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Anne Harding was Deputy Director of Richmond Fellowship Workschemes until 1991 and a founder member of the CEFEC European Network. As such she has seen (and initiated) many of the developments in employment and mental health we now take for granted, especially social firms — having been the prime mover in starting Castle Project Printfinishers and a co‐author of the Social Firm Handbook, published by Pavilion 1997. Here, she gives a personal view on the value of networking and makes some suggestions for future issues of A life in the day which I fully endorse.

Manufacturing enterprises must satisfy customers’ needs, in order to sustain their position in the competitive market. This requires the enterprises to continuously design and produce new products. To handle new product introductions or changes to existing product ranges, enterprises must modify or re‐design their processes. Enterprise design and implementation is very expensive and time consuming. Hence, application of modelling techniques can be beneficial, first to avoid mistakes, which may result in loss of market position, and secondly to test alternative designs with minimum cost. Modelling a complex manufacturing enterprise requires a great amount of varied information. Thus, efficient collection and assessment of information are key factors in successful design. This paper introduces a multi‐view support tool, called Factory Design Process Views (FDP Views), which aims to facilitate the capture, evaluation, access and modification of all the information required by designers and management during an enterprise design.

THE first surprise when travelling by air from Fiji to Western Samoa is that one leaves Fiji on Saturday and arrives in Western Samoa on Friday. This is because of crossing the International Date Line en route and a story is told in Fiji of a man who owned a shop through which the date line ran. Sunday trading is frowned on in Fiji but our friend got round this by opening only half of his shop on Sunday—the half on the Saturday or Monday side of the date line. It is therefore not surprising that the Fiji Times describes itself as “the first newspaper in the world every day”.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of mindfulness training (MT) on employee well-being. Mindfulness is the awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions, sensations, actions and surroundings in the present moment.

The authors used pre-post training measures and a four-week follow-up on a sample of 23 employees from a UK-based organization. The MT group (n=12) received a weekly two-hour training over eight weeks whilst the control group (n=11) received no training. Qualitative interviews (n=36) were conducted with the MT group at three time points to further assess the subjective experiences of training participants.

Compared to the control group, the MT group significantly increased their mindfulness skills including observing and acting with awareness. Scores on well-being, i.e. satisfaction with life, hope and anxiety also improved and were generally maintained at follow-up. Some improvements were seen in the control group too but there was a larger difference in change scores in the MT group on most variables. Qualitative data show additional benefits of MT such as improved concentration at work and better interpersonal relationships. More practice at home led to greater benefits suggesting a dose-response relationship between the amount of practice and substantial benefits.

Inviting participants to have a greater amount of practice between sessions may further increase the benefits of mindfulness. Future research should consider a longer follow-up period to further explore the sustainability of the training benefits.

Employing a mixed-method approach, this study showed that MT is a viable psychological intervention for enhancing employee well-being.

Drawing on nearly ten years' experience of developing and managing social firms in Edinburgh, Sheila Durie makes the case for creating real jobs to complement the government's ‘Welfare to Work’ and ‘New Deal’ initiatives.

Becky Feculak has battled through early onset illness to make a life for herself, finding support at vital times from fellow users, professionals and employers. Becky's story has many lessons and she hopes that others, including those responsible for designing and commissioning mental health services, will benefit from her experiences.

A large part of this paper is based on a presentation by Maria Fafalios‐Dragonas at the International Conference on Developmental/Intellectual Disabilities, ‘Bridging the Continents’, held in Cyprus, 27‐29 March 1998. The conference was organised by the North Dakota Centre for Persons with Disabilities, a university‐affiliated programme at Minot, North Dakota, and Cyprus University, Nicosia, Cyprus. The paper looks at vocational rehabilitation projects in Greece and is based on a questionnaire distributed (August 1996 to August 1997) to the directors of various sheltered workschemes throughout the country, for people with mental health problems, learning difficulties and physical disabilities. This survey ‐ unique in Greece, to our knowledge ‐ was carried out by Maria Fafalios‐Dragonas, Eleni Tsigara and Panayota Papamanoli, for Kaleidoscope social enterprise. The statistical analysis is by ORCO, Athens.

The Network page is your chance to share information or make contact with others. If you are involved in an innovative project, network or partnership that might be of interest to others, why not use this space to tell our readers about it?