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Although training has been identified as a key requirement for developing staff capability for working with people with co‐morbid mental health and substance misuse problems, little attention has been given to the training needs of staff working with older adults. Dual diagnosis within the older adult population is often underestimated, yet can present significant challenges to older people themselves, their family and carers and staff. This paper aims to describe the development and preliminary evaluation of a five‐day course designed to meet the needs of staff working with older people who have a dual diagnosis.

The paper describes how the course was developed and presents the evaluation data for the initial pilot. A repeated measures design was employed to assess changes to knowledge, confidence and attitudes. Students' perceptions of the quality of the programme were also obtained.

Significant changes were achieved in knowledge and confidence after the course. Although there were some changes in attitudes these did not reach significance.

Dual diagnosis initiatives, particularly those related to training, have largely focused on working age adults. This paper describes the development and preliminary evaluation of a dual diagnosis course designed specifically for staff working with older people. It suggests that staff benefit from this training and highlights the importance of such training being part of a wider strategy to develop staff capability.

In March, Pavilion and the University of Luton organised a conference ‐ Community Safety Five Years On. This article reviews the contributions of the speakers. It argues for the need to embrace the wider social exclusion agenda and unless community safety becomes a working habit, it risks returning to the limited status of ‘crime prevention’.

For local law enforcement agencies, the subject of illicit drugs can appear all‐pervasive. Any multifaceted problem situated in an intrusive media and political environment raises difficult challenges concerning the allocation of resources. This article explores the process behind Lancashire Constabulary's decision to highlight Class A open drug markets as an operational priority, and looks at how a multi‐agency intelligence process, based on geographic mapping methodology (GIS), was initiated to direct enforcement and preventative activity.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a qualitative study of the views of a cross-section of managers and union officials engaged in joint learning projects on the impact more generally on the employee relations climate in those organisations.

Findings are based on an analysis of interview data incorporating the views and experiences of 32 union representatives and managers engaged in promoting learning in a number of case study projects in North West England.

Findings suggest that union-led learning and development has a clear impact on pre-empting potential performance issues for individuals in terms of better equipping them with the skills to achieve expected performance levels, assisting individuals with managing work-related stress and also to prevent discrimination against workers. Collectively, the managing of downsizing in particular through union-led learning support to retrain in order to redeploy effected staff or better prepare them for new employment opportunities was also a significant finding.

The research suggests that successful union-management learning partnerships can also have a positive impact on managing conflict in those organisations. However, further research is needed to test these assertions in other union organised sectors.

There are implications for management in recognising the “added value” that partnership working with their unions on learning can bring in terms of also both pre-empting and resolving individual and collective disputes in the workplace.

The research is one of few studies that focuses on the link between promoting learning through union-management partnerships and managing conflict in organisations and offers a clear insight into how this can be achieved in practice.

The challenges of transferring the theoretical requirements of an effective multi-agency partnership into everyday practices are often overlooked, particularly within safeguarding practices. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore practitioner perspectives of working within a multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) and those factors that encourage or hinder a multi-agency approach to safeguarding vulnerable individuals.

Semi-structured interviews with 23 practitioners from one MASH location in the North of England were conducted, with a thematic analysis being used to analyse findings.

The interviews with practitioners illustrated the complexity of establishing a multi-agency approach to safeguarding. It was inferred that whilst information sharing and trust between agencies had improved, the absence of a common governance structure, unified management system, formalisation of practices and procedures and shared pool of resources limited the degree to which MASH could be considered a multi-agency approach to safeguarding.

Establishing a multi-agency approach to safeguarding is complex and does not occur automatically. Rather, the transition to collaborative practices needs to be planned, with agreed practices and processes implemented from the beginning and reviewed regularly.

Few studies have investigated the implementation of MASH into safeguarding practices, with this paper providing a unique insight into practitioner opinions regarding the transition to multi-agency practices. Whilst there is a focus on MASH, the challenges to arise from the research may be reflective of other multi-agency partnerships, providing a foundation for best practice to emerge.

The movement of policing from a traditional reactive approach to a more proactive ‘intelligence‐led’ approach has been a widespread but infrequently evaluated process. This study compares 200 offenders arrested for dealing Class A drugs in public spaces, half of whom have been arrested through ‘intelligence‐led’ police operations and half of whom have been arrested through traditional ‘reactive’ approaches. Analysis shows the offenders arrested through an intelligence‐led approach show a ‘local lifestyle’ profile. They are more likely to be older, be unemployed and live closer to their drug market, are less likely to diversify in relation to the illicit drugs sold, and show a high incidence of prior offending (especially in relation to acquisitive crime). The study argues that taking an intelligence‐led approach to open drug markets identifies prolific offenders who cause the most distress to the local community, as well as highlighting those most in need for treatment services.

This article describes a practice initiative to reduce the incidence of young people running away from home or care. Such individuals are at risk of exploitation, offending and victimisation. The cost of dealing with runaways is also assessed. Partnership initiatives are described that achieved significant reductions in the number of running away incidents and cost savings.

This paper reports the findings of an empirical investigation into the disclosure of corporate accounting information to trade union decision makers. These findings are evaluated against earlier normative and descriptive literature on corporate disclosure to trade unions and an attempt is made to derive some implications for the design of accounting reports for use in the context of collective bargaining. The research methodology used was a case study of decision making in one trade union, the Amalgamated Textile Workers' Union (ATWU) which represents most of the manual workers in the Lancashire cotton industry.

The importance of multi-agency information sharing is recognised as central to tackling crime and disorder in an intelligence-driven environment. However, whilst technology can facilitate and enhance this process, barriers to effective agency information exchange are consistently reported. This paper aims to categorise how information sharing takes place in a law enforcement operational setting and whether there is scope to improve the process.

There were two stages to the method; firstly, a select group of practitioners with intelligence-related experience (n = 28) were interviewed to identify the most common approaches to operational information sharing. This generated a categorisation model, which was tested with a larger group of practitioners (n = 73). A mixed-methods approach was adopted.

The research found consensus surrounding four different approaches to information sharing, labelled as: (1) inform and request, (2) meet and share, (3) customised database and (4) integrated systems. These are used at various levels of frequency, dependent on the operational context.

This research provides original evidence-based research to show law enforcement practitioners vary in the way they share information. By demystifying and categorising the process, it provides understanding for practitioners, policymakers and researchers, allowing barriers to be more readily tackled in a much more cost-effective manner.

The use of ‘problem solving’ as a strategy to tackle the underlying causes of crime and disorder, rather than continually responding to their symptoms, has suffered widely from ‘implementation failure’. This study describes the variables associated with failure, and shows how a UK constabulary, by ensuring compliance with good practice, raised success rates from 33% to 80% in the partnership initiatives with which it was involved.