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Article
Publication date: 3 June 2014

Elspeth Anne Gibson

Progress towards Healthy Ageing in Europe has been a two-year European funded project led by Suffolk County Council Public Health and involving five European Union (EU) member…

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Abstract

Purpose

Progress towards Healthy Ageing in Europe has been a two-year European funded project led by Suffolk County Council Public Health and involving five European Union (EU) member nations. The purpose of this paper is to share the learning from the project as it relates to early preventative activity to promote healthy active ageing. The population of interest are those people in the mid-life age group of 45-68 years accessed via the workplace.

Design/methodology/approach

Qualitative research applying an online Health Manager tool and focus group discussions. Transnational work to learn from other EU countries about approaches to promote healthy active ageing.

Findings

A comprehensive account of all project findings is available via the following web site: www.progresshealthyageing.eu This paper outlines the findings from the UK regional activity of the application of an online Health Manager™ tool to employees from Suffolk in the 45-68 year age group.

Research limitations/implications

The research limitations related to smaller cohorts (ca. 1,000 participants) as opposed to large-scale surveys. The phenomenon of the “healthy worker effect” (Shah, 2009), may be a limitation as the population of interest in this age group were mainly employed and in paid employment. The healthy worker effect implies that those who are employed are already “healthier” due to being employed. The further limitation of the timescale for the intervention and project funding as a resource limitation precludes longer term follow-up and evidence collection to find out if behaviour change in participants has been sustained over time.

Social implications

The findings of the EU Project have contributed towards the Europe 2020 Strategy. Locally the findings from the project have supported Suffolk County Council's ambition to be the most active county in England. The findings have added momentum to local workplace health initiatives by providing a focus for the needs of the older workforce. Learning from the Project has also informed development of the Suffolk Workplace Challenge.

Originality/value

This paper provides a review on a European project, Progress towards Healthy Ageing in Europe.

Details

Working with Older People, vol. 18 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1366-3666

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Article
Publication date: 14 August 2017

Rachael Dobson

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a methodology for critical welfare practice research, “recollection-as-method”, and to use this to demonstrate the social relations of…

334

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a methodology for critical welfare practice research, “recollection-as-method”, and to use this to demonstrate the social relations of social welfare institutions.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper analyses a series of personal recollections from the author’s experiences of academic life and welfare work to establish a methodology for critical welfare practice research. This uses concepts memory, dirty work, shame and complicity, and is grounded in critical feminist and critical race work, and psychosocial and socio-cultural approaches to governance.

Findings

The paper establishes a methodology for critical welfare practice research by demonstrating the significance of using an ontologically driven approach to governance, to achieve a realistic and complex understanding of statutory welfare work.

Research limitations/implications

Recollections are post hoc narrations, written in the present day. The ethics and robustness of this approach are deliberated in the paper.

Practical implications

The focus of the paper is on statutory welfare practice that involves the assessment and regulation of homeless people. Principles and arguments developed in this paper contribute to reflective and reflexive debates across “front-line” social welfare practice fields in and beyond homelessness. Examples include assessment of social groups such as unemployed people, refugees and asylum seekers. Arguments also have application for criminal justice settings such as for prison work.

Social implications

This foregrounds practitioner ambivalence and resistance in order to theorise the social relations of social welfare institutions.

Originality/value

The recollection-as-method approach provides a methodology for critical practice research by demonstrating an alternative way to understand the realities of welfare work. It argues that understanding how resistance and complicity operate in less conscious and more structural ways is important for understanding the social relations of social welfare institutions and the role of good/bad feeling for these processes. This is important for understanding interventions required for anti-oppressive social change across the social worlds of policy-practice life.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 17 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

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