker Voice in the Fair Food Programme

The Fair Food Program (FFP) provides a mechanism through which agricultural workers’ collective voice is expressed, heard and responded to within global value chains. The FFP's model of worker-driven social responsibility presents an alternative to traditional corporate social responsibility. This article identifies the FFP's key components and demonstrates its resilience by identifying the ways in which the issues faced by a new group of migrant workers – recruited through a “guest-worker” scheme – were incorporated and dealt with. This case study highlights the important potential presented by the programme to address labour abuses across transnationalized labour markets while considering early replication possibilities

Do firms demand temporary workers when they face workload fluctuation? Cross-country firm-level evidence

The growth of temporary employment is one of the most important transformations of labor markets in the past decades. Theoretically, firms' exposure to short-term workload fluctuations is a major determinant of employing temporary workers when employment protection for permanent workers is high. The authors investigate this relationship empirically with establishment-level data in a broad comparative framework. They create two novel data sets by merging 1) data on 18,500 European firms with 2) measures of labor-market institutions for 20 countries. Results show that fluctuations increase the probability of hiring temporary workers by 8 percentage points in countries with strict employment protection laws. No such effect is observed in countries with weaker employment protections. Results are robust to subgroups, subsamples, and alternative estimation strategies

The social dimension of globalization: A review of the literature

With globalization affecting so many inter-connected areas, it is difficult to grasp its full impact. This literature review of over 120 sources considers the impact of globalization on wages and taxes, poverty, inequality, insecurity, child labour, gender, and migration. Opening with some stylized facts concerning globalization in 1985-2002, the authors then highlight recent findings on these areas, reporting on controversies and on emerging consensus where it exists. There follows a review of national and international policy responses designed to make globalization more sustainable and equitable and to deliver decent jobs, security and a voice in decision-making