Working across borders to promote positive mental health and well‐being

World health reports highlight the increasing prevalence of mental health problems and the need to recognize that mental well‐being is a fundamental aspect of any health policy. The scale and cost of mental health problems mean that appropriate policies and strategies must be developed and implemented. In Ireland this is a period of substantial review and reflection on mental health policy and practice, but to date little consideration has been given to the development of a cross‐border strategy. Cooperation and collaboration has been largely dependent on the leadership of a number of individuals supported by short‐term European Union funding. This paper is informed by a study which was concerned with examining the issues associated with promoting mental health across the Irish border. Insights were provided by 38 individuals who were involved in the delivery of cross‐border mental health services in the North West region. The article argues that there is substantial support for working across borders and developing sustainable cross‐border health strategies. In the absence of a statutory all‐Ireland coordinated policy overseeing the development of mental health promotion, the sustainability of projects emerged as a key issue. The results suggest that whilst much innovative and creative work has been undertaken by committed individuals, what is now required is a strategic response from both the British and Irish governments which will ensure the needs of service users in these deprived border regions can be effectively addressed. Also, at a policy level this strategic development would be seen as a reflection of the value placed on promoting mental health and well‐being.     

Cross‐border commuters: How to segment Them? A Framework of Analysis

The removal of barriers to labour mobility and the enhancement of cross‐border mobility are expected to reduce regional disparities by contributing to a more efficient allocation of labour. For some time now, however, researchers have considered borders and cross‐border regions to be marginal zones. Therefore, we contribute to the discussion by providing a qualitative framework for the segmentation of the cross‐border job market, capable of addressing some questions relevant to the management of cross‐border commuting regarding the nature of imbalances that characterize the cross‐border job market and the main factors underpinning the phenomenon. To do so, we focused specifically on the Euroregion “Regio Insubrica”, a cross‐boundary cooperation community between Italy and Switzerland. Nevertheless, the proposed framework may be easily applied to all the existing cross‐border regions across the world in order to help explain the imbalances that exist, and support decision‐makers regarding educational and labour market policies.     

Organised Voluntarism in Ireland

Historically Irish society has had a long tradition of grass roots voluntary community work. However, with the rise of neoliberalism in the 1990s, the Irish community and voluntary sector became increasingly subjected to government controls and restrictions. As a result, voluntary community work became more formally organised, centrally regulated and depoliticised. Such ‘organised voluntarism’ (Fye and Mulligan in Prog Hum Geogr 27:397–413, 2003) has since become part and parcel of contemporary community development initiatives in Ireland. While some UK research has explored the impact that this discursive and policy shift is having on volunteering, there is a dearth of Irish literature on this issue. This article presents an account of how and why this form of voluntarism took hold in contemporary Ireland. The establishment of Family Resource Centres in Ireland will be recalled and assessed to further illustrate the observations being made about organised voluntarism in Ireland.     

Strategic spatial planning on the island of Ireland

The central argument in this article is that recent advances in strategic spatial planning on the island of Ireland have been considerably enhanced through the medium of the European Spatial Development Perspective. This has provided a shared technical vocabulary and an imperative to imagine possibilities which transcend the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to a greater and lesser extent, depending on the sensitivities of the actors concerned. Particular attention is given to the role played by very different participatory processes in helping to shape these spatial agendas. The paper concludes by identifying an action‐oriented commitment to sustainable development as the key strategic choice in advancing the logic of territorial interdependence.     

Measuring What Matters: Achieving Consensus on a Positive Aging Indicator Set For Ireland

The objective of this study was to measure consensus among expert stakeholders on a set of positive aging outcome indicators in Ireland. Stakeholders from academic, public, and voluntary sectors and older people participated in a 3-round, online Delphi study to evaluate indicators for participation, security, healthy aging, attitudes to aging, and information access. Evaluation criteria included: acceptability, utility, accessibility, ranking, and balance and coherence. Consensus was achieved on 56 key indicators that are aligned with action areas in the National Positive Ageing Strategy. These indicators will be reported on a biannual basis to monitor progress in positive aging in Ireland.     

