The Impact on Women of the Coalition Spending Review 2010

This report provides a gender impact assessment of the Coalition Government's 2010 Spending Review

Women

This chapter examines the government's approach to fairness in its Comprehensive Spending Review and shows that it fails to acknowledge that men and women start from unequal positions, and that there are many barriers to social mobility other than lack of educational qualifications. Unequal employment opportunities and unpaid caring responsibilities are given as two examples. As a result women rely on public services to be able to combine care with employment and so cuts in public services have a greater impact on women's opportunities than on men's. This is shown to have been the case for the cuts in the Comprehensive Spending Review and figures giving the differential impact on various types pf households are given

Rules of ministerial recruitment

Women’s recruitment to ministerial office is improving, but our understanding of what determines women’s access to cabinet remains underdeveloped. Comparative studies explain women’s ministerial presence through correlations with country-level socio-economic or political factors. This research uses a feminist institutionalist approach to explain gendered access to cabinets. It uses original data from interviews with former ministers and special advisors to map the rules in use of ministerial recruitment. It demonstrates that that women’s access to ministerial office is facilitated and constrained by three complexes of predominantly informal rules which structure: who is eligible to be chosen (the eligibility pool); how to qualify (specialist or generalist principles); and who selects ministers (the prime minister or the party). By examining the rules of ministerial recruitment in two Westminster democracies, Australia and the UK, the research demonstrates the differences that exist, even in most similar cases, at system level, at party levels, and over time. By identifying the specific complexes of rules which shape women’s access it is possible to identify the rule changes which have been effective in improving women’s ministerial opportunities and suggest future reform strategies which would be most effective in the specific context

The implications of health policy for nursing: at a glance

Nursing needs policy, it provides the context to our practice, roles, knowledge andframes our patients' day to day lives. This article defines what we mean by policy andwhat influences its development. With the use of health policy examples theimplications for nursing are explained and ideas on how policy is implemented inpractice set out. As health is a devolved issue policy comparisons are made betweenthe four regions of the UK. Finally, the implications of current policy change on nursingroles and skill mix shows how future developments in our professional are beingdirected

Analysing stormwater temperature at site-specific discharge points along the Liesbeek River, South Africa

Increased urban development has resulted in increased impervious landcover and the removal of natural vegetation. The continued anthropic modification of the Earth's surface towards an urban state, has had profound effects on the surrounding natural systems (Thompson et al., 2008). Consequently, recent studies have highlighted a strong link between expanding urbanisation and thermal impacts on streams and rivers draining urban catchments (Roa-Espinosa et al., 2003; Arrington, 2003; Herb et al., 2009b). Anthropogenic perturbations such as thermal pollution can adversely disturb the natural thermal regime of a river (Boothe and Bledsoe, 2009). An important source of thermal pollution is thermally enriched stormwater runoff. During a rainfall event, runoff temperature is elevated as it makes contact with, and passes over surfaces which have a large heat storage capacity, such as pavements, roofs and roads (Young et al., 2013). However, the extent of impervious surfaces and resulting thermal pollution produced by them is poorly understood, although it is thought to be a major contributor to stream degradation. Previous research has focused on investigating the thermal effects of removing riparian vegetation. Additionally, a recent research approach has been to develop models of the urban surface-water-atmosphere systems. Finally, research in the field of fresh-water ecology has investigated the effects of temperature on aquatic biota. Water temperature affects all aspects of freshwater ecosystems and plays an important role in regulating physical and biological characteristics of a river (Olsen et al. 2011). Consequently, any anthropogenic modification to temperature can have devastating effects on the ecological functioning of a river and biodiversity of species within the river habitat. Important findings by Young et al. (2013) suggest the need for a detailed study of stormwater temperature changes in relation to rainfall events, at a catchment scale. Furthermore, data is required to show the point source effects of stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces on the temperature of the receiving water body. Therefore, the aim of this study is: To determine the extent and risk of thermal pollution at site specific discharge points, along the Liesbeek River. In order to achieve this aim, variables which cause temperature variations needed to be identified. The primary research method makes use of Thermocron iButton Temperature Loggers. These were placed in four stormwater outlet pipes, which frequently discharge event-based stormwater runoff into the Liesbeek River. Additionally, iButton loggers were placed in the river channel, to provide a reference temperature to compare stormwater discharge temperature. In addition, hourly rainfall and air temperature was acquired from the South AfricanWeather Service (SAWS) and was used in conjunction with the iButton temperature data

A qualitative study of policy and action: How the Scottish Government has implemented self-management support for people with long-term conditions (LTCs)

