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The purpose of this paper is to expand upon some of the issues raised in “An evaluation of a speech and language therapy eating, drinking and swallowing service for adults with intellectual disability” (Crocker et al., 2024).

This commentary outlines considerations for multidisciplinary team working and professional roles both within and beyond the community learning disability team. It discusses models of service delivery and competency frameworks relating to eating, drinking and swallowing services.

Services should be integrated, include a broad multidisciplinary team and aim to increase competency in all contexts supporting people with eating, drinking and swallowing needs. Outcomes of service provision need to be measured outside of individualised care.

This paper broadens the discussion of quality of eating, drinking and swallowing services beyond speech and language therapy and considers a whole systems approach.

The purpose of this paper is to broaden the discussion on some of the barriers and solutions for co-production in positive behaviour support (PBS) planning as identified in the paper “Including people with intellectual disabilities in the development of their own Positive Behaviour Support Plans”.

Drawing on the literature associated with co-production in PBS planning, this commentary will reflect on the wider systems and culture needed to enable successful implementation of this way of working.

Co-production in PBS planning is recommended as part of best practice guidelines. However, there is limited research in the area of co-production with regards to PBS and use of augmentative and alternative communication methods. Collaboration among speech and language therapy and PBS practitioners is an important factor for co-production to achieve the best outcomes for people with learning disabilities who display behaviours of concern. Along with identifying a range of communication tools/strategies needed for PBS assessment/planning, it also requires a whole systems approach and culture shift to ensure the necessary foundations are in place.

Co-production in PBS planning remains an under practiced way of working. This commentary builds on the barriers and solutions identified for co-production and provides further insight into what might be needed to achieve this in health and social care settings.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a service evaluation that gathered feedback from people with a learning disability on their experience of lockdown in Jersey and Guernsey. This feedback was intended to guide planning for service provision during any future lockdown and for life as we exit lockdown.

An accessible survey was sent to everyone accessing learning disability services across the two islands and Mencap in Jersey. Data was analysed quantitatively and qualitatively to identify patterns in the data and key themes.

Most respondents felt safe, calm and happy and valued support from services. Key themes emerging from the data included the importance of relationships, messages of safety, keeping busy and communication.

This survey has been undertaken at a time where there is a paucity of research and consultation with individuals with a learning disability self-reporting on their experiences of lockdown, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the effectiveness of Talking Mats® (TM) in evaluating service users’ experiences, and explore their views of the implementation of person-centred active support (PCAS).

This is a mixed-methods study, employing qualitative interviewing and observational measures.

Both qualitative and quantitative measures indicated inconsistent implementation of PCAS. It was possible to effectively gain participants’ views on positive and negative aspects of quality of support and quality of life, using TM, across three themes, My life, My support and Self-determination.

Generalisability of the research may be limited due to the sample, and the potential for researcher and interviewer bias is acknowledged.

TM provides a mechanism that may facilitate the inclusion of the views and experiences of people with intellectual and developmental disability (PWIDD) who have limited verbal skills. Their views need to be reflected in adaptions made to PCAS.

This study included a population who are often left out of qualitative research because of the methodologies adopted. It also included older PWIDD, where there has been less research about the effectiveness of TM.

The purpose of this paper is to provide some thoughts following on from reading “Evaluating service users’ experiences of using Talking Mats®”.

This commentary outlines some considerations for the continued discussions about how to engage people who have profound and multiple learning disabilities.

The literature is not clear on the involvement of people with more profound and multiple learning disabilities, or for those who do not use much spoken language. Some papers have explored the notions of involvement and interpretation of pre-intentional communicators’ desires and interests.

There needs to be a robust discussion across carer, academic and service user communities to consider what the communication rights and needs are for people who have profound and multiple disabilities.

