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Key to successfully addressing the ongoing transitions being experienced in the care home sector is a transformation of the workforce. This is required in order to respond appropriately to the increasing dependency of older people moving into care homes. This article considers the policy framework surrounding the provision of care services in England and reviews the relevant research into the workforce and the changes needed if the sector is to meet the needs of vulnerable older people living in care homes. Building on present policy and practice, consideration is given to how this change could be achieved.

Respect for people with dementia and their involvement in service planning is explored, based on selected research publications and policy papers, mainly from the Department of Health and the Alzheimer's Society. This article supports the inclusion of people with dementia care in service planning as part of person‐centred care. Necessary adjustments to research methods and ethics committee procedures for gaining informed consent are discussed, as is the importance of ethical policy formation and implementation, in order to achieve person‐centred care. This will ensure a high degree of active involvement by people with dementia, enhancing self‐respect and responding to the needs of this often marginalised population.

This paper aims to briefly review leadership within the contemporary UK National Health Services (NHS) including Department of Health and Royal College of Nursing (RCN) initiatives.

It is argued that the concept of clinical leadership is a viable and important one, and is theoretically consistent with the contemporary social psychological literature on the importance of “local” leadership to effective organizational functioning. Field theory proposes that local influences (e.g. local management) on attitudes and behaviour will to a large extent mediate the impact of the organization (e.g. organisational structure and values) on (in this instance) health care delivery.

The reality of clinical leadership must involve a judicious blend effective management in the conventional sense with skill in transformational change in order to make real difference to the care delivery process.

For leadership initiatives to become truly culturally embedded into the “way we do things around here”, they require more than just individual training and development.

A view is offered for the practical interpretation of the clinical leadership concept in relationship terms. This will involve management of the relationship between health care professionals, between health care professionals and the “organizations” to which they are accountable and between health care professionals and service users.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the delivery of facilitated action learning sets as an integral component of a multidisciplinary end-of-life care course.

The educational intervention described in this paper is delivered by specialist palliative care practitioners to those working with dying patients and their families in non-specialist settings. The programme consists of two components: the first taught/experience-based component takes place in a hospice. The second integral component involves action learning sets which are facilitated by specialist palliative care staff over a six-month period. This paper reports the challenges, learning and benefits of using action learning sets to improve end-of-life care.

Action learning sets provide support which enables staff to implement changes to end-of-life care. Participants in the successful action learning sets were motivated to change practice and identified themselves as change agents. Management support was vital to allow participants the authority to implement changes to practice.

Facilitators need to gain participant and management commitment to the action learning process before the programme begins if they are to be successful in achieving changes to end-of-life care.

Hospices and other health care organisations work in partnership to deliver this programme, and this paper demonstrates how action learning sets can increase mutual understanding and communication between specialist and non-specialist end-of-life care settings.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the practical utility of using repertory grids with sexual offenders in denial and to demonstrate through a case study how they can be used to bolster both initial assessment and psychological formulation.

The study uses a single case study design and applies a repertory grid methodology, which is underpinned by personal construct psychology, to make sense of the case study. The analysis predominately focuses on the structure of the repertory grid.

The case study appeared to elicit factors that were of clinical utility and which could be used as tentative hypotheses for problem formulation and also seemed to point to an adequate starting point for intervention.

The use of the case study makes generalisation difficult and future research may benefit from more large‐scale research.

Rather than subscribing to fatalist notions of deniers as untreatable, the paper argues that constructive work can be done with this population and that repertory grids can be one way to initially facilitate this process.

Currently “total deniers” are excluded from treatment and are seen as untreatable. It is argued here that this need not be the case and it is demonstrated how repertory grids can inform initial formulation with such offenders. Repertory grids have not been used with deniers before and this is an original feature of this research.

The Scopes Monkey Trial is a landmark court case in American history and has often been referred to as “The Trial of the Century.” It provides a curricular platform for understanding changes in American society, populace tensions with shifting social and moral views, gaps in economic prosperity, and the outcomes of urbanization. Studying this pivotal and historical trial – along with the context surrounding it – offers readers a dynamic lens to view powerful social and cultural insights at the beginning of the twentieth century. Additionally, academic freedom issues, which have a history in our nation's courts, (Patterson & Chandler, 2008) as well as current dialogue among educators (see the November/December issue of Social Education), and are at the very center of the Scopes Trial, require critical examination. Most importantly, it exemplifies the type of interdisciplinary content social studies educators should be promoting, a goal of 21^st Century Teaching and Learning and Common Core Standards. In this article, we provide a brief historical context setting the stage for the Scopes Monkey Trial, a daily synopsis of significant points in the trial, a rationale for teaching the Scopes Trial, and instructional teaching resources with particular emphasis on books, DVD/media, and web-based materials.