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The purpose of this paper is to mine Black mothers’ stories to highlight the critical literacy work they do for themselves and their daughters, to change stereotypic views of them, and to illuminate how they negotiate intersectional structures such as gender, sexuality, race and class practice, to sustain and uplift them.

To generate a mother’s narrative, the author asked the following research question: What do you think Black girls need in an afterschool club or in education, or in general?

The author found that the mother’s narrative could be productively contextualized within a reproductive justice framework which gave insights into the mother’s experiences of multiple and simultaneous oppressions which aligned with her social identities with regard to race, class, gender and sexuality. These experiences in turn informed her critical literacies of Black motherhood and girlhood. The author found the system of white heteropatriarchal capitalism, through the privatization of public goods and the lack of adequate social services penalizes Black working mothers and obstructs their ability to mother their children adequately.

Critical literacies of Black motherhood and girlhood should be harnessed for holistic approaches to the literacy education of Black girls, with a focus on improving their life outcomes, enhancing potential for them to realize their gifts, and ending the many forms of violence against them.

Centering the voices of Black mothers as critical literacy education has the potential to thwart oppressive reproductive politics and practices and promote social justice.

This study aims to describe key elements that are critical to virtual qualitative research especially while working with practitioners as participants.

This paper takes a reflexive researcher approach using a case study to explore how researchers adopted a qualitative research approach using digital technology. We use five principles suggested by Boland et al. (2022) as a framework to consider and reflect on our experiences as researchers and those of our participants.

We highlight the gatekeeper’s support, trusted relationship with the organisations, interpersonal skills of interviewers, stringent measures of securing data and shared experiences of interviewee and interviewers helped complete virtual research. We recommend that four key factors such as digital competency, feasibility, flexibility and resilience should be considered while undertaking or commissioning virtual, qualitative research studies.

Social care practitioners and qualitative researchers increasingly negotiate with digital technologies to undertake their work. In this paper, we evidence how online qualitative approaches can be effective provided challenges are dealt with diligently in each stage of the research process.

In order to create sustainable health systems, many countries are introducing ways to prioritise health services underpinned by a process of health technology assessment. While this approach requires technical judgements of clinical effectiveness and cost effectiveness, these are embedded in a wider set of social (societal) value judgements, including fairness, responsiveness to need, non-discrimination and obligations of accountability and transparency. Implementing controversial decisions faces legal, political and public challenge. To help generate acceptance for the need for health prioritisation and the resulting decisions, the purpose of this paper is to develop a novel way of encouraging key stakeholders, especially patients and the public, to become involved in the prioritisation process.

Through a multidisciplinary collaboration involving a series of international workshops, ethical and political theory (including accountability for reasonableness) have been applied to develop a practical way forward through the creation of a values framework. The authors have tested this framework in England and in New Zealand using a mixed-methods approach.

A social values framework that consists of content and process values has been developed and converted into an online decision-making audit tool.

The authors have developed an easy to use method to help stakeholders (including the public) to understand the need for prioritisation of health services and to encourage their involvement. It provides a pragmatic way of harmonising different perspectives aimed at maximising health experience.

All health care systems are facing increasing demands within finite resources. Although many countries are introducing ways to prioritise health services, the decisions often face legal, political, commercial and ethical challenge. The research will help health systems to respond to these challenges.

This study helps in increasing public involvement in complex health challenges.

No other groups have used this combination of approaches to address this issue.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of women’s experiences of living with and surviving HIV/AIDS. We argue that strong conceptualization of this experience will lead to more efficient health care delivery for this growing population, within the general framework of managed care. Our analytical strategy is to integrate the nursing concept of inner strength with ideas from the sociological concept of the existential self. There are numerous definitions of the increasingly popular concept of inner strength in the health care literature, largely developed through the experiences of women living with breast cancer. In general, this concept is useful because it focuses research attention on patients’ experiences and perceptions of illness. Nevertheless, current definitions can be critiqued for their tendency: (1) view inner strength as a thing-like phenomenon, as if it were like a disease, to be measured, treated and supplemented; (2) describe inner strength in overly metaphoric and romanticized terms that do not reflect the everyday life of living with a serious illness; and (3) assume that inner strength is equivalent to doing well. We argue that this concept can be of greater scholarly and clinical use if it is defined as follows: Inner strength refers to the different ways women with serious illnesses experience and, subsequently, talk about the deepest, existential resources available to and used by them to manage severe threats to body and self. We developed this concept through a series of 19 biographical and conversational interviews with women living with HIV/AIDS. Our interviews found that these women describe their experiences in terms of three types of narratives or stories. Faith stories recount the ways reliance upon a higher power (spiritual or religious) provides a sense of inner strength. Character stories recount the ways women experience inner strength as a resource available to them before as well as during their illness. Uncertainty stories recount the ways women perceive their inner strength as problematic. We conclude with specific suggestions for the application of our revised concept of Inner strength to the role of nursing in the delivery of managed care to women living with HIV/AIDS.

To explore the experience of a key member of the UK equalities policy‐making elite, interrogating her shift from activist to top‐ranking equalities professional. To focus attention on the under‐explored area of lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender equalities work.

The interview is prefaced with a critical commentary on current UK equalities policy, contextualising the interview discussion, which links personal and collective histories and provides a comparison of equalities work over time.

Angela Mason, while top‐ranking civil servant, continues to claim the label activist. Like a variety of other equalities workers she uses multiple tactics to appeal to different constituents at different times and in different contexts.

This is an interview with one of the key protagonists in the development of UK equalities policies over the last 30 years. It is unique in its focus on the current overhaul of UK equalities policy from an “insider” and in its timing at the interim point of this reorganisation (October 2006).