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In 2016, the oversight body for policing in England and Wales reported a national shortage of 5,000 qualified detectives and other investigators. Commissioned by the National Police Chiefs Council, this research critically assessed initiatives taken by the Police Service of England and Wales since that time to remedy that shortfall. The purpose of this study is to answer the question, “To what extent can fast-track investigator recruitment and training schemes enhance the PSEW’s investigative capacity and capability?”

Between 2019 and 2020, the authors examined four cases in England and Wales. Three were novel fast-track programmes for new joiners. The fourth was an investigator resilience programme. This study was qualitative and interpretive in nature. The authors carried out systematic reviews of the literature on investigative policy and detective work. The authors reviewed internal evaluations completed by Forces A, B and C. The authors interviewed respondents (n = 82) and supplemented the interview data with survey data (n = 45; N = 127); the authors analysed the data thematically and reviewed the findings in the context of systems theory and social identity theory.

The major themes identified by the analysis presented in this study were marketing and recruitment, attrition and progression, acceptance of the trainees, training and trainees’ welfare and well-being. The programmes were not as successful as they might have been because of systems failures. Principally, ineffective coordination of the programmes with other elements of the forces on which their success also relied (such as training, human resources and detective, departments). A critical limiting factor was the lack of experienced, skilled detectives able to train, support and mentor the trainees.

This paper provides empirical evidence of the efficacy of a whole systems approach to organisational change. This study evidences the crisis in police investigative practice that limits the service that the police can provide to victims and communities and ultimately threatens police legitimacy. This study provides insights from police practitioners into detective work in the modern era and highlights areas where improvement is necessary. The research on which this study is based was commissioned by the National Police Chiefs Council. Thus, there is institutional buy in to its findings.

With its roots firmly in empiricism, this paper presents the first scholarly evaluation of the police's attempts to make up a massive shortfall in investigators. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper presents the first attempt to explain the challenges the police faced in this context, thematically. This study’s focus on systems and on human behaviour is intended to inform a wide audience beyond British policing.

This article is timely due to the current high attrition of officers (National Police Chiefs Council, 2023) and will explore the literature surrounding retention and attrition of officers, the impact of this on trust and confidence, and the need to understand the reasons why officers join the service coupled with their expectations of the police as a long-term career (>10 years).

This research will describe a study using a survey that examined views of 120 new recruits from 3 UK police forces on why they joined the service.

It notes that many still see the police service as a long-term career and indicate little intention of leaving, raising further questions surrounding the reasons for the current high attrition rates. It concludes with where police forces could focus to improve retention, suggesting some reasons for the attrition such as low job satisfaction, poor welfare and organisation culture, and some practical suggestions as to where police forces could focus to improve retention.

Albeit this research was sent to a small sample (n = 127) and did not address shift work issues or welfare support, it will serve as a foundational pilot. The research initial findings can inform future studies with more detailed analyses and targeted strategies to enhance officer retention and public trust in the police force.

The research aims to provide insights into how recruitment motivations and job satisfaction impact long-term retention.

This research highlights the significance of examining the reasons for new recruits joining the service, and of implementing retention strategies prioritising stability, officer support, and community engagement to cultivate a trusting relationship between the police and the public.

This study was designed to examine if current new police officers still view the police as a long-term career choice and to identify if their reasons for joining the service have changed with the current political climate of policing in the UK.

Since the 1990s, the importance of childhood and children within the political agenda of advanced welfare states has grown rapidly. For example, in 1989 the Canadian House of Commons launched a resolution aimed at eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000. With the help of the National Children's Agenda and the National Child Benefit the situation of children should be improved. Nearly 10 years later in the UK, New Labour heralded the political goal to halve child poverty within 10 years and to eradicate it within 20 years. A wide variety of measures and programs like Sure Start and the National Childcare Strategy were started to improve the welfare and well-being of children. In 2002, a new paradigm was established in Germany concerning family policy. The aim was to improve the reconciliation of family and work, the material welfare of young families by a new parental leave scheme, as well as supporting the development of young children by increasing the number of places for children under the age of 3 in early childhood education and care. Additionally, international organisations contributed to this trend. For example, the OECD (cf. 2001, 2006) propagated the development of early childhood education and care (ECEC) as an important contribution to a successful transition into the knowledge society. According to the Lisbon-Strategy, the EU announced new goals for policies concerning children and families as well as introduced benchmarks for evaluating the implementation of these goals in the member states. Finally, in an influential evaluation for the EU President, Esping-Andersen (cf. 2002) and his colleagues argued for a concept of a “child-centered social investment strategy.”

