Quality of care: testing some measures in homes for elderly people

In this national study of 17 residential homes, 309 residents were interviewed, 264 members of staff completed an anonymous survey, and 228 relatives responded to a postal questionnaire. The data were collected between January andSeptember 1995. The aim of the study was to suggest promising measures of quality of care, looking particularly at depression as a possible indicator. It also served as a follow-up study of the Caring in Homes Initiative, although its timing ruled out evaluation of the impact of this development programme, because changes occurred in the homes before this study began. No strict definition of quality was adopted a priori, but a pragmatic approach was taken, addressing the perspectives of residents, health and social care professionals, home staff, managers, and relatives

The direct costs of specialist services for children with mental health problems

To provide a comprehensive service for children and young people with mental health problems, commissioners require, atthe least, three set of data: information on the needs of the population; knowledge of the provider units available and the service components they offer; and financial information to assess the costs of meeting the population needs. Data such as these are vital to ensure that the services purchased do meet the needs of the population and that the desired balance between expenditure and the budget is attained. This chapter focuses on the last two of these desiderata

Residential care for elderly people: policy implications from an exploratory study

The Association of Directors of Social Services, in response to the Burgner review, has called for joint health and local-authority inspection of residential homes (Community Care, 8.1.97, p. 1). Yet there is little agreement about what constitutes good residential care (Gibbs and Sinclair, 1992). Without such information, we cannot make valid comparisons between homes or set meaningful standards. The study described below tested a wide range of possible measures of quality of care. It adopted an eclectic approach, including the perspectives of residents, health and social care professionals, home staff, managers, and relatives. Full details of the instruments used are given in the final report, which is available from the Personal Social Services Research Unit, University of Kent at Canterbury, CT2 7NF, as Discussion Paper 1245

Neotropical freshwater fisheries : A dataset of occurrence and abundance of freshwater fishes in the Neotropics

The Neotropical region hosts 4225 freshwater fish species, ranking first among the world's most diverse regions for freshwater fishes. Our NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES data set is the first to produce a large-scale Neotropical freshwater fish inventory, covering the entire Neotropical region from Mexico and the Caribbean in the north to the southern limits in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay. We compiled 185,787 distribution records, with unique georeferenced coordinates, for the 4225 species, represented by occurrence and abundance data. The number of species for the most numerous orders are as follows: Characiformes (1289), Siluriformes (1384), Cichliformes (354), Cyprinodontiformes (245), and Gymnotiformes (135). The most recorded species was the characid Astyanax fasciatus (4696 records). We registered 116,802 distribution records for native species, compared to 1802 distribution records for nonnative species. The main aim of the NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES data set was to make these occurrence and abundance data accessible for international researchers to develop ecological and macroecological studies, from local to regional scales, with focal fish species, families, or orders. We anticipate that the NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES data set will be valuable for studies on a wide range of ecological processes, such as trophic cascades, fishery pressure, the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation, and the impacts of species invasion and climate change. There are no copyright restrictions on the data, and please cite this data paper when using the data in publications