Paul Simic, Steve Newton, Dave Wareing, Barbara Campbell and Marie Hill
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate key organisational processes in managing “safeguarding” in relation to the independent sector, the local authority delivery arm for care.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate key organisational processes in managing “safeguarding” in relation to the independent sector, the local authority delivery arm for care.
Design/methodology/approach
The methods employed were a telephone survey (one in five random sample of all residential and domiciliary providers in a local authority area) and follow up focus groups (n=2) of local authority staff and independent sector domiciliary and residential providers, in an action research framework. The survey was developed through expert members of a multi‐agency Project Reference Group.
Findings
Three survey domains (on “information”, “training” and “support and advice”) indicated high satisfaction, but “experience of investigations'” low rating raised questions for further exploration and were followed up in detail in the focus groups selected from providers with experience of safeguarding alerts. A number of issues were raised for local policy and for safeguarding more broadly.
Research limitations/implications
The paper only assesses one local authority area. A more balanced systems approach is needed to manage safeguarding.
Originality/value
The involvement of the independent sector in safeguarding is under‐researched and the development of processes that encourage a research culture and a systems approach are exemplified.
Details
Keywords
From Toronto comes an equally impressive record. There, Drs. Tisdall, Drake and Ebbs have made a study of the effect of giving women, living on a nutritionally inadequate diet…
Abstract
From Toronto comes an equally impressive record. There, Drs. Tisdall, Drake and Ebbs have made a study of the effect of giving women, living on a nutritionally inadequate diet, supplementary milk, eggs, oranges, tomatoes, cheese and vitamins B and D during the latter part of pregnancy. The numbers of pre‐natal anæmias, toxæmic conditions, miscarriages, stillbirths and premature births all showed striking reductions. On this supplementary diet 90 per cent. of the babies born were judged as “good.” The control group scored only 62 per cent. No record in vital statistics is more striking than the fall in infant mortality that has occurred in the past quarter of a century. For this, we have to thank the growth of the infant welfare movement—with which you, my Lord Chairman (Lord Woolton) and your wife were associated as pioneers in its earliest days—and the introduction of dried and pasteurised milks. But the reduction in the incidence of infantile deaths has not been paralleled by a fall in stillbirths and neo‐natal deaths. In Toronto, for example, the former dropped 40 per cent. in the decade before 1939, whilst the latter fell only 7 per cent. They are believed to be much higher in hospital cases than in specialist practice. The evidence that the faulty diet of the mother is more often than not a causative factor appears to be growing. It can, I think, be safely assumed that what has been done and should be done during this war to enable the pregnant woman to get the nutriment she and her growing child require will form the sure foundation on which will be built a post‐war policy to abolish once and for all a hazard to which no expectant mother should ever be exposed because it is her misfortune to lack the means to purchase the foods which her condition demands. The child is born. To‐day, our nutritional policy has ensured that it obtains a good start in life, whatever may be the circumstances of its parents; milk for the mother if she is nursing; milk for the child if it needs artificial feeding. To this are added cod liver oil and orange juice, each of proven vitamin potency. In every home where these bottles of golden juice from the groves of Florida and California are found, they are a reminder of the heartfelt wish of the people of the United States that our babies should not suffer from grave deficiencies which might affect the whole of their later life. I believe this is something which has come to stay. I cannot see us reverting after the war to conditions which make it difficult to provide the fullest protection that can be given by proper diet to the health of every child during its early years. It is said of King Edward VII that he replied, when told that tuberculosis is a preventable disease: “Then why is it not prevented?” He could well have said this of malnutrition. What of the children of school age? How have they fared under war‐time conditions so far as their food is concerned? It is difficult to present a composite picture, for there are so many and so varied problems. Do not for one moment imagine it is only the child from the poor home who is in danger of being badly nourished. I have had in my hands records of the food of boys at exclusive public schools that sent shivers down my nutritional spine. The nutritional policy adopted for the war period has given strong reinforcement to those who wished to see the feeding of school‐children in our elementary schools carried out on a much wider basis and by more up‐to‐date methods. The days when necessity had to be proven before a child was entitled to a school meal will soon seem as remote as those when the proposal to give meals to necessitous school‐children was being vigorously debated. It is hard to credit that there was strong opposition to this project only thirty‐five years ago. Looking at the records of that lively controversy, one finds over and over again that curious concern for “parental control” or “parental influence.” Apparently this is gravely endangered by giving a child a nourishing meal at school. The fact that so large a proportion of those who so dogmatically expressed that view—and there still appear to be many such—had no compunction in packing their own children off to schools where they would be out of parental control for the best part of nine months of the year did not seem to weigh with them. Gone are the days when all that mattered was filling the bellies of the youngsters with something hot and stodgy. Menus for our elementary school kitchens are now planned to give meals appetising and nourishing in themselves, and also to provide over a sequence of days an intake of nutrients which ought to go a long way to make good deficiencies there are likely to be in the home diet. It is much the same principle as that on which Professor Schiötz based the “Oslo meal” and it is fundamentally sound. I do not need to refer in detail to active co‐operation between the Board of Education and the Ministry of Food on these plans for extending the provision of meals for children or to the striking progress that is being made to‐day, in spite of great difficulties arising from shortage of supplies, labour and equipment, to increase the number of good meals provided at school feeding centres. Already the numbers are approaching half a million. But expectations are that a much larger total will be achieved before the end of the year. We are often asked why, when it is so relatively simple a matter to prepare good, nourishing soups, we do not encourage this method of feeding children. I had many enquiries about this when I was recently in the United States, where interesting experiments are in progress in compounding soup‐base mixtures of high nutritional value.
The successful manufacturer of consumer goods has a market orientation.
