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Recent guidelines from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence highlight that service users (SUs) with intellectual disabilities and co-occurring mental health problems rarely get the opportunity to share their experiences of mental health services. Over the past 20 years, policy documents have stated that these individuals (SUs) must be included in decisions about their care. Research suggests that often this is not the case. Therefore, this paper aims to create a space for SUs to share their experiences of mental health services, and what they found helpful.

A focus group was held with five SUs, two psychologists and two researchers. The audio recording of the discussion was transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis.

Three main themes were identified, namely, “relationships with others”, “inclusion and communication” and “challenges”. This focus group highlighted that although some SUs felt supported, they reported having little control in their lives and wanted to be listened to.

Including a SU in the planning and facilitation of the focus group would have made this research more inclusive.

The implications of this research suggest that by listening to and involving SUs and developing more person-centred services, recovery rates may increase as the services provided would be more targeted.

Very little research has previously been conducted to explore SUs’ experiences. This paper highlights the value of being heard and the knowledge that is often lost if the authors do not take the time to listen to the people for whom a service is designed.

Social prescribing (SP) is an emerging area of public health that has the potential to alleviate pressure on primary care by offering non-clinical solutions to health problems. Whilst there is an increasing body of literature exploring service design and impact, there is little research that focuses specifically on the SP workforce. The purpose of this paper is to explore routes into SP, worker’s experiences of the sector and potential career progression.

For this qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight members of the SP workforce with varying levels of responsibility from within six different organisations in an urban/suburban area of South West England. Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis.

Pathways into the sector were varied, and those without direct experience often brought transferable skills from other professions. Careers in SP were clearly rewarding, and some providers had established good support structures for staff. However, some participants were in need of additional training in areas such as collaborative working and staff management. Staff working at a more senior level – particularly in community-based organisations – seemed less well supported overall, with limited career progression. Staff in such organisations also reported working beyond contractual hours.

This study has revealed inconsistencies between the experiences of staff in some community organisations vs those associated with larger, more established services. It has also highlighted a need for further training and capacity building in some areas. These findings may be of interest to those commissioning or funding SP services in the future.

In this paper, I synthesize the prior psychology literature on ego depletion and apply this literature to an auditing setting. Ego depletion refers to a reduced desire or ability to use self-control in task performance due to using self-control on prior tasks. I focus on the likely causes and consequences of depletion in an auditing setting, as well as means of mitigating depletion and recovering self-control resources. While ego depletion theory is prevalent in the psychology literature, little is known about whether or how ego depletion affects professionals on meaningful task performance. As a result, this synthesis is aimed at stimulating future ego depletion research in accounting, and specifically auditing, by surveying existing literature and applying this literature to an auditing setting. Further, I develop 13 questions for future research to investigate. My synthesis reveals that ego depletion likely has a pervasive effect in an auditing setting, and can hinder auditors’ judgment and decision-making (JDM) quality. Therefore, this synthesis helps to provide a greater understanding of the impact of auditing tasks on individuals, and refines both auditor JDM and ego depletion theories.

Personal information management (PIM) is an activity in which people store information items in order to retrieve them later. The purpose of this paper is to test and quantify the effect of factors related to collection size, file properties and workload on file retrieval success and efficiency.

In the study, 289 participants retrieved 1,557 of their shared files in a naturalistic setting. The study used specially developed software designed to collect shared files’ names and present them as targets for the retrieval task. The dependent variables were retrieval success, retrieval time and misstep/s.

Various factors compromise shared files retrieval including: collection size (large number of files), file properties (multiple versions, size of team sharing the file, time since most recent retrieval and folder depth) and workload (daily e-mails sent and received). The authors discuss theoretical reasons for these negative effects and suggest possible ways to overcome them.

Retrieval is the main reason people manage personal information. It is essential for retrieval to be successful and efficient, as information cannot be used unless it can be re-accessed. Prior PIM research has assumed that factors related to collection size, file properties and workload affect file retrieval. However, this is the first study to systematically quantify the negative effects of these factors. As each of these factors is expected to be exacerbated in the future, this study is a necessary first step toward addressing these problems.