The paper aims to describe how London & Continental Railways resolved recruitment and training of customer‐service officers (CSOs) for the redeveloped St Pancras and new Ebbsfleet…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to describe how London & Continental Railways resolved recruitment and training of customer‐service officers (CSOs) for the redeveloped St Pancras and new Ebbsfleet international stations within the latest phase of implementing high‐speed rail links between the UK and continental Europe.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper details the role of consultant Echelon Learning in creating and implementing an innovative four‐stage process to deliver a service to complement the rebranding of St Pancras as a quality leisure and retail destination.
Findings
The paper confirms the appropriateness‐to‐task of the process in both recruitment and induction of CSOs and reveals ongoing commitment to the same.
Practical implications
The paper shows how staff induction and training have played an important part in the development of the St Pancras International brand.
Originality/value
The paper highlights how London & Continental Railways was able quickly to identify and develop the best candidates from a large number of applicants.
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Margaret Muir, Hannah Cordle and Jerome Carson
Margaret's story concludes our short series on recovery heroes. This series started with Dolly Sen, followed by Peter Chadwick, Gordon McManus and Matt Ward. Four of the five…
Abstract
Margaret's story concludes our short series on recovery heroes. This series started with Dolly Sen, followed by Peter Chadwick, Gordon McManus and Matt Ward. Four of the five people featured were from our local service at South London and Maudsley NHS Trust. We have defined recovery heroes as individuals whose journeys of recovery can inspire both service users and professionals alike. Margaret once commented that, ‘all service users are recovery heroes’. It is fitting that the series should end with her own story.
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Robert Hurst, Jerome Carson, Aishath Shahama, Hollie Kay, Courtney Nabb and Julie Prescott
The purpose of this paper is to review the 16 published non-student Recovery Heroes and Remarkable Lives accounts published in Mental Health and Social Inclusion, using the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review the 16 published non-student Recovery Heroes and Remarkable Lives accounts published in Mental Health and Social Inclusion, using the connection, hope, identity, meaning and empowerment (CHIME) framework.
Design/methodology/approach
All 16 accounts were rated independently by four researchers and evaluated in terms of whether each account met the five criteria for the CHIME model.
Findings
All accounts met the criteria for the CHIME model, with the exception of one, which still met four of the five criteria. Evidence was presented which suggests that the model can be extended to creativity, connectedness, hope, identity, meaning and empowerment (C-CHIME), to incorporate creativity.
Research limitations/implications
While a certain level of subjectivity is required in deciding how each account meets the CHIME criteria, there were high levels of inter-rater reliability within the research team. Creativity had a central place in all the accounts.
Practical implications
The revised C-CHIME model can be used by practitioners to examine accounts of recovery in a more focussed manner and may also help in devising recovery action plans.
Social implications
The recovery model privileges both professional and lived experience perspectives on recovery. The current review highlights how much we can benefit from the wisdom contained in first person accounts.
Originality/value
This review adds to the existing literature and highlights the importance of creativity for mental health recovery.
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Philip Muir and Carolyn Dunford
Evidence-based practice is a professional standard for occupational therapists, but limited time, resources and knowledge challenge its implementation. This study aims to identify…
Abstract
Purpose
Evidence-based practice is a professional standard for occupational therapists, but limited time, resources and knowledge challenge its implementation. This study aims to identify what free evidence summary sources (FESS) can be found through a simple online search, related to child/youth interventions surrounding cerebral palsy (CP), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), developmental coordination disorder (DCD), mental health or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (MH/ADHD). Evidence summaries share research in concise, time-efficient manners.
Design/methodology/approach
An internet-based scoping review was conducted between February 2022 and July 2022, using Google, and known evidence summary producers. Evidence summaries meeting the inclusion criteria were located and catalogued. Type of agency, target audiences, purpose and distribution of evidence summaries related to diagnosis were identified for each FESS.
Findings
Ten FESS were found, which produced 113 intervention-focused evidence summaries within the past 10 years. These FESS were aimed at a variety of target audiences: service providers, service users, parents/families, researchers and commissioners, and were produced primarily by non-profit/charity organisations (6 of 10) who were trying to fill a gap in evidence. Forty-eight evidence summaries were related to ASD, 34 to CP, 29 to MH/ADHD and two to DCD.
