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This article presents the findings of research conducted in Thailand that examines the equity practices of local and foreign organisations. The managers of these organisations make equity policy decisions that are influenced by a combination of the cultural and social environments in which they operate and their own organisational policies and managerial positions. Against a background of social closure and inequality theories, this article discusses some of these cultural and social factors and their influence on current equity responses in the workplaces of selected organisations in Thailand. Importantly, it draws attention to the underlying dynamic between class and gender in Thailand and highlights the need for theorists and management to more closely consider the implications this has on equity policy and programmes in organisations in this nation.

This article reviews the contents of the previous year's editions of the Journal of Children's Services (Volume 2, 2007), as requested by the Journal's editorial board. It draws out some of the main messages for how high‐quality scientific research can help build good childhoods in western developed countries, focusing on: the need for epidemiology to understand how to match services to needs; how research can build evidence of the impact of prevention and intervention services on child well‐being; what the evidence says about how to implement proven programmes successfully; the economic case for proven programmes; the urgency of improving children's material living standards; how to help the most vulnerable children in society; and, lastly, the task of measuring child well‐being.

The paper aims to address the gap in the literature related to students’ mindsets and learning activities through investigation of the differences in students’ expectations of, feelings towards, and perceptions of an overseas study tour based on their mindset. The study provides an in-depth analysis of students with different mindsets and proposes the use of overseas tours and intercultural learning to foster students’ growth mindset.

An overseas study tour hosted by a self-financing tertiary institution in Hong Kong was selected for investigation. 13 sub-degree students participated in the study tour during the summer term in 2018. Two types of primary data – quantitative (i.e., a questionnaire survey) and qualitative (i.e., in-depth interviews) – of fixed mindset and growth mindset students were collected for analysis.

The findings indicate differences in students’ expectations of, feelings towards, and perceptions of an overseas study tour depending on whether they demonstrate a fixed or growth mindset. The growth mindset students had more and higher expectations of the study tour, all of which were related to personal growth and development. The fixed mindset students did not have as much of a desire for personal development and their expectations were easily met. Both growth and fixed mindset students had positive feelings and perceptions of the tour.

Research on the application value of overseas study tours in helping students from self-financing tertiary institutions develop a growth mindset is scarce, and thus warrants further investigation.

TO many of us it is a matter for regret that we are not able to keep ourselves so closely in touch with library affairs in other parts of the world as we would wish. With American happenings we are, of course, fairly well acquainted, but Colonial effort has not received the attention which is its due. In many places in the Empire methods are, in certain ways, in advance of ours—in more than one country the legislation has been more enlightened than it was in England until quite recently—and everywhere the experience of keen progressive librarians facing their own particular problems must prove of interest and value to those in the home country. Therefore we believe that by devoting this issue to a discussion of some phases of Colonial librarianship we are but answering the large demand for such information.

IN October a well‐known literary periodical appeared for a single number in a bright‐red cover to signalise a certain change. Two months earlier we had altered our size, type and cover‐colour; for the last exchanging the decorous consistent grey of our outer garment for the summer yellow in which our two Conference numbers appeared. Some readers found this too gaudy, although the three colours which have most “attention value,” as the advertisement experts say, are yellow, red and Cambridge blue. We compromise on orange, which has warmth, and we hope will have welcome.

THIS journal is not devoted exclusively to public libraries; they are only part of the library fabric but, because the preponderant number of workers in our craft are in public libraries, they and their work naturally occur more often in our pages than do those of others. We have always urged that the profession is indivisable and that a librarian is a person who, in his fundamental training, should be equipped to serve in any kind of library. The tendency to create distinctions, based upon slight—and they usually are slight—differences of work, are unfortunate and have led to bickerings and sometimes recriminations. Even between the two arms of the public library service, the county and the urban, there has been an emphasis on the differences rather than the likenesses; and every wise librarian knows that the services of a fully‐engaged library in a town are exactly the same as those of a county except that the county has to cover longer distances. The emphasis is even stronger where public and nonpublic libraries are in question.

The article aims to argue that the concept of “distributed leadership” lacks the specificity required to allow a full understanding of how change happens. The authors therefore utilise the “Strategic Action Field Framework” (SAF) (Moulton and Sandfort, 2017) as a more sensitive framework for understanding leadership in complex systems. The authors use the New Care Models (Vanguard) Programme as an exemplar.

Using the SAF framework, the authors explored factors affecting whether and how local Vanguard initiatives were implemented in response to national policy, using a qualitative case study approach. The authors apply this to data from the focus groups and interviews with a variety of respondents in six case study sites, covering different Vanguard types between October 2018 and July 2019.

While literature already acknowledges that leadership is not simply about individual leaders, but about leading together, this paper emphasises that a further interdependence exists between leaders and their organisational/system context. This requires actors to use their skills and knowledge within the fixed and changing attributes of their local context, to perform the roles (boundary spanning, interpretation and mobilisation) necessary to allow the practical implementation of complex change across a healthcare setting.

The SAF framework was a useful framework within which to interrogate the data, but the authors found that the category of “social skills” required further elucidation. By recognising the importance of an intersection between position, personal characteristics/behaviours, fixed personal attributes and local context, the work is novel.

The purpose of this study is to describe the development of the 14-item reflective fostering fidelity rating (RFFR), an observational rating system to evaluate model fidelity of group facilitators in the Reflective Fostering Programme (RFP), a mentalisation-based psychoeducation programme to support foster carers. The authors assess usability, dimensionality, inter-rater reliability and discriminative ability of the RFFR.

Eighty video clip extracts documenting 20 RFP sessions were independently rated by four raters using the RFFR. The dimensionality of the RFFR was assessed using principal components analysis. Inter-rater agreement was assessed using the intra-class correlation coefficient.

The proportion of missing ratings was low at 2.8%. A single principal component summarised over 90% of the variation in ratings for each rater. The inter-rater reliability of individual item ratings was poor-to-moderate, but a summary score had acceptable inter-rater reliability. The authors present evidence that the RFFR can distinguish RFP sessions that differ in treatment fidelity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first investigation and report of the RFFR’s validity in assessing the programme fidelity of the RFP. The paper concludes that the RFFR is an appropriate rating measure for treatment fidelity of the RFP and useful for the purposes of both quality control and supervision.