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Haworth Press, the well known publishers in the library and information science field, have recently cottoned on to an interesting idea: devote a special issue of one of their journals to a special theme, and at the same time produce a hardback book, reasonably priced, that reproduces the articles. The idea is to appeal to a market other than the libraries that will typically subscribe to the Haworth journals. Success depends upon the collection of chapters forming a coherent whole. This book, reproduced from a special issue of The Reference Librarian, partly succeeds. The 150 page hardback book comprises seven articles, from five different authors (two authors supply two articles each) with an editor's introduction. The articles are fairly typical journal articles, reporting research results; some could easily have graced the pages of Online and CD‐ROM Review. The articles vary somewhat in length and style, but generally either review the literature of a particular topic, or describe some recent research work. The title is somewhat misleading, as the book is NOT comprehensive; a better subtitle would have been ‘Aspects of Use and User Behavior’.

Learning objects strive for reusability in e‐Learning to reduce cost and allow personalization of content. We show why learning objects require adapted Information Retrieval systems. In the spirit of the Semantic Web, we discuss the semantic description, discovery, and composition of learning objects. As part of our project, we tag learning objects with both objective (e.g., title, date, and author) and subjective (e.g., quality and relevance) metadata. We present the RACOFI (Rule‐Applying Collaborative Filtering) Composer prototype with its novel combination of two libraries and their associated engines: a collaborative filtering system and an inference rule system. We developed RACOFI to generate context‐aware recommendation lists. Context is handled by multidimensional predictions produced from a database‐driven scalable collaborative filtering algorithm. Rules are then applied to the predictions to customize the recommendations according to user profiles. The RACOFI Composer architecture has been developed into the contextaware music portal inDiscover.

Conducting research with young migrants offers an important opportunity to understand better their own perspectives on their migration experiences. Yet, engaging migrant youth in research can be fraught with ethical and methodological challenges. Institutional ethics processes have a tendency to prioritise standard principles – many of which depart from the ethical sensitivities that emerge during research practice. In this chapter, the authors explore some of the procedural and situated ethical issues involved in conducting research with child and youth migrants in Ghana. In particular, the authors highlight how the diversity of young migrants prompts definitional issues about what constitutes childhood and youth, and in different socio-cultural spatial settings. Differing categorisations of child and youth generate issues of representation and guide adult-led decisions about children’s assumed competencies and vulnerabilities to participate in research. The precarious living circumstances of many migrant children, including the absence of parental figures or legal guardians, coupled with language and cultural barriers, present particular difficulties for securing informed consent. Challenges of this kind can deny young migrants the opportunity to participate in research about their own lives and serve to reproduce dominant power asymmetries and assumptions about these children’s vulnerabilities. The authors conclude by offering some suggestions for how researchers might develop critical ethical reflexivity to support the meaningful and ethical engagement of young migrants in research.

While I agree with the broad theme of Jane Little's article in June NLW that there are not enough women in senior library posts, I feel that at least some of her points must be challenged.

The purpose of this paper is to explore debates about the powers social workers may need to undertake safeguarding enquiries where access to the adult is denied.

The paper takes as a starting point a scoping review of the literature undertaken as part of a study exploring social work responses to situations where they are prevented from speaking to an adult at risk by a third party.

A power of entry might be one solution to situations where social workers are prevented from accessing an adult at risk. The paper focuses on the Scottish approach to legal powers in adult safeguarding, established by the Adult Support and Protection Act (Scotland) 2007 and draws out messages for adult safeguarding in England and elsewhere. The literature review identified that debates over the Scottish approach are underpinned by differing conceptualisations of vulnerability, autonomy and privacy, and the paper relates these conceptualisations to different theoretical stances.

The paper concludes that the literature suggests that a more socially mediated rather than an essentialist understanding of the concepts of vulnerability, autonomy and privacy allows for more nuanced approaches to social work practice in respect of using powers of entry and intervention with adults at risk who have capacity to make decisions.

This paper provides a novel perspective on debates over how to overcome challenges to accessing adults at risk in adult safeguarding through an exploration of understandings of vulnerability, privacy and autonomy.

Opinion is divided on whether a new power of entry should be introduced for social workers in cases where individuals seem to be hindering safeguarding enquiries for community-dwelling adults at risk in England who have decision-making capacity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prevalence and circumstances of situations where access to an adult at risk is denied or difficult and what helps those in practice. The study consists of a literature review, a survey of adult safeguarding managers and interviews with social care staff in three case studies of local authorities. As part of the contextual literature review, during 2014 the authors located parliamentary debates on the subject and this paper reports on their analysis.