Firefighters across frontiers: two fire brigades cooperating in the Dutch–German borderland

This article focuses on boundaries as symbolic constructs to overcome structural impediments to cooperation in a borderland constituted by two nation states – Germany and the Netherlands – that, from a global perspective, may be regarded as close cultural neighbours. Empirically, the vicissitudes of cross‐border cooperation are analysed at the level of a Dutch and a German fire brigade in adjacent borderland villages. The diminishing visibility of borders does not necessarily lead to more openness, but gives rise to the emergence of socially constructed symbolical boundaries, which has major effects on issues of national identity and loyalty within organizations operating in trans‐border spaces. Cultural differences can complicate processes of transnational coordination, harmonization, and negotiation. However, cooperation and trust, based on an affinity with a local culture in borderlands, may provide a more stable fundament for successful common ventures than do regulations enacted by state authorities. Addressing the question of how processes of transnationalization affect inter‐organizational cooperation, this article describes and analyses the ways in which European integration, national bureaucracies and cultural similarities and differences form partly converging and partly conflicting forces in cooperative efforts in the Dutch–German borderland.     

The strategic challenges of cooperation and competition in British Voluntary Organizations: Toward the next century

The interrelationships between public, private, and voluntary sectors in Britain have witnessed increasing levels of change in recent years. This article argues that there have recently been identifiable trends within the voluntary sector, namely, increased levels of competition between sectors, increased competition between voluntary organizations, and increased pressures toward professionalization in voluntary sector management and organization. Predominantly competitive strategies and modes of professionalization have often been borrowed uncritically from commercial “best practice” by voluntary organizations. Thompson's (1967) typology of strategies is used as a basis for proposing cooperation as an alternative to competition in the British voluntary sector.     

Resource Dependence as a Mechanism for Survival: The Case of the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital

This paper examines the evolution of the largest university teaching hospital in Ireland, from its origins in 1861 to the present day, drawing upon the lens of resource dependence theory as proposed by Pfeffer and Salancik (1978). Analysing the mission, resources and governance of the hospital, three distinct eras are identified, self-financing, transitionary and that of government/non-profit partnership. The paper demonstrates that despite traumatic events and financial crises this hospital has survived through evolving resource dependence and has preserved its voluntary status notwithstanding its current collaborative partnership with the Irish State.     

State Welfare and the Development of Voluntary Action: The Case of Ireland,North and South

This paper considers the development of voluntary action in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Drawing on research conducted during 2002–2003 at the Centre for Voluntary Action Studies at the University of Ulster and funded by the Royal Irish Academy, it is argued that the way that voluntary and community organizations developed in Ireland’s two jurisdictions after the partition of the island in 1922 illuminates debates on the role of states in structuring the civic space in which voluntary action occurs. It illustrates, in particular, the interaction of state policy drivers with the cultural and ideological forces that shape voluntary action. Analysis lends support to the view that state action, together with cultural trends and social capital resources, is the crucial determinant of how the voluntary sector develops in a jurisdiction.     

Conceptualizing the Third Sector in Ireland,North and South

While there is a long established and deeply embedded tradition of voluntary action and nonprofit organizing in Ireland, there has been very limited debate on a philosophy of voluntary action or on the place of the third sector in a modern democratic state. It is against this background that practitioners and academics are beginning to articulate their individual understandings of the role of the third sector in Irish society. This paper presents a framework developed from three questions to consider the place of the third sector in a modern democratic state. The questions are: What are the roles of the third sector in a society? What relationships exist between the third and other sectors? How are third sector organizations resourced within that societal context? Answering these questions contributes to a conceptualization of the third sector in Ireland, North and South.

