Search results

The purpose of this paper is to identify the health problems and treatment needs of drug‐misusing offenders and to draw out the implications of the findings for health education and prevention.

This analysis is based on data collected as part of the New English and Welsh Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (NEW‐ADAM) programme. The survey was based on interviews and urine sample collection with over 3,000 arrestees.

The research found that young arrestees experienced a wide range of drug‐related and general health problems. The implications of this are discussed in the context of programmes implemented as part of the government's drug strategy.

The NEW‐ADAM surveys provide an original source of information on the drug and general health needs of young people at the first point of entry in the criminal justice system.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the five papers comprising this special issue on post‐millennium trends in young people's substance use in the UK. The positions taken by the authors of each of the papers in the issue are compared with respect to their conclusions on how best to reduce harmful outcomes for young people in relation to their substance use, and what role exists for health education in this process.

The approach takes the form of a narrative review of the papers in the issue.

Across substances (alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs), the authors identify slight downward trends in population prevalence of use by adolescents and young adults since 2000. This downward trend follows some fairly steep rises during the 1990s, resulting in levels of use remaining historically relatively high. The importance of global and demographic changes is identified as being important in understanding the (arguably somewhat limited) scope for changing youthful behaviour. The different recommendations for how to reduce harmful outcomes for young people are discussed: modifying the context/environment of use (for alcohol and tobacco), drugs treatment (for drug‐using offenders), tackling inequality and disadvantage (for heroin and crack cocaine).

Two key roles for health educators are identified: first, supporting mechanisms already known to be effective in reducing use/harmful use such as smoke‐free environments; second, providing an “expert” source of information used by the vast majority of young people who both want and require this on their lifelong health and drug “journeys”. Health education should have a harm reduction role; measuring success in terms of reducing population prevalence of substance use may be inappropriate and unrealistic.

Important insights are gained into substance use trends by young people when UK trends are set alongside international trends, and when all the psychoactive substances consumed are considered together.

Discriminatory abuse has been a distinct category of abuse in safeguarding adults policy since 2000, but it is rarely used in practice, according to recent official statistics. As part of a larger project, the authors undertook a literature review to clarify the concept, explore reasons for low reporting and consider recommendations for practice. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of this literature review.

This literature review comprises 35 sources, which were identified using three academic databases, reference harvesting and sector-specific websites. Findings were developed through thematic analysis of the data.

The literature review demonstrates that definitions of discriminatory abuse stretch from an interpersonal emphasis in policy documents to a more structural approach. There are open questions about the status of discriminatory abuse as a category of abuse due to the complicated interface between discriminatory motivations and the abusive acts through which they are experienced. A range of factors can obscure its identification, particularly the hidden, stigmatised and normalised nature of discriminatory abuse. Some recommendations for practice are identified, but more work is needed to develop the practice vocabulary and required skills.

This study brings together existing research on discriminatory abuse to argue that it is time to revive this understanding of abuse and develop safeguarding practice with adults who have protected characteristics.

A range of studies have shown that performance is typically higher in organisations with employee share ownership (ESO) schemes in place. Many possible causal mechanisms explaining this relationship have been suggested. These include a reduction in labour turnover, synergies with other forms of productivity-enhancing communication and participation schemes, and synergies with employer-provided training. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper empirically assesses these potential linkages using data from the 2004 and 2011 British Workplace Employment Relations Surveys, and provides comparisons with earlier analyses conducted on the 1990 and 1998 versions of the survey.

Substantial differences are found between the 2004 and 2011 results: a positive relationship between ESO and workplace productivity and financial performance, observed in 2004, is no longer present in 2011. In both years, ESO is found to have no clear relationship with labour turnover, and there is no significant association between turnover and performance. There is, however, a positive moderating relationship with downward communication schemes in 2004 and in 2011 in the case of labour productivity. There is no corresponding relationship for upward involvement schemes.

The results are only partially supportive of extant theory and its various predictions, and the relationship between ESO and performance seems to have weakened over time.

The study further questions the rhetoric offered in support of wider ESO.

All too often creative projects are established by a charismatic worker and, despite winning golden opinions for their work, they remain essentially a jewel in their own locality rather than being replicated elsewhere. Not so with the well‐known ‘Feathers’ project which began in the vicinity of the pub of that name in downtown Greenwich, South East London. The project, which was originally set up by Ronnie Wilson and Caroline Furnivall, has been replicated in several different parts of the country. This account from Sheffield looks at the lessons for good practice from one experience of the replication process.

This chapter asks: How has Donald Trump communicated about COVID-19 on Twitter? How have conspiracy theories influenced his Twitter communication about COVID-19? Utilising critical discourse analysis, it analysed tweets in which Trump communicated about COVID-19 and showed that he used social media to spread conspiracy theories and fake news about COVID-19.

The findings show that Donald Trump uses social media such as Twitter for spreading far-right ideology, conspiracy theories and fake news. He makes use of a variety of linguistic ideological devices. In the context of COVID-19, Trump has spread a variety of conspiracy theories to his millions of followers, which has contributed to the intensification of risks and harms at the time of the worst global health crisis in 100 years.