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The purpose of this paper is to explore offenders’ experiences of community reintegration facilitated by a supported housing scheme.

Data were derived from five semi-structured interviews with prolific offenders who were participating in a UK “north west housing association” scheme; a community reintegration programme for offenders released from prison.

Thematic analysis demonstrated four predominant themes, these were: “the decision to change”, “self-fulfilment”, “a place to call home” and “a suitable support system”. The themes are discussed in relation to the Good Lives Model.

Participation in the housing scheme was a key component of the reintegration process, which positively facilitated lifestyle change.

This research considers the often “unheard” perspectives of prolific offenders and highlights the significant role of community housing schemes in supporting successful community reintegration.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons why customers often cannot or do not exit a negative service encounter (lock-in) and to discuss how this affects their well-being and coping responses. This contributes to the research on how negative service encounters emerge and evolve and how such encounters impact customer well-being and subsequent responses.

An inductive, exploratory approach was used. Interviews with 20 service customers yielded over 90 detailed lock-in experiences across 25 different services. A multi-step, iterative coding process was used with a mixture of coding techniques that stem from a grounded theory approach.

Four categories of factors that caused customers to endure a negative event were identified (physical lock-in, dependency on the service, social lock-in and psychological lock-in). Customers either experienced inner turmoil (if they perceived having the option to stay or leave) or felt captive; both impacted their well-being and coping strategies in different ways. Three characteristics of negative events that caused lock-in to persist over time were identified.

This is a qualitative study that aims to identify factors behind customer lock-in, reduced well-being and coping strategies across different types of service encounters. Future research may build on these themes to investigate lock-in during specific service encounters in greater depth.

This research provides insights regarding how service providers can anticipate lock-in situations. In addition, the findings point to several ways in which frontline employees can assist customers with the coping process, during lock-in.

Customer lock-in during a service encounter is a common, yet unexplored phenomenon. This research contributes to a better understanding of why customers endure negative events and how such perceptions are reflected in their experiences and behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a range of questions and problems pertaining to a sound-based project that the author began half-way through 2011. Called Daddy Diary, this archive-in-progress takes the form of a series of free-association audio monologues, produced by a first-time father, that are addressed to his adult-daughter of the future and that reflect upon their evolving familial relationship.

As is often the case with creative projects that are embedded in a plurality of ideological, material and temporal conditions, Daddy Diary requires an eclectic and para-humanities approach to its theorisation. By drawing from ethical, sociological, historical and pedagogical assemblages, this paper shows how Daddy Diary activates a non-hegemonic truth space wherein familial knowledge (tacit knowledge captured in the raw material of the voice recordings) participates in the sustainable and counter-institutional negotiation of self-concept.

Sound recording technologies have made accessible new ways of documenting human life-narratives, thus augmenting how notions of the self can be written, reviewed and shared with a creative learning community. Just as photography has been used in creative practice reinforce parental worth, playing into the experience of holding and letting go, so too does an audio diary provide the apparatus through which a parent may reflexively navigate death anxiety and the possibility of loss. Thus, this paper contains insight that may prove useful for other first-time fathers. It’s insight may also be of benefit to practice-led researchers wishing to understand how to translate non-institutional activity into a creative learning experience.

Just as the foregrounding of sound poses a challenge to the so-called dominance of visual cultural communication, so too can “listening” engage an alternative sensory perspective from which we “see” ourselves.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal a qualitative researcher’s journey into finding her sense of self during a trial she faced while conducting her dissertation research.

Indigenous research methodologies (IRM) mixed with an autoethnography were used. A critical reflexivity position, with respect to being in the field, was adopted, melding in the Universe, the Sun and the Earth as objects that the author can talk and interact with. This reflexivity was captured within the letter to the Universe.

Three outcomes are discussed. Notably, the implications of this work with respect to power-relations and gender. The issue of being in the field is then discussed. Finally, untangling the practical implications of using IRM/autoethnography as a combined method is presented.

The letter to the Universe offers a guide of sorts to other qualitative researchers, via one person’s experience in the field. The letter is, in the end, a cautionary story for others, acknowledging that the author can respond to a trial in a gendered fashion, that one needs to be humble along with being persistent, flexible and resourceful toward achieving “good” research.

As a Western, White woman scholar, who circles Indigenous influences, the author demonstrated (through this letter) one possible way of embracing, and acknowledging, IRM without appropriating it.

Previous research has explored inter-professional education (IPE) in mental health contexts, for example, between mental health nurses and clinical psychologists (CPs). However, little research has explored IPE with children’s nurses (CNs) and CPs, who often work together in a range of in-patient and community mental health settings. Indeed, a significant proportion of CNs’ work involves identifying and responding to the mental health needs of children, young people and families; equally, CPs work directly into child teams, and their consultancy work requires awareness of other professional roles. However, knowledge and understanding of roles, and true collaborative working, appears to be limited. This study aimed to address these limitations.

A project was designed to bring together these two groups in an educational context, to explore ways in which collaborative working may enable effective mental health-care delivery. A total of 17 children’s nursing students and 15 clinical psychology trainees participated in a 3-day workshop, including experiential and clinical vignette work. Workshops were evaluated at three time points, using a questionnaire.

The workshops were effective in improving knowledge, skills and understanding of roles. Teamwork and discussions were helpful in modifying attitudes and perceptions. However, “defensiveness” was an important theme, demonstrating somewhat fixed beliefs about roles in relation to child mental health care.

Few studies have explored IPE in child mental health contexts, especially in the pre-qualification arena.

Does having things make people happy; does buying, consuming, or giving bring happiness? In an increasingly materialistic era, it seems that people might believe so. Despite our consumption culture, research tells us that the desire for material possessions relates more to unhappiness than to happiness (Belk, 1985; Burroughs & Rindfleisch, 2002; Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; La Barbera & Gürhan, 1997; Mick, 1996; Richins, 1987; Sirgy et al., 1998). Economists find that subjective well-being increases, then levels off as national levels of discretionary income increase (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999; Diener, 2000; Meyers, 2000). Furthermore, many economists cite correspondence between happiness and relative income (Blanchflower & Oswald, 2004; Solnick & Hemenway, 1998; Stutzer, 2003) to explain the stagnation of average happiness despite rises in national incomes. Increasing one person's income relative to others decreases the others’ happiness so that pursuing money to achieve happiness becomes a zero-sum affair; average national happiness does not change (Lee, 2006).