Originality/value
A catalogue of FESS that exist online was produced, to support evidence-based practice for paediatric occupational therapists with limited resources, and may support improved health promotion and informed decision-making for service users. No consistent framework for FESS evidence summaries exists at this time.
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The following is an introductory profile of the fastest growing firms over the three-year period of the study listed by corporate reputation ranking order. The business activities…
Abstract
The following is an introductory profile of the fastest growing firms over the three-year period of the study listed by corporate reputation ranking order. The business activities in which the firms are engaged are outlined to provide background information for the reader.
THE centenary celebration is that of the apparently prosaic public library acts ; it is not the centenary of libraries which are as old as civilization. That is a circumstance…
Abstract
THE centenary celebration is that of the apparently prosaic public library acts ; it is not the centenary of libraries which are as old as civilization. That is a circumstance which some may have overlooked in their pride and enthusiasm for the public library. But no real librarian of any type will fail to rejoice in the progress to which the celebration is witness. For that has been immense. We are to have a centenary history of the Public Library Movement—that is not its title—from the Library Association. We do not know if it will be available in London this month; we fear it will not. We do know its author, Mr. W. A. Munford, has spent many months in research for it and that he is a writer with a lucid and individual Style. We contemplate his task with a certain nervousness. Could anyone less than a Carlyle impart into the dry bones of municipal library history that Strew these hundred years, the bones by the wayside that mark out the way, the breath of the spirit that will make them live ? For even Edward Edwards, whose name should be much in the minds and perhaps on the lips of library lovers this month, could scarcely have foreseen the contemporary position ; nor perhaps could Carlyle who asked before our genesis why there should not be in every county town a county library as well as a county gaol. How remote the days when such a question was cogent seem to be now! It behoves us, indeed it honours us, to recall the work of Edwards, of Ewart, Brotherton, Thomas Greenwood, Nicholson, Peter Cowell, Crestadoro, Francis Barrett, Thomas Lyster, J. Y. M. MacAlister, James Duff Brown and, in a later day without mentioning the living, John Ballinger, Ernest A. Baker, L. Stanley Jast, and Potter Briscoe—the list is long. All served the movement we celebrate and all faced a community which had to be convinced. It still has, of course, but our people do now allow libraries a place, more or less respected, in the life of the people. Librarians no longer face the corpse‐cold incredulity of the so‐called educated classes, the indifference of the masses and the actively vicious hostility of local legislators. Except the illuminated few that existed. These were the men who had the faith that an informed people was a happier, more efficient one and that books in widest commonalty spread were the best means of producing such a people. These, with a succession of believing, enduring librarians, persisted in their Struggle with cynic and opponent and brought about the system and the technique we use, modified of course and extended to meet a changing world, but essentially the same. Three names we may especially honour this September, Edward Edwards, who was the sower of the seed; MacAlister, who gained us our Royal Charter ; and John Ballinger, who was the person who most influenced the introduction of the liberating Libraries Act of 1919.
To better understand the key issues surrounding Global Ecopolitics, it may be beneficial to examine the background to the environmental movement over time. The environmental…
Abstract
To better understand the key issues surrounding Global Ecopolitics, it may be beneficial to examine the background to the environmental movement over time. The environmental movement is perhaps the most significant contemporary global movement to have emerged in recent decades. The relationship between humankind and nature has been the subject of much debate and enquiry over time. The environmental movement had its cultural origins in literary accounts of humanity's relationship with nature, beginning from the romantic poets such as William Blake, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron, whose works were concerned with the reconciliation of man and nature. This aesthetic could also be found in subsequent transcendentalist American literature, such as Henry David Thoreau's Walden, published in 1854 (Shabecoff, 2003, pp. 37–71). The transcendentalists were interested in the spiritual connections that connected humankind and nature with God and could be seen as the forefathers of deep green ecologists. Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species was published in 1859, creating further interest in the understanding of nature. George Perkins Marsh wrote of the destructive impact of agriculture in his book Man and Nature in 1864. President Teddy Roosevelt would develop the National Parks with Gifford Pinchot of the Forestry Service in the early 1900s. In the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, concerns about protecting wildlife led to the emergence of a progressive conservation movement, alongside federal regulation of natural habitats and the establishment of national parks. Influential conservation groups included the National Audubon Society, founded in 1886, and the Sierra Club, founded by John Muir in 1892. Muir and Pinchot would become adversaries in the campaign to prevent the building of a dam in Yosemite National Park in the early decade of the nineteenth century (ibid.).
