Constructing dementia and dementia care: daily practices in a day care setting

Abstract • Summary:This article explores the ways in which dementia can be constructed and maintained by the actions, and received ideas concerning dementia, of social care staff practising in a local authority day care setting in the UK.The article is set within the context of ‘daily practice’, the things that we do forming the basis of how things may be (re)defined. • Findings:The study suggests that the physical environment of the day care setting, the routines and activities provided and the practices of care staff indicate three particular ways in which dementia was constructed. These comprised ‘holding and homogenizing’, ‘demarcating and distancing’ and ‘caring and controlling’. Each depended on individual approach, training and experience and was influenced by ‘received’ traditional approaches. • Applications:This is important to our understanding of dementia care as we seek to recognize diverse experiences and to consider pluralistic approaches to best practice in dementia care.The study indicates the need for training at a deep and reflective level in which the new culture of person-centred dementia care becomes part of daily practice rather than a distant ideal

Developing self efficacy in research skills: becoming research-minded

The OSWE project’s aims to promote research capacity and develop outcome measures in social work education mirror the capacity and capability building ambitions articulated in the JUCSWEC research strategy (2006) and resonate with concerns about the limited research mindedness and competence of practitioners and social work students. This situation is not unique to the UK. A study from Canada (Unrau and Beck, 2004, p. 188) captures these concerns: While professional and academic expectations are that students integrate research into their practice frameworks…it is not at all clear to what degree students….are learning research skills. Furthermore, studies consistently show that social work students do not exercise research knowledge and skills in their early years of entering the profession. Further synergies between the project discussed within this chapter and the intent to build research capacity in social work were created by focusing on the development of self-efficacy in research skills of social work students at Bournemouth University. This concern for research capacity and capability enhancement, or ‘collaborative capacity building’ (Burgess and Carpenter, 2008, p. 909), was reflected in the local project through the active collaboration between an established and an emerging researcher. This chapter describes the use of research self-efficacy as a tool to evaluate and promote student learning, through self-assessment and lecturer-assessment. We suggest ways in which the approach can be used to plan, predict and assist future learning. The project rationale arose from the desire to increase and enhance research capacity and awareness in social work students. The underpinning premise is summarised by Holden: “when a social worker…has greater confidence regarding his or her research abilities he/she will feel more empowered as a social worker” (Holden et al., 1999, p. 465). This is because high self-efficacy ratings in research are consistently predictive of future confident and successful research behaviour in social workers in the USA (Holden et al., 1999). This confidence in being able to engage with research will enable practitioners to develop practice based on competent reading of research and contribute to the enhancement of the profession and its research base

Consumption Risk and Expected Stock Returns

Following the textbook C-CAPM, the consumption risk of an asset is typically measured as the contemporaneous covariance of the marginal utility of consumption and the return on that asset. When measured this way, consumption risk is too small to explain the observed equity premium, is negatively related to expected excess returns over time, and fails to explain the cross-sectional differences in average returns of the Fama and French (25) portfolios. This paper evaluates the central insight of the C-CAPM - that consumption risk determines returns - but take the model less literally by allowing the possibility that households do not instantaneously and completely adjust consumption to the news revealed about wealth in a period. The long-term consumption risk of the aggregate market is signficantly larger than the contemporaneous risk and is positively related to expected excess returns over time. The long-term consumption risk of different portfolios largely explains the observed differences in average returns.

Spendthrift in America? On Two Decades of Decline in the U.S. Saving Rate

During the past two decades, the personal saving rate in the United States has fallen from eight percent to below zero. This paper demonstrates that this change represents a major shift in the allocation of newly produced goods. The share of GDP that households consume rose by 6 percentage points since 1980. This increase occurred concurrently with a reduction in the growth rate of real consumption spending per person, high real rates of return, and an increasing ratio of aggregate wealth to income. Despite this last fact, wealth changes can explain little of the boom in consumption spending. The largest increases in national wealth post-date the consumption boom and households with different wealth levels have similar increases in consumption. The paper also finds that the changing age distribution of the U.S. population does not explain the consumption boom. While it may be that new wealthier cohorts are driving this boom, the preponderance of evidence suggest rather that the rising consumption to income ratio is due to a common time effect. The main findings of the paper are consistent with either an increase in the discount rate or with a general belief in better economic times in the future. Alternatively, the low rates of saving could be due to a combination of factors such as the increase in intergenerational transfers from the Social Security system raising the consumption of the elderly and an increase in access to credit and expanded financial instruments raising the consumption of the young.

Consumption Risk And Expected Stock Returns

Following the textbook CCAPM, the consumption risk of an asset is typically measured as the contemporaneous covariance of the marginal utility of consumption and the return on that asset. When measured this way, consumption risk is too small to explain the observed equity premium, is negatively related to expected excess returns over time, and fails to explain the cross-sectional differences in average returns of the Fama and French (25) portfolios. This paper evaluates the central insight of the CCAPM — that consumption risk determines returns — but take the model less literally by allowing the possibility that households do not instantaneously and completely adjust consumption to the news revealed about wealth in a period. The long-term consumption risk of the aggregate market is signficantly larger than the contemporaneous risk and is positively related to expected excess returns over time. The long-term consumption risk of different portfolios largely explains the observed differences in average returns.Consumption Capital Asset Pricing Model, Expected returns, Equity premium, Consumption risk, Consumption smoothing