     

The Voluntary–Community Sector and Political Development in Northern Ireland,Since 1972

This paper traces the development of the voluntary and community sector in Northern Ireland from the early 1970s onwards. Particular attention is given to the expansion of the voluntary and community sector in the 1970s, community action in conflict with government in the 1980s, and new funding--from the European Union and other international sources--for development work since the mid-1990s. More recent trends discussed include the rapprochement of the voluntary and community sector with government, which has seen a growth in formal partnerships and networking, as well as the impact of the 1998 Belfast Agreement.     

VOLUNTARY ACTIVITIES AND DAILY HAPPINESS IN THE UNITED STATES

This article analyzes differences in daily happiness between those individuals in the United States who perform voluntary activities during the day and those who do not. Using the Well‐Being Module of the American Time Use Survey 2010, we find that those who devote any time to voluntary activities during the day report higher levels of daily happiness than those who do not. Comparing the happiness obtained from a range of activities, we find that volunteering is among the most enjoyable, indicating that time spent on voluntary activities is utility‐enhancing. We document that the effect of voluntary activities on the experienced utility of individuals can be decomposed into a “time‐composition” effect and an “activity” effect, with the latter explaining between 11% and 46% of the observed difference. (JEL D13, J16, J22)     

CORPORATE TAX GAMES WITH CROSS‐BORDER EXTERNALITIES FROM PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE

We construct a model of corporate tax competition in which governments also use public infrastructure investment to attract foreign direct investment, thus enhancing their tax bases. In doing so, we allow for cross‐border infrastructural externalities. Depending on the externality, governments are shown to strategically over‐ or underinvest in infrastructure. We also examine how tax cooperation influences investment in infrastructure and find that welfare may be lower under tax cooperation than under tax competition; this is the case when infrastructure is very effective in raising the tax base and generates a large negative cross‐border externality. (JEL F23, H40)     

两岸大学生志愿服务动机与激励机制比较研究

20世纪70年代以来,志愿者组织在全球范围兴起并得到发展,逐渐成为现代社会发展的一支活跃力量,在全球掀起了开展志愿服务的热潮。大学生志愿者作为我国志愿服务的重要参与主体,在志愿服务中起到了举足轻重的作用。在两岸和平发展新时期,两岸出现了大交流、大合作、大发展的新局面。作为志愿服务的主力军,两岸大学生志愿服务动机和激励机制的比较,有利于促进两岸大学生志愿服务合作机制的建立。     

Competing nonprofit organizations also collaborate

Cooperation among voluntary organizations is examined from the perspective of an Israeli project in which local voluntary organizations formed a joint forum. An analysis of questionnaires filled in by members of nine such bodies (“roundtables”) shows that cooperation among voluntary organizations may be functional in nature and not necessarily based on common goals. The degree of independence of the organizations did not affect their cooperation, but it influenced the way they looked on the “convenor” (external change agent), who played an important role in the process of interorganizational cooperation. The authors show that competition and cooperation are not mutually exclusive among voluntary organizations.     

‘Equally at home on Beacon Hill and Hill 16’? Transnational identities among Irish‐born return migrants from the United States

In this article, I examine the transnational identities that return migrants create upon resettlement in their country of origin. Specifically, I draw on interviews with Republic of Ireland‐born return migrants from the United States between the years 1996 and 2006. The analysis shows that return migrants – like other migrant groups – maintain and establish translocal identities and practices that straddle ‘here’ (Ireland) and ‘there’ (United States) upon return. However, the article goes further, asking why returnees develop such border‐spanning social fields. Some recent scholarship suggests that some migrants develop transnational identities as an adaptive response to a hostile receiving society. The analysis here shows a similar process at play for certain return migrants in the post‐return environment. Doubtless, for some returnees, a transnational identity is a natural outgrowth of having spent several years in the United States. Yet for others, one can better explain this transnational identity as a coping strategy to buffer resettlement anxieties and disappointments.     

