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There is little evidence regarding how to best support the emotional well-being of children in foster care. This paper aims to present the evaluation of an adaptation of the reflective fostering programme, a group-based programme to support foster carers. This study aimed to explore whether a version of the programme, co-delivered by a social work professional and an experienced foster carer, was acceptable and relevant to foster carers and to gather data on programme effectiveness.

In total, 38 foster carers attended the programme and took part in this study. Data was collected regarding carer- and child-focused outcomes at pre-intervention, post-intervention and four-month follow-up. Focus interviews were also conducted to further assess acceptability and relevance for foster carers.

Analysis of quantitative outcome showed statistically significant improvements in all outcomes considered including foster carers stress and carer-defined problems, as well as carer-reported measures of child difficulties. Focus group interviews with foster carers suggested that the programme as co-delivered by a foster carer and a social worker was felt to be relevant and helpful to foster carers.

These results provide a unique contribution to limited understandings of what works for supporting foster carers and the children in their care. Promising evidence is provided for the acceptability and relevance of the revised version of this novel support programme and its effectiveness in terms of carer- and child-related outcome measures. This work paves the way for further necessary impact evaluation.

This article aims to depict the pivotal role Octavia Hill, Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett played in the field of social entrepreneurship. The article aims to examine the contributions made by these remarkable women who made valuable theoretical and practical contributions to the emerging field of social entrepreneurship.

Synthesizing articles from history journals, writings about the figures of interest, published works by the figures themselves and other resources, this paper illustrates how Hill, Addams and Follett made valuable contributions to social entrepreneurship and questioned the rectitude of unadulterated capitalism.

This paper concludes that Hill, Addams and Follett refuted the viewpoint that self-interest and single-minded self-survival were the best ways to live and to conduct business. By their actions, the women showed that they did indeed bring “capitalism in question”, by recognizing the importance of seeking others’ interests.

This article highlights the contributions made by Hill, Addams and Follett, who made valuable contributions in the field of social entrepreneurship which is made evident by their work with housing settlements, community center development, etc.

The main purpose of this paper is to document the first author's experience of using institutional ethnography (IE) to “take sides” in healthcare research. The authors illustrate the points with data and key findings from a study of cardiovascular disease prevention.

The authors use Dorothy E Smith's IE approach, and particularly the theoretical tool of “standpoint”.

Starting with the development of the study, the authors trouble the researcher's positionality, highlighting tensions between institutional knowledge of “prevention” and other locations where knowledge about patients' health needs materialises. The authors outline how IE's theoretically and methodologically integrated toolkit became a framework for “taking sides” with patients. They describe how the researcher used IE to take a standpoint and map institutional relations from that standpoint. They argue that IE enabled an innovative analysis but also reflect on the challenges of conducting an IE – the conceptual unpicking and (re)thinking, and demarcating boundaries of investigation within an expansive dataset.

This paper illustrates IE's relevance for organisational ethnographers wishing to find a theoretically robust approach to taking sides, and suggests ways in which the IE approach might contribute to improving services, particularly healthcare. It provides an illustration of how taking a patient standpoint was accomplished in practice, and reflects on the challenges involved.

The Association of Language Excellence Centre (ALEC) is a professional body, forum and information source dedicated to raising the profile and quality of business and vocational language training ALEC′s Guidelines on Good Practice in the Management and Delivery of Foreign Language Training for Business have been written for the benefit of private organizations and educational institutions who intend to provide language services which assist the business community in responding to the opportunities of the Single European Market and beyond. The Guidelines, discussed here, are a statement of the collective views of some 50 Language Excellence (LX) Centres on what constitutes good practice in language training for business, including the step‐by‐step summary of a systematic approach to its management.

Dietary advice is extremely important to patients′ well‐being and control of disorders such as diabetes. A mini‐survey of dietetic outpatients was carried out at Bedford Hospital, and 51 patients were chosen at random. It was felt that, while patients understood their diet, they wanted more help in implementing their diet with a request for recipes being high on the list.

Attempts to improve the quality of the products or systems which customers purchase have focused traditionally on improving the availability of the product through its reliability or maintainability characteristics. However, a growing awareness of the importance of integrating reliability and maintainability considerations into the design phase of a product has led to customers being unable to affect these characteristics to any great extent. As a result, supportability has emerged as a crucial concept to be considered if customers wish to enhance the quality of the products they purchase. Reviews some of the previous work on supportability, particularly in the areas where it is generally recognized that product owners can be most influential, namely spares estimation and shared capital investment equipment provision, and reflects on the associated impact on product quality.

Notes that vitamin K has long been known to be required for blood clotting, and more recent evidence suggests a role in bone mineralization, atherosclerosis, and apoptosis. Guidelines for vitamin K intake were set in 1991; however, the food compositional data and intake levels in the UK were not known and, as such, no dietary reference values were set. Since then, work in the field has progressed enormously, with a provisional food composition database being developed, both in the UK and USA, and a healthy population reference plasma range for K₁ has been established in the UK in parallel with detailed estimates of K₁ intake. Plasma K₁ and the proportion of undercarboxylated prothrombin and osteocalcin have been identified as sensitive functional markers of vitamin K status. Current work on aspects of vitamin K and bone health in the elderly will further assist with the setting of dietary reference values for the future.

In the current drive to improve product quality through its reliability, maintainability and supportability characteristics, supportability has emerged as the key area in which customers can have an impact, the other two aspects being increasingly integrated into the product design phase. Previous work on supportability has indicated that product or system owners can be most influential in the areas of spares estimation and shared capital investment equipment provision. The effect of spares provisioning has previously been considered at some length. Presents the development of a mathematical model for estimating the impact of the level of shared capital investment equipment provided on the supportability. Such a model would then allow engineering practitioners to assess the implications of their decisions regarding resource allocation, in terms of the overall system availability.

The purpose of this editorial is to introduce this special issue on “International trade union networks, European works' councils and international labour regimes”.

The editorial provides an overview and introduces the papers which make up the special issue.

These papers allow us to consider the social, political and institutional dimensions of grass roots organising across countries and continents.

The issue adds new insights into the topic in addition to the more typical focus on institutional levels of union engagement.