Departing from the contribution of the Social Studies of Childhood, this research aimed to understand children’s relations with school based on their economic, social, and geographical belongings. In order to understand the way children from a big city in Southern Brazil build their relations with school, 36 children between 11 and 13 years old participated. The research was developed in two public schools in two neighbourhoods which are very different in terms of family income, violence taxes, access to cultural equipment, public green spaces, public and social freedoms, among other characteristics. Both contexts have big inequalities, and one of them is a context of high social vulnerability. Through participant observations, focus group discussions, and registers in notebooks, it was intended to comprehend not just what school represents to the children but also which elements structure their childhood experiences. The listening to children’s voices revealed that school is important for both groups. For the children who attend the school in the border of the city, school represents future, learning, the possibility to be together with their friends, and also a leisure space. For the children who attend the school in the city centre, the institution is their main social space where they can be together with their friends. Children from the city center school also acknowledge that the inequality between public and private schools is a social injustice. In a country constituted by strong social inequalities, children’s knowledge contributed to comprehend how territoriality, poverty, and social exclusion are related and how they shape the relations children establish with school. This chapter aims to discuss how social inequalities create different school representations, highlighting the specificities in each context.

The hypothesis that broadly defined managerial functions can be subdivided on the basis of their members′ internal and external task orientations, and that the resulting subfunctions are, respectively, predominantly “adaptive” or “innovative” in terms of Kirton′s adaption‐innovation theory, was tested. Data from samples of British (N = 115), Australian (N = 123) and American (N = 131) mid‐career managers undertaking MBA programmes who completed the Kirton Adaption‐Innovation Inventory (KAI) and provided employment histories displayed the expected patterns of task orientation and cognitive style. Implications for adaption‐innovation theory and the management of organisational change are briefly discussed.

The purpose of this study is to explore the role of professional and leader identity and the maintenance of identity, through identity work as IT professionals transitioned to a permanent hybrid role. This study therefore contributes to the under-researched area of permanent transition to a hybrid role in the context of IT, where there is a requirement to enact both the professional and leader roles together.

The study utilised a longitudinal design and two qualitative methods (interviews and reflective diaries) to gather data from 17 IT professionals transitioning to hybrid roles.

The study findings reveal that IT professionals engage in an ongoing process of reconciliation of professional and leader identity as they transition to a permanent hybrid role, and they construct hybrid professional–leader identities while continuing to value their professional identity. They experience professional–leader identity conflict resulting from reluctance to reconcile both professional and leader identities. They used both integration and differentiation identity work tactics to ameliorate these tensions.

The longitudinal study design, the qualitative approaches used and the unique context of the participants provide a dynamic and deep understanding of the challenges involved in performing hybrid roles in the context of IT.

Home-based work results in a specific spatiotemporal arrangement: one location serves as both the family home and the workplace. This mode of work shapes the everyday family life and at the same time has to be adjusted to suit the divergent needs of all family members involved, especially if children live in the same household. So far, research on home-based work has predominantly examined home-based workers’ and adults’ perspectives. Therefore, this chapter puts children’s perspectives at the centre of the inquiry and recognises the wider web of family relations and home by focussing on the spatiotemporal coordination of everyday family life.

This chapter examines how children conceptualise parental home-based work in relation to their everyday family life and home, and how they participate in family practices in the context of home-based work.

The contribution is based on original empirical data that were collected during fieldwork with 11 families in Austria. It builds on observations of daily routines in these families, photointerviews and guided tours through the home with kindergarten and primary school-aged children as well as qualitative interviews with home-based workers living in these households.

From children’s perspectives, the findings show various independences between paid work and family life when work and home coincide. The in-depth analysis of these everyday situations emphasises how children actively modify and shape everyday family life and home in the context of parental home-based work arrangements. Family practices are constantly done and in so doing turn temporarily both the house and the workspace into a home.