Most people would agree that smoking, especially of cigarettes, is a closely ingrained habit in great masses of the British people, as indeed it is in most other parts of the…
Abstract
Most people would agree that smoking, especially of cigarettes, is a closely ingrained habit in great masses of the British people, as indeed it is in most other parts of the world, but there can be few countries where so many people smoke at their work. The large number of prosecutions of food workers for smoking while handling open food and the presence of tobacco, cigarette ends, spent matches, etc., in foods; these are an index of how widespread is the habit of smoking at work.
Lord Woolton, the Minister of Food, stated in the House of Lords, on March 11th, that “to reduce the tonnage used for the transport of wheat” the Government had decided to…
Abstract
Lord Woolton, the Minister of Food, stated in the House of Lords, on March 11th, that “to reduce the tonnage used for the transport of wheat” the Government had decided to increase to 85 per cent. the ratio of flour from the wheat milled in this country; and that it will be illegal to sell, except under licence, any “white” bread from April 6th. In the discussion that followed, Lord Horder stated that he and his medical colleagues were satisfied that no other step concerning the nation's food was so calculated to raise the level of the nation's nutrition. He added that there was no evidence that 85 per cent. extraction flour is indigestible; and that where bread of any kind is permissible in diseases of the digestive system, it may be given with impunity. Moreover, Sir Ernest Graham Little, M.D., has rendered a great service to the public by his oft‐repeated and strong advocacy, in the House of Commons, of better bread than that which constitutes the “white loaf.” The unanimous verdict of those who are best qualified to express an opinion supports the conclusion that adequate nutrition is the prime requirement for the physical well‐being of mankind. Neglect this and all other hygienic props fail to support us. It is deplorable, therefore, that so little has been done hitherto in the sphere of national welfare to support the findings of science in favour of the more adequate loaf which has been so powerfully advocated for years. It is no exaggeration to state that the “white loaf” has been a real impediment to an improvement in the hygienic development of the growing child; as the “national loaf” (which will be superior to the “standard bread” of the last war) will not only reduce the tonnage for the transport of wheat, but will also greatly benefit the children, more especially those of the poorer section of the community with whom bread is the main food. Although from a standpoint of nutrition the “National” loaf falls short of the desirable “Wholemeal” loaf, it certainly represents a valuable step in the right direction. As the much impoverished wheat of the “white loaf” is a matter for considerable national concern, it is an anomaly that it should be permitted, seeing that similar impoverishments of natural foodstuffs have for long been punishable by law. For instance, prosecutions and fines for the watering of milk occupy pages of most issues of The British Food Journal. Why, then, should the serious reduction of the valuable mineral matter and vitamins of the wheat used for the wheaten loaf be suffered to continue? The general public do not readily accept guidance upon what they should eat, and it is unlikely that they will have displayed a concerted predilection for the “national loaf” by the time the war ends. But by then much will have been gained by the reduction of prejudice and the increased accommodation which even short phases of custom can confer. Therefore the war‐time expedient of a “national loaf” may very usefully contribute to the perpetuity of its advantages. If we are wise, propaganda to this end will be maintained meanwhile, and be made to develop in power and authority during the early clays of peace. If the Government and the Local Health Authorities are in default in impressing, and (if need be) imposing such a major interest to the nation, the passing of the “white loaf” will soon be followed by its return. Especially is it to be hoped that the Ministry of Health will then give greater support to the advocacy of a better loaf than hitherto. The British Food Journal has often given expression to the public need for an improved loaf, and if this is destined to become an accomplished fact it will partake of the nature of a crowning event to our modest efforts.
WHEN the open access method of lending books was first introduced on safe‐guarded lines at Clerkenwell, over twelve years ago, a considerable amount of dolorous prophecy was set…
Abstract
WHEN the open access method of lending books was first introduced on safe‐guarded lines at Clerkenwell, over twelve years ago, a considerable amount of dolorous prophecy was set free, which sometimes formed rather depressing reading for those responsible for the experiment. As time went on, it became clear that many of the prophets based their vaticinations on imperfect knowledge of the actual arrangements in use, and it was then only a simple matter of allowing complete play to one's sense of humour, while the comedy of errors proceeded. One imaginative prophet pictured the time when painstaking librarians would be supplanted by a uniformed janitor, who would assume the functions of librarian, by the easy process of supervising the filtration of readers through a turnstile, like sheep through a hurdle. Another equally resourceful Quidnunc saw in his mind's eye, all the riff‐raff of London, filing through the little Clerkenwell wicket, like a Cup‐tie crowd at the Crystal Palace, without introduction, guarantee, or slightest degree of responsibility. Probably it was only a humorist, and not a prophet, who forsaw the introduction of weighing machines at both entrance and exit wickets, as a means of preventing wholesale thefts. These, and many other absurd misconceptions of the actual mechanical arrangements employed to overcome various anticipated difficulties, formed a considerable proportion of the prophetic utterances which advertised the open access system in its early days.
IF we count the University of Strathclyde School of Librarianship as a “new” school—rather than simply an old school transferred from a College of Commerce to a university—then…
Abstract
IF we count the University of Strathclyde School of Librarianship as a “new” school—rather than simply an old school transferred from a College of Commerce to a university—then four “new” schools were established between 1963 and 1964, three of the four in universities and the other closely linked with a university, though remaining independent. All four schools have their special features but I consider the more significant of Belfast's features to be its right, from the outset, to conduct all its own examinations for graduates and non‐graduates. Queen's was also the first British university to provide non‐graduates with courses in librarianship. (Strathclyde is the second.) All successful students are eligible for admission to the Register of Chartered Librarians (ALA) after they have completed the prescribed period of practical experience.