Objective: The promotion of self-management support for people with LTCs is a health policy priority across the UK (LTCAS 2008; DoH 2012). Self-management support is designed to change and improve care for people with LTCs, who form an increasing proportion of the population requiring healthcare and treatment. For health organisations models of care, which support self-management, require greater emphasis on person-focused rather than disease-focused manifestations of health and represents a new model of care delivery requiring changes in practice. Current research demonstrates that health policies are increasingly complex, involve multiple organisations and often fail to translate into effective practice (Noyles et al. 2014). The deficit between what works and what happens in practice is referred to as the “implementation deficit” (Pressman and Wildasky 1984) and traditionally it has been difficult to breakaway from the idea that the policy process is best viewed from the top-down (Barett and Fudge 1981). However, there remains a need to understand the processes of implementation, which takes account of the variation, the multiple layers and interactions which takes place between policy-maker and -implementer as policy becomes practice (Hupe 2011). Implementation of self-management is a contemporary focus in UK health policy and this thesis explains what processes are used to implement self-management policy for people with LTCs into everyday practice in one health board. Methods: A case study approach was used to investigate the policy process with data collected using thirty-one semi-structured interviews with policy-makers and regional and local policy-implementers plus eight hours of observation of national and regional policy meetings. To provide context to the implementation process data also included thirteen policy documents. Data analysis used the retrospective application of NPT as a theoretical framework with which to explore the implementation processes. NPT is an emerging theory that is being promoted as a means of understanding implementation, embedding and integration of new ideas in healthcare (McEvoy et al. 2014). The application of NPT focuses on four mechanisms, termed work (May and Finch 2009: 547), which promote incorporation of new ideas in practice. These areas of work are coherence, cognitive participation, collective action and reflexive monitoring (Mair et al. 2012). Findings: The findings suggest that there are a number of important influences operating behind or as part of the policy implementation process. These included the need for a shared understanding, getting stakeholders involved to drive forward policy, work promoting collaboration and participation was the most detailed and important in the process of policy implementation; the course of policy was affected by factors which facilitated or inhibited stakeholders acceptance of self-management; and NPT fosters key analytical insights. Conclusion: Understanding the process of policy implementation in healthcare and how practice changes as a result of policy is subject to a wide range of influences. What emerges are five key recommendations relating to understanding policy implementation. (1) understanding the concept of self-management is important in promoting policy implementation. This understanding benefits from dialogue between policy-makers and -implementers. (2) stakeholder involvement supports implementation particularly the role of clinical leadership and leadership through existing networks but also value in establishing new organisational structures to create a receptive context. (3) develop participation and collaboration through use of the patient voice which helped simplify the policy message and motivate change. (4) other resources help policy implementation and where these are evident then policy is implemented and where they are absent then implementation is not embedded. Lack of evidence was a particular area of constraint. (5) NPT has shown that social context is important, and provides for this. But in addition there is evidence that historical perspectives and previous experience are also important influence on receptivity to implementation. This research contributes to the development of theory and practice in the area of implementation science. The exploration of the policy implementation has revealed the action and work which policy-makers and -implementers are engaged in while implementing policy. It has tested the utility of NPT in a real-life setting using all four mechanisms

Ion Suppression in Mass Spectrometry

Background: Mass spectrometry (MS) is being intro-duced into a large number of clinical laboratories. It provides specificity because of its ability to monitor selected mass ions, sensitivity because of the enhanced signal-to-noise ratio, and speed because it can help avoid the need for intensive sample cleanup and long analysis times. However, MS is not without problems related to interference, especially through ion suppres-sion effects. Ion suppression results from the presence of less volatile compounds that can change the effi-ciency of droplet formation or droplet evaporation, which in turn affects the amount of charged ion in the gas phase that ultimately reaches the detector. Content: This review discusses materials shown to cause ion suppression, including salts, ion-pairin

Sigrid Undset\u27s Sacramental Realism: The Body in Kristin Lavransdatter

Though literary modernism has been historically characterized as atheistic and anti-traditional, new critical voices are emerging that argue for the presence of the sacred in modernist texts. This paper joins those voices by proposing, along with the reexamination of the sacred in nonreligious writers like Woolf and Joyce, a reexamination of specifically religious work and on its own terms. The modern Catholic novel, in particular, with its focus on the eternal significance of humanity, deserves this attention. The paper offers Sigrid Undset’s 1920, Nobel Prize wining, Catholic trilogy, Kristin Lavransdatter, as a significant (and unjustly overlooked) text of the period, ripe for reevaluation. Nearly all critics who discuss Kristin Lavransdatter pose a dichotomous reading of the text, in which the protagonist Kristin overcomes her flesh and her earthly desires in order to move toward eternity and God. The trajectory of the narrative, they argue, discards all things physical in favor of the spiritual. This paper refutes those dichotomies, presenting a new close reading of the body, paganism, and the natural world in the text of Kristin Lavransdatter to suggest that Kristin’s life is not a dichotomy between flesh and spirit, but rather, inherently sacramental, as she moves to a deeper understanding of Christ’s Incarnation and Cross. Finally, the paper proposes the term sacramental realism to define Sigrid Undset’s contribution to modernism

A reshuffle for women? Welcome, but underwhelming

Has David Cameron succeeded in making his cabinet more diverse and representative of the population? Claire Annesley and Francesca Gains argue that the prime minister still has much more to do to if he is to improve the representation of women. They suggest that Cameron should make sure more women are selected for winnable Conservative seats and reinstate and resource a dedicated women and equalities policy machinery

The Conservatives’ failure to prioritise gender equality could cost them dear at the general election

One of the features of British politics since the last General Election has been the widening of the gender gap in terms of voting intentions, with women more likely to back Labour. Here, the Conservatives have a blind spot, according to Claire Annesley and Francesca Gains, with their failure to support gender equality in a number of ways holding the potential to cost them dear electorally