Helen Tucker, Veronica Larkin and Martina Martin
The Midland Health Board in Ireland has invested significantly in promoting integrated care in order to improve the quality and efficiency of its services. Stakeholders in all…
Abstract
The Midland Health Board in Ireland has invested significantly in promoting integrated care in order to improve the quality and efficiency of its services. Stakeholders in all agencies have shared in the creation of the ICON model that provides a structured approach to integration. The diagrammatic model has enabled shared understanding of providing, managing and receiving integrated health and care services. A resource pack and measurement tool have been developed to continue to support the increasing number of implementation sites for integration across all client groups. The transferability of the project is being tested in another Board in Ireland, and lessons will be shared as the projects progress.
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Helen Tucker, Veronica Larkin and Martina Martin
This article updates an article in Issue 12 (5) of the Journal of Integrated Care, which explained the first two phases of the ICON project in the Midland Area of Ireland. It…
Abstract
This article updates an article in Issue 12 (5) of the Journal of Integrated Care, which explained the first two phases of the ICON project in the Midland Area of Ireland. It describes the systems and processes put in place to support improving practice, focusing on process, culture and context, and illustrates the impact so far on individual clients and families, and how this information is being shared.
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Beverly Love, Arlene Vetere and Paul Davis
Psychological developmental informed theories imply that addiction is not exclusively due to the addictive properties of the substance but that early psycho-social experiences are…
Abstract
Purpose
Psychological developmental informed theories imply that addiction is not exclusively due to the addictive properties of the substance but that early psycho-social experiences are influential on later life. The purpose of this paper is to understand substance dependency, relapse and recovery amongst community-based substance using offenders in relation to their childhoods, relationships and significant life events, from their perspective. A key aim was to help better inform policy and practice.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative study (interpretative phenomenological analysis) was used to understand the impact of childhood, relationships and significant life events amongst (N = 17) adult ex/offenders with substance use dependency problems, (who were part of the UK Government rehabilitation programme), to understand their substance use and recovery from their own perspectives.
Findings
Four main superordinate themes were developed illustrating participants extremely adverse childhoods. Substance use was a means to cope with current and past trauma and crises and to help manage the emotions and mental health which could accompany these difficulties. Managing recovery was about learning to manage life itself, including emotions, mental health problems, trauma/responses, relationships and everyday life.
Originality/value
This group is under researched where qualitative methods have been used. The study focussed on early-psycho-social experiences and relationships and the influence of these throughout the life cycle, in relation to their substance use. The study was informed by theories often used in therapeutic settings but rarely in research, (Orford, 2008; Khantzian, 2012; Flores, 2012, Van Der Kolk, 2014).
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Aldo Alvarez-Risco, Alfredo Estrada-Merino, María de las Mercedes Anderson-Seminario, Sabina Mlodzianowska, Verónica García-Ibarra, Cesar Villagomez-Buele and Mauricio Carvache-Franco
This paper aims to explore university students' multitasking behavior in online classrooms and their influence on academic performance. Also, the study examined students' opinions.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore university students' multitasking behavior in online classrooms and their influence on academic performance. Also, the study examined students' opinions.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 302 university students fulfilled an online survey. Ten questions were focused on demographic information, five items evaluated online class behavior of students, 9 items evaluated self-efficacy and four items measured academic performance.
Findings
Multitasking behavior was found to negatively influence self-efficacy of −0.332, whereas self-efficacy showed a positive influence of 0.325 on academic performance. Cronbach's alpha and average variance extracted values were 0.780 and 0.527 (multitasking behavior), 0.875 and 0.503 (self-efficacy), 0.781 and 0.601 (academic performance). Outcomes of the bootstrapping test showed that the path coefficients are significant.
Originality/value
The research findings may help university managers understand undergraduates’ online and face-to-face behavior and strategies to improve the behavior to ensure the best academic outcomes. The novelty is based on using the partial least square structural equation modeling technique.
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THE changes in London local government which came into operation on 1st April, 1965, cut across the existing regional library bureaux organisation.
MY reaction to being appointed Director of Library Services would be one of frank amazement, rather as if I had been a commercial traveller in a rather dubious line of trade, such…
Abstract
MY reaction to being appointed Director of Library Services would be one of frank amazement, rather as if I had been a commercial traveller in a rather dubious line of trade, such as ladies' underwear, who had suddenly been offered a bishopric. The recovery from this amazement would take about ten seconds flat and I would doubtless find myself in the thick of finding an office, a desk, a rubber plant and a regulation‐size piece of carpet appropriate to my grade. My first real task would be to bring some order to the seven sections of the D.E.S. now dealing with library matters and to initiate among librarians generally some radical thinking on the problems that face us all.