The purpose of this paper is to examine a particular aspect of the history of the watchmaking industry during the eighteenth century. Attention is drawn to overlooked ideas and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine a particular aspect of the history of the watchmaking industry during the eighteenth century. Attention is drawn to overlooked ideas and inventions and how years later they may become profitable business opportunities for entrepreneurs. The approach adopted allows examination of the development and commercialisation of a watch escapement mechanism, the rack lever, within the context of the development of other escapements. The rack lever was an escapement which was initially overlooked in the early part of the eighteenth century but which many decades later was reinvented and became a commercial success in the early nineteenth century.
Design/methodology/approach
Reference is made to the literature on entrepreneurship and acquisition of knowledge in the eighteenth century and the nature of watchmaking in the same epoch. The literature on entrepreneurship produces a framework for examining the actions that were taken to bring the rack lever escapement to market. The historical context within which the innovations occurred was examined to establish the events and circumstances surrounding the times when commercialisation took place. An account of the commercialisation of the rack lever escapement is presented.
Findings
The entrepreneurial opportunity examined in this article relates to a need to satisfy consumers with a reasonably accurate and reliable portable time piece. The historical context within which commercialisation took place was found to be significant. Attention to the escapement mechanism in watches was identified as the key to improving performance, and the focus of the paper is placed upon how this opportunity was satisfied through the means provided by the rack lever escapement. Alertness to the potential of already discovered but undeveloped ideas appears to be an additional feature behind the entrepreneurial activity. The paper shows that innovation can be a discontinuous process. It also indicates the relevance of modern-day knowledge brokers in facilitating the process of new product innovation.
Originality/value
Entrepreneurship and innovation along with research and development are all intrinsically linked in producing goods and services to satisfy customer wants and needs. Together, they represent a cornerstone which helps to establish a business and maintain its continued survival. Importantly, the development of new products is a key contributor to this end and innovation and entrepreneurship play their part in bringing this about. The paper suggests that new ideas can occur which may be deemed unsuitable for commercialisation at one period in time but which can at a future time be considered a temporary solution to meet an unfulfilled need in the market place. It argues for the case for reserving judgement on new ideas that are not commercialised and ensuring that knowledge of them is kept for posterity and made accessible to future generations.
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Peter Bayliss, Peter Hill, Kenneth Calman and John Hamilton
For the modernisation of the NHS and successful implementation of clinical governance there must be a new curriculum, with new educational goals for the education of clinicians…
Abstract
For the modernisation of the NHS and successful implementation of clinical governance there must be a new curriculum, with new educational goals for the education of clinicians, managers and consumers. Whilst many elements to that end have been introduced in recent years, a missing element is the study of the system of health care as a system, its properties and risks. The study of safety of and adverse outcomes from error in the “Quality of Australian health care”, highlighted not only preventable error in individual clinical decision and actions, but more importantly the hidden flaws, the latent errors within the system of health care that can lead to such errors. The study of system error in health care is greatly enhanced by the experience of comparable studies of safety in industry. These issues are explored in postgraduate vocational education and training. Perhaps they should be core curriculum for all undergraduate health profession and management education.
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The UK Public Library Service has been in the news lately, but for all the wrong reasons. The service offered to customers/users has been steadily declining in recent years as…
Abstract
The UK Public Library Service has been in the news lately, but for all the wrong reasons. The service offered to customers/users has been steadily declining in recent years as local politicians view libraries as a "soft" option as regards budget cuts. This decline in funding is seen as being responsible for poor service levels and declining book stocks. Central Government aims to halt this decline by introducing another set of performance indicators against which libraries will be judged. However, their success will depend on what is happening at local level. This paper examines the decline in library services and its impact on users. It looks at the role of libraries in the community and offers ways for libraries to improve their product‐service bundle. It further highlights the need for library services to be fairly and properly funded if their role in the community is to be maintained and service levels improved.