Production layout improvement in emergency services: a participatory approach

Volunteer fire department is a service that responds emergency situations in places where there are no military emergency services. These services need to respond quickly, because time is often responsible for the operation success besides work environment and setup time interfere with the prompt response to these calls and care efficiency. The layout design is one factor that interferes with the quick setup. In this case, the spaces arrangement can result in excessive or unnecessary movements; also the equipment provision may hinder the selection and collection of these or even create movement barriers for the workers. This work created a new layout for the emergency assistance service, considering the human factors related to work through the task analysis and workers participation on the alternatives of improvement. The results showed an alternate layout with corridors and minimization of unusable sites, allowing greater flexibility and new possibilities of requirements.     

Barriers to the Uptake of Emergency Accommodation by Young Runaways and Thrown‐out children and the Role of the ‘Transitional Person’

Young runaways and thrown‐out children, under‐16, face a number of barriers to accessing safe emergency accommodation. The need for such accommodation is not always apparent because children sometimes make themselves invisible to services through fear of being returned or fear of being removed from inappropriate accommodation. Young people's retrospective accounts of their experiences suggest the importance of a ‘transitional person’, an adult who has a pivotal role in trust‐building and who acts as a conduit to services and helps runaway and thrown‐out children overcome internal and external barriers to uptake of emergency accommodation.     

Dissemination as success: Local emergency management communication practices

Local emergency managers are charged by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to increase the number of community members with emergency plans and kits. This outcome remains unrealized in part based upon in-depth interviews with 37 emergency managers in eight states revealing that emergency managers conceptualize communication as dissemination rather than as a process of research and evaluation. This study calls for local emergency managers to conduct outcome evaluations of risk communication campaigns to increase public participation.     

Best practices for emergency shelters that serve male populations

Homeless men represent the majority of homeless people. While federal funding priorities have shifted to permanent housing solutions, quality emergency shelters are vital in communities to help these men. To determine the best practices in emergency shelter delivery to homeless men based on top agency representatives’ opinions. Leaders from 21 emergency shelters that serve single men throughout the U.S.A. were interviewed about their facilities, their opinions on the best practices of emergency shelters, and barriers that single men face in exiting homelessness. The main goal of emergency shelters is to offer a welcoming environment. Emergency shelters try to offer a variety of services on-site, but find it difficult to offer medical and dental services at facilities with smaller budgets. Access to beds, showers, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, case management, and access to medical services are seen as vital to the success of the emergency shelter. These emergency shelters have many services in place to help the single male population. The most important services are ones that address the basic needs of human beings first: food, showers, beds, medical services, and storage. Mental health and breaking substance dependency are also priorities.     

A Multi-Method Evaluation of the Teen Pregnancy Hotline in Taiwan

The present study examines the outputs and qualities of the thirteen teen pregnancy service hotlines in Taiwan that were funded by the Children’s Bureau in 2004 and 2005. The evaluation was made through agency visits, focus groups, document reviews, call-in tests and the use of a management information system. The results show that the average number of calls was low, and one agency did not receive any calls during the time period examined. The quality of services varied, and the advice provided by the hotline staff was influenced by the value orientation of the agencies. Most callers were adult women, and the major services they received were information and emotional support. The service characteristics were heavily affected by the goals and routine tasks of the agencies as certain agencies applied their existing services to the program without assessing their fitness to the needs of the potential clients. Suggestions for service improvement are provided, including an islandwide hotline to be set up and operated by a single agency with high accountability. Implications for program monitoring and documentation, staff training and knowledge-sharing, and service advertisement and promotion are also discussed.     

Housing Strategies for the Elderly:

Gerontologists often speak of a need to create a continuum of alternative housing environments to increase the number of housing options between those with no services and those with a high level of complementary services. By expanding the number of alternatives, it is expected that the elderly will select an environment consistent with their needs and at least implicitly maximize life satisfaction. This paper examines a set of assumptions and values implicit in calls for such a continuum. The analysis identifies a number of issues not generally recognized in the literature which may hinder or facilitate the development and implementation of housing programs for the elderly.     

Telephone counseling and the masturbator: A dilemma

Summary The problems facing telephone counseling services who receive calls from men who desire to masturbate while talking to a female are discussed. Some suggestions are made as to how the counselor can handle this type of call, but it is noted that there is no evidence that telephone counseling is feasible with such callers.     

The 193 call center, a meaningful public service!

This article is the first part of an on-going ergonomic work analysis with the emergency services call center set up by the Fire Department of the Military Police of S?o Paulo. The final objective of the research is to identify the prescribed task, the real work executed and strategies used by workers to meet the demands of the job. Starting by identifying the tasks and activities developed, this article analyzes the work of the emergency services call center which is of vital importance to the organizational structure, since it is the start point for the process that results in fulfilling the corporation's mission.     

Family support for the elderly in Korea: continuity, change, future directions, and cross-cultural concerns.

This article discusses major issues and concerns regarding family support for parents and elderly people in industrialized and urbanized Korea. It summarizes new trends in family support for elderly members, continuing influences of the traditional value of family support (filial piety), growing needs for public services for elderly people and their families, urgent calls for the state to assume greater responsibilities for providing social security and services for the elderly, needs for cross-cultural studies of family support, and certain cultural similarities and differences to be considered. The article concludes with some suggestions for future research.     

Availability and accessibility of public health services for adolescents and young people in South Africa

Against the background of increasing international calls for the development and implementation of age-appropriate programmes that address both quality and access issues to improve adolescent and youth health, this paper explores the extent to which public health facilities are available and accessible to adolescents and youth in South Africa. The impetus for the study was the current evidence that there was generally poor utilisation of services offered at public health facilities by young people in the country. The overall findings are that despite the country's comprehensive legal and policy framework and commitment to improve the health of young people, there continues to be some structural and systemic factors that hamper effective provision and programming of adolescent and youth friendly services. The paper concludes with recommendations for policy and practice.     

Family Support for the Elderly in Korea

Abstract

This article discusses major issues and concerns regarding family support for parents and elderly people in industrialized and urbanized Korea. It summarizes new trends in family support for elderly members, continuing influences of the traditional value of family support (filial piety), growing needs for public services for elderly people and their families, urgent calls for the state to assume greater responsibilities for providing social security and services for the elderly, needs for cross-cultural studies of family support, and certain cultural similarities and differences to be considered. The article concludes with some suggestions for future research.     

Beyond cultural competence: what child protection managers need to know and do

This article addresses issues for child protection managers, such as hiring, program design, service evaluation, and policy development. It presents three frameworks for levels of organizational change: cultural sensitivity, which modifies existing services to better meet the needs of target populations; self-reflective cultural sensitivity, which calls for managers to be aware of personal and organizational cultural values; and cultural solidarity, which acknowledges that organizational power is vested in managers, which can oppress clients.     

Emergency department social work in the UK and Sweden: evaluation by