Shreela V. Sharma, Courtney Winston Paolicelli, Vinu Jyothi, William Baun, Brett Perkison, Mary Phipps, Cathy Montgomery, Michael Feltovich, Julie Griffith, Veronica Alfaro and Lisa A Pompeii
As posited by the ecological model of health, improvements in the nutrition and physical activity environments of worksites may facilitate healthier dietary intakes and physical…
Abstract
Purpose
As posited by the ecological model of health, improvements in the nutrition and physical activity environments of worksites may facilitate healthier dietary intakes and physical activity patterns of employees. This cross-sectional study describes current policies and practices targeting these environments in five large Texas-based hospitals employing approximately 40,000 adults. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
The environmental assessment tool survey, an observation tool, was used to assess these policies and practices in August and September 2012.
Findings
Results demonstrated major policy and practice deficiencies, including a lack of policies supporting on and offsite employee physical fitness, no healthy catering or healthy meeting policies, minimal subsidizing of healthy food and beverage options, few health-promoting vending services, and no performance objectives related to worksite health improvement. Hospitals having an active employee wellness staff consistently performed better on implementation of policies and practices supporting healthy eating and physical activity.
Practical implications
This study supports practice recommendations including engaging executive leadership to prioritize worksite wellness and using policies to create an infrastructure that promotes healthy eating and encourages physical activity among employees.
Originality/value
This study is the first to compare and contrast the nutrition and the physical activity environments of large hospitals, allowing for the identification of common environmental barriers and supports across multiple hospital and foodservice systems.
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This paper aims to explore some initial and necessarily broad ideas about the effects of the world wide web on our methods of understanding and trusting, online and off.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore some initial and necessarily broad ideas about the effects of the world wide web on our methods of understanding and trusting, online and off.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper considers the idea of trust via some of the revolutionary meanings inherent in the world wide web at its public conception in 1994, and some of its different meanings now. It does so in the context of the collaborative reader‐writer Web2.0 (of today), and also through a brief exploration of our relationship to the grand narratives (and some histories) of the post‐war West. It uses a variety of formal approaches taken from information science, literary criticism, philosophy, history, and journalism studies – together with some practical analysis based on 15 years as a web practitioner and content creator. It is a starting point.
Findings
This paper suggests that a pronounced effect of the world wide web is the further atomising of many once‐shared Western post‐war narratives, and the global democratising of doubt as a powerful though not necessarily helpful epistemological tool. The world wide web is the place that most actively demonstrates contemporary doubt.
Research limitations/implications
This is the starting place for a piece of larger cross‐faculty (and cross‐platform) research into the arena of trust and doubt. In particular, the relationship of concepts such as news, event, history and myth with the myriad content platforms of new media, the idea of the digital consumer, and the impact of geography on knowledge that is enshrined in the virtual. This paper attempts to frame a few of the initial issues inherent in the idea of “trust” in the digital age and argues that without some kind of shared aesthetics of narrative judgment brought about through a far broader public understanding of (rather than an interpretation of) oral, visual, literary and multi‐media narratives, stories and plots, we cannot be said to trust many types of knowledge – not just in philosophical terms but also in our daily actions and behaviours.
Originality/value
This paper initiates debate about whether the creation of a new academic “space” in which cross‐faculty collaborations into the nature of modern narrative (in terms of production and consumption; producers and consumers) might be able to help us to understand more of the social implications of the collaborative content produced for consumption on the world wide web.
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Kashmir Goddard, Jane Montague and James Elander
This study aims to reflect on ways that the experiences of vulnerable users of drug and alcohol services can inform social work practice and policy to improve treatment engagement…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to reflect on ways that the experiences of vulnerable users of drug and alcohol services can inform social work practice and policy to improve treatment engagement and mitigate negative responses to interventions.
Design/methodology/approach
The research used semi-structured interviews and photovoice in an interpretative phenomenological analysis of the experiences of people in treatment for drug or alcohol problems whose child was the subject of a Child Protection or Child in Need order.
Findings
The research gave insights into participants’ experiences of loss of control, unfairness and stigma. Participants described how they felt powerless in the social services system and were afraid to be open and honest with practitioners for fear of having their children removed.
Practical implications
The research highlighted the need for more training and professional development for social work practitioners to address power imbalance issues, and the need to promote non-threatening professional practice that removes penalties for disclosure of substance use, enabling substance users who are parents to be more honest about their drug use.
Social implications
The research showed the value of phenomenological methods for investigating sensitive issues with vulnerable users of treatment services in a way that can inform policy and practice.
Originality/value
This paper explores ways that phenomenological research with vulnerable, hard-to-reach participants can produce insights about the potential benefits of social work practice that is non-threatening and encourages greater openness and honesty among substance users who are parents.