This study examines the selection criteria, country preference and people which influence Taiwanese male office workers' business apparel purchases in Taiwan. A partial model by Engel, Blackwell and Miniard (EBM) was used as the framework to indicate that the culture factor directly affects consumers' decision‐making process of purchase behaviour. A total of 232 questionnaires from male consumers in Taipei, Taiwan, were used for data analyses. Selection criteria, country preference and influential people were analysed by demographic variables including age, marital status, education, occupation, and yearly expenditure for business apparel purchase. Overall, the respondents ranked the selection criteria in order of descending importance as: fit, colour, price, style, quality, brand name, ease of care, fibre content and country. The order of country preference was rated first to last as: Taiwanese, Italian, US, French, British, Japanese, Hong Kong, German and Canadian. Individuals who influenced purchases were ranked as: my own opinion, wife or girlfriend, female friend, family member or other relative, male friend and salesperson. This research suggests that if foreign companies want to market to Taiwanese male consumers, they must develop appropriate strategies that help to change the domestic bias of the older males, or choose to appeal to younger males in hopes of developing long‐term brand loyalty. Additionally, the price strategies should be adjusted to be more competitive in Taiwan's marketplace. Meanwhile, fit and colour of apparel products may also need to be altered or modified in order to reach Taiwanese male consumers' demands.

An understanding of consumer behaviour helps companies in catering more effectively to the needs and wants of their target markets. This better understanding of the consumer can lead to significant increases in a company's sales within a given market segment, and therefore can lead to increased profits (Dhalla and Mahatoo 1976). Accordingly, understanding the factors which contribute to consumer purchases and consumer satisfaction are among the most important functions a market researcher may perform (Vecchio 1991). Once manufacturers understand the characteristics of their particular target market segment, more effective promotion can be devised (Piirto 1990).

In this paper the concept of knowledge production is used as a framework to study Dutch corporate universities. Knowledge production serves not simply as a desirable aim of corporate universities, as the concept also offers guidelines for the design of corporate universities. The purpose is to clarify the extent to which corporate universities fulfil this aim of knowledge production and the way they produce new knowledge.

From different theoretical perspectives 11 design characteristics have been extracted that help corporate universities to be knowledge‐productive. Two empirical studies were carried out to find out to what extent corporate universities meet those features required for knowledge production. The first study implies an exploration of opinions of key actors within 12 Dutch corporate universities, in which data were gathered through interviews and analysis of documents. The second study can be characterised as a case study of a concrete training practice within one corporate university. Data were gathered by interviews, evaluative questionnaires, and observation.

Results reveal that knowledge production is viewed as important, but that concrete measures to stimulate it are often absent. Moreover, corporate universities need to pay more attention to the working environment of their employees in order to achieve their own goals.

Analysing the corporate university from the perspective of knowledge production may stimulate corporate universities to rethink their own goals as well as their position within the organisation.

THE College of Librarianship is best considered on its own terms, as an institution unique in the history and present pattern of British library education, but its significance and probable future development can best be assessed if two external factors are kept in mind.

This paper investigates whether the audit fees of Chinese listed firms are associated with the share pledging practice of the firm’s controlling shareholders.

This study uses the audit pricing model to estimate the association between the share pledging of listed firms and audit fees. Cross-sectional analysis is conducted on a large sample of Chinese listed firms during the period 2004 to 2019. The authors further test the moderating effects of listing on the Main Board, state ownership and abnormal audit report lag on the association between share pledging and audit fees. The results remain robust to various endogeneity tests including two-stage least squares instrumental variable analysis, entropy balancing analysis and difference-in-difference analysis.

The study finds that audit fees are positively associated with the proportion of shares pledged by the listed firm’s controlling shareholder in China. The results also provide new evidence that the positive association between audit fees and the share pledging of controlling shareholders could be mitigated if the firm is listed on the Main Board and/or it is a state-owned enterprise. In contrast, pledged firms with abnormal audit report lag are found to have higher audit fees than their pledged counterparts without the excessively long audit delay.

Findings of this study have important practical implications to those charged with governance, as boards need to comprehensively understand the adverse consequences of share pledging when pursuing it as the firm’s major source of financing. The study also has policy implications for stock market regulators such as the China Securities Regulatory Commission in China. Regulators could consider developing a threshold-based share pledging disclosure and pledge ratio requirements based on factors such as a firm’s listing status and ownership structure.

This study provides new evidence on the audit-related consequences of share pledging in a significant capital market. Findings of this study also enrich the existing audit literature by introducing the share pledging activities of controlling shareholders into the audit pricing decision-making model.