Welfare to Work

[Excerpt] This paper explores welfare to work policy in the UK and sets out ways in which the delivery of that policy could become more efficient and effective by making small but significant changes to the approach. Employers and intermediaries must reposition disability from an issue to do with incapacity, doctors, damage and cost – to one concerned with capability, the workplace and investment in human potential. Employers, disabled people and intermediaries must all engage – and have high expectations of each other. We set out the case for an employer engagement strategy that supports welfare to work and maximises impact on employer behaviour by: • Repositioning the employer from ‘problem’ and ‘target’ (i.e. people whose attitudes must be changed) to valued ‘end user’, customer and potential partner. • Streamlining the ‘disability to work supply chain’ so that it more efficiently delivers suitable disabled candidates to employers equipped and supported to hire them on the basis of their capability, to retain them and to develop their potential. We believe it is necessary to reframe the welfare to work challenge as a supply chain challenge and outline 6 fundamental principles that should underpin any welfare to work policy

Epistemic burdens and the incentives of surrogate decision-makers

We aim to establish the following claim: other factors held constant, the relative weights of the epistemic burdens of competing treatment options serve to determine the options that patient surrogates pursue. Simply put, surrogates confront an incentive, ceteris paribus, to pursue treatment options with respect to which their knowledge is most adequate to the requirements of the case. Regardless of what the patient would choose, options that require more knowledge than the surrogate possesses (or is likely to learn) will either be neglected altogether or deeply discounted in the surrogate’s incentive structure. We establish this claim by arguing that the relation between epistemic burdens and incentives in decision-making is a general feature of surrogate decision-making. After establishing the claim, we draw out some of the implications for surrogate decision-making in medicine and offer philosophical and psychological explanations of the phenomenon

Realising Potential: Disability Confidence Builds Better Business

[Excerpt] ‘Realising potential’ sets out the latest thinking on how disabled people contribute to business success and how business, in the UK and globally, benefits from disability confidence. It provides the information senior business decision makers need to manage and profit from the disability dimension to key business trends: including an aging population, increasingly individualised customer relations, changing working patterns and enabling technology. Business must address the disability component of these trends and develop disability confidence if it is to compete in an increasingly complex environment and create value from difference. ‘Realising potential’ highlights the strategic, commercial, legal, societal, ethical, and professional benefits of getting it right on disability – the six building blocks of any business case for disability confidence

The psychological distress of the young driver: a brief report

Objective: To explore the role of psychological distress in the self-reported risky driving of young novice drivers. Design: Cross-sectional online survey of 761 tertiary students aged 17-25 years with an intermediate (Provisional) driving licence who completed Kessler’s Psychological Distress Scale and the Behaviour of Young Novice Drivers Scale. Setting: Queensland, Australia, August-October 2009. Main outcome measures: Psychological distress, risky driving. Results: Regression analyses revealed that psychological distress uniquely explained 8.5% of the variance in young novice’s risky driving, with adolescents experiencing psychological distress also reporting higher levels of risky driving. Psychological distress uniquely explained a significant 6.7% and 9.5% of variance in risky driving for males and females respectively. Conclusions: Medical practitioners treating adolescents who have been injured through risky behaviour need to aware of the potential contribution of psychological distress, whilst mental health professionals working with adolescents experiencing psychological distress need to be aware of this additional source of potential harm. The nature of the causal relationships linking psychological distress and risky driving behaviour are not yet fully understood, indicating a need for further research so that strategies such as screening can be investigated

Thermal and reproductive biology of the lizards sceloporus occidentalis and sceloporus graciosus along an environmental and geographical gradient

The thermal environment exerts a strong influence on many aspectsof squamate life history. Environmental temperatures constrain daily activity time, fecundity, growth rate, and also influences hatchling phenotype. Cold nest temperatures can slow the development of eggs deposited in the soil, cause developmental abnormalities or result in mortality of embryos

Parker Scott Honor Portfolio

Parker Scott\u27s honors portfolio captured in November 2017