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This study aims to explore the experiences of living through the COVID-19 pandemic for people who faced homelessness and dealt with mental health and/or substance use challenges.

This qualitative study was comprised of 26 1:1 interviews (16 men and 10 women), conducted between February and May 2021 with people who experienced homelessness in North East England during the COVID-19 pandemic. An inductive reflexive thematic analysis was undertaken, with input from individuals with lived experience who were involved throughout the study.

Four themes were developed. The first theme, lack of support and exacerbation of mental health and substance use difficulties, highlighted how the lack of in-person support and increased isolation and loneliness led to relapses or new challenges for many people’s mental health and substance use. The second theme, uncertainty and fear during the pandemic, explored how the “surreal” experience of the pandemic led to many people feeling uncertain about the future and when things would return to normal. The third theme, isolation and impacts on social networks, discussed how isolation and changes to relationships also played a role in mental health and substance use. Finally, opportunity for reflection and self-improvement for mental health and substance use, explored how some people used the isolated time to re-evaluate their recovery journey and focus on self-improvement.

The experiences shared within this study have important implications for planning the future delivery and commissioning of health and social care services for people facing homelessness, such as sharing information accessibly through clear, consistent and simple language.

As one of the few papers to involve people with lived experience as part of the research, the findings reflect the unique narratives of this population with a focus on improving services.

Given the importance of senior volunteers in an ageing society, this study aims to deepen the understanding of how seniors create well-being by volunteering as service providers in terms of motivations for volunteer participation and value co-creation/co-destruction in service provision.

Focussing on senior volunteers acting as service providers in the tourism sector, this study conducted a programme of qualitative research with 15 senior volunteer tour guides in Japan and the UK through the purposive sampling method. The data were analysed by the Gioia method to identify data structure and create a conceptual model.

Seniors start with a mixture of different motivations, not only symbolic and health ones. However, after a certain period of training, they become more aware of their volunteer role as service providers and may strive to maximise the benefits to their clients. The overall performance of such a role supports their well-being. They may also experience episodes of value co-destruction; such negative experiences may be overcome by building good relationships with their colleagues in the organisation.

The paper identifies organisational support ideas for senior service provider volunteers aimed at overcoming negative experiences and achieving well-being, in terms of training and improved communication between organisation members.

This study contributes to the transformative service research literature by constructing a model to showcase the relationship amongst expectations of volunteering as a service provider, service delivery and well-being creation. This paper also discusses the positive and negative effects of volunteer service delivery on senior volunteers' well-being.

High levels of child obesity alongside rising stunting and the absence of a coherent food policy have deemed UK’s food system to be broken. The National Food Strategy (NFS) was debated intensely in media, with discussions on how and who should fix the food system.

Using a mixed methods approach, the authors conduct framing analysis on traditional media and sentiment analysis of twitter reactions to the NFS to identify frames used to shape food system policy interventions.

The study finds evidence that the media coverage of the NFS often utilised the tropes of “culture wars” shaping the debate of who is responsible to fix the food system – the government, the public or the industry. NFS recommendations were portrayed as issues of free choice to shift the debate away from government action correcting for market failure. In contrast, the industry was showcased as equipped to intervene on its own accord. Dietary recommendations made by the NFS were depicted as hurting the poor, painting a picture of helplessness and loss of control, while their voices were omitted and not represented in traditional media.

British media’s alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system. Media firms should move beyond tropes of culture wars to discuss interventions that reform the structural causes of the UK’s broken food systems.

As traditional media coverage struggles to capture the diversity of public perception; the authors supplement framing analysis with sentiment analysis of Twitter data. To the best of our knowledge, no such media (and social media) analysis of the NFS has been conducted. The paper is also original as it extends our understanding of how media alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system.

In the leadership debate, one of the questions for public leaders nowadays is how to reflect and experience meaning in these complex and accelerated times. This article compares three dominant theoretical narratives with the narratives of public strategic leaders in practice. The statement in literature is that leaders in organisations need to create time to reflect on “creating meaning” with others as an answer to the adaptive challenges. The limitation of these studies is that they do not explore leaders’ experiences in practice. We fill this gap by examining the experiences of public strategic leaders and exploring the implications.

We qualitatively explore the narratives of 25 public strategic leaders using interviews, group dialogues and surveys.

The central finding is a problematic gap between theory and practice. This is a concern because of the utopic ideology of reflectivity, which does not consider the forces present in political and bureaucratic organisations and the leaders’ perceptions of their role and position. The narrative exploration shows a pattern of leaders trying “to do good”, avoiding disruptions caused by doubts, emotions or intuitions.

The narratives of public strategic leaders show three persistent ideologies putting pressure on their reflective space in daily practice. These narratives offer a starting point for public organisations regarding the reflective practices of strategic leaders.

This article opens a debate about leadership and reflectivity paradigms in theory and practice. It offers a reality check for leaders’ and coaches’ daily practices, as opposed to the often utopic theories.