Nonprofit governance during organizational transition in voluntary associations

This explorative field study examines the governance challenges that voluntary associations face in the transition from an internal focus on members to the provision of services to mainly nonmembers. This transition is an important stage in the life cycle of many associations. A qualitative research design was used to study five Swiss patient organizations. This article describes the transition process in terms of five main management challenges: different target groups, self‐help group versus competence center, cooperation, fundraising, and transparency. It then examines the implications for four governance aspects that confront managers and board members: recruitment and selection of board members, tasks of the board, relationship between the board and managing director, and the role of the general assembly of members.     

An examination of student and provider perceptions of voluntary sector social work placements in Northern Ireland

Practice based learning in Northern Ireland is a core element of social work education and comprising 50% of the degree programme for undergraduate and postgraduate students. This article presents evidence about the perceptions of practice learning from voluntary sector/non-government organisation (NGO) placement providers and final year social work students on social work degree programmes in Northern Ireland in 2011. It draws on data from 121 respondents from189 final year students and focus group interviews with voluntary sector providers offering 16% (85) of the total placements available to students. The agencies who participated in the research study provide a total of 55 PLOs to social work students, and are therefore fairly representative in terms of voluntary sector (NGO) provision. The article locates these data in the context of practice learning pedagogy and the changes introduced by the Regional Strategy for Practice Learning Provision in Northern Ireland 2010–2015. Several themes emerged including; induction, support and guidance, practice educator/student relationship, professional identity and confidence in risk assessment and decision-making. Social work educators, placement providers and employers must be cognisant of newly qualified social workers’ needs in terms of consolidating knowledge within the formative stages of their professional development.     

Service Delivery and Civic Engagement: Disability Organizations in Northern Ireland

In the United Kingdom, the New Labour administration that came to power in 1997 has promoted two models of partnership between the state and the voluntary sector. The civic engagement model is based on the renewed interest among governments in the potential of voluntary organizations to contribute to the civic engagement of citizens. In the service delivery model, voluntary organizations are recruited to the task of delivering core social services. Drawing on data from disability-related voluntary organizations in Northern Ireland, this paper illustrates the impact of the service delivery partnership model on the development of voluntary action in the welfare field, and the relative paucity of resources allocated to participatory voluntary action and civic engagement. The consequent impact on the development of partnerships between the state and the voluntary sector is discussed.     

Does “Smarter” Lead to Safer? An Assessment of the US Border Accords with Canada and Mexico

The terrorist attacks of September 11 and their immediate aftermath along the US‐Canadian and US‐Mexican borders focused attention on border management strategies in ways previously unimaginable. Suddenly confronted by the fact that existing systems and processes were not particularly effective either at protecting security or facilitating legitimate traffic, the United States, in conjunction with the Canadian and Mexican Governments, demonstrated an uncharacteristic willingness to reconceptualize its approach to physical borders. While initiating a series of internal policy adjustments to secure themselves against terrorist threats, the US, Canadian, and Mexican Governments also signed two bilateral agreements — the 12 December 2001 United States‐Canada Smart Border Declaration and the 22 March 2002 United States‐Mexico Border Partnership Agreement. These agreements represent an important development in the US's relationship with each of its North American neighbours, acknowledging not only the deep economic, social, and cultural ties, but also the new reality that the United States cannot attain the additional security it desires through unilateral actions alone. Thus, while September 11 forced a reassessment of vulnerabilities, it simultaneously provided the United States an opportunity to work more systematically with its contiguous neighbours for security benefits, a realization likely to flow into other areas where the benefits of cooperation eclipse those of unilateralism. This paper analyses the first year of the two border accords, tracking their implementation and evaluating their successes and failures. Most importantly, the paper outlines outstanding challenges, highlights steps that the governments should take to achieve additional border security and efficiency, and draws conclusions regarding factors likely to make their efforts more, or less, successful.