Following approaches were used in historical research, documentary analysis was carried out on transcripts of parliamentary debates available online from Hansard, supplemented by other materials that were referenced in speeches and set in the theoretical context of the representations of social problems.

The authors describe the content of debates on the risks and benefits of a new right to access for social workers and the role of parliamentary champions who determinedly pursued this policy, putting forward three unsuccessful amendments in efforts to insert such a new power into the Care Act 2014.

There are limits to a focus on parliamentary reports and the limits of Hansard reporting are small but need to be acknowledged. However, adult safeguarding research has surprisingly not undertaken substantial analyses of political rhetoric despite the public theatre of the debate and the importance of legislative initiatives and monitoring.

This paper adds to the history of adult safeguarding in England. It also offers insight into politicians’ views on what is known/unknown about the prevalence and circumstances of the problems with gaining access to adults with capacity where there are safeguarding concerns and politicians’ views on the merits or hazards of a power of access.

Serious Case Reviews (SCRs, now Safeguarding Adults Reviews (SARs)) may be held at local level in England when a vulnerable adult dies or is harmed, and abuse or neglect is suspected, and there is cause for concern about multi-agency safeguarding practice. There has been no analysis of SCRs focussing on pressure ulcers. The purpose of this paper is to present findings from a documentary analysis of SCRs/SARs to investigate what recommendations are made about pressure ulcer prevention and treatment in a care home setting in the context of safeguarding. This analysis is presented in cognisance of the prevalence and risks of pressure ulcers among care home residents; and debates about the interface of care quality and safeguarding systems.

Identification of SCRs and SARs from England where the person who died or who was harmed had a pressure ulcer or its synonym. Narrative and textual analysis of documents summarising the reports was used to explore the Reviews’ observations and recommendations. The main themes were identified.

The authors located 18 relevant SCRs and 1 SAR covering pressure ulcer care in a care home setting. Most of these inquiries into practice, service communications and the events leading up to the death or harm of care home residents with pressure ulcers observed that there were failings in the care home, but also in the wider health and care systems. Overall, the reports reveal specific failings in multi-agency communication and in quality of care. Pressure ulcers featured in several SCRs, but it is problems and inadequacies with care and treatment that moved them to the safeguarding arena. The value of examining pressure ulcers as a key line of inquiry is that they are “visible” in the system, with consensus about what they are, how to measure them and what constitutes optimal care and treatment. In the new Care Act 2014 context they may continue to feature in safeguarding enquiries and investigations as they may be possible symptoms of system failures.

Reviews vary in content, structure and accessibility making it hard to compare their approach, findings and recommendations. There are risks in drawing too many conclusions from the corpus of Reviews since these are not published in full and contexts have subsequently changed. However, this is the first analysis of these documents to take pressure ulcers as the focus and it offers valuable insights into care home practices amid other systems and professional activity.

This analysis highlights that it is not inevitably poor quality care in a care home that gives rise to pressure ulcers among residents. Several SCRs note problems in wider communications with healthcare providers and their engagement. Nonetheless, poor care quality and negligence were reported in some cases. Various policies have commented on the potential overlap between the raising of concerns about poor quality care and about safeguarding. These were highlighted prior to the Care Act 2014 although current policy views problems with pressure ulcers more as care quality and clinical concerns.

The value of this documentary analysis is that it rests on real case examples and scrutiny at local level. Future research could consider the findings of SARs, similar documents from the rest of the UK, and international perspectives.

The value of having a set of documents about adult safeguarding is that they lend themselves to analysis and comparison. This first analysis to focus on pressure ulcers addresses wider considerations related to safeguarding policy and practice.

Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS), as part of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (DoLS, 2007), was established to provide a legal framework for decision-making in respect of adults who lack capacity to make decisions in relation to their care and residence in England and Wales. The purpose of this study was to explore the DoLS decision-making process from the perspectives of health and social care practitioners when working with individuals with an acquired brain injury (ABI).

A total of 12 health and social care practitioners were interviewed in 2019–2020 about their experiences of using and making or supporting decisions in the DoLS framework with ABI survivors. Data were analysed, and a tentative explanation of variations in DoLS decision-making was developed.

Three distinct approaches emerged capturing different decision-making styles (risk-averse, risk-balancing and risk-simplifying) which appeared to influence the outcome of DoLS assessments. A range of mediating factors seemed to account for the variability in these styles. The wider contextual challenges that impact upon practitioners’ overall experiences and use of DoLS processes in their ABI practice were noted.

The findings highlight a need for changes in practice and policy in relation to how DoLS or similar processes are used in decision-making practice with ABI survivors and may be relevant to the implementation of the Liberty Protection Safeguards that are replacing the DoLS system.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore accounts of DoLS decision-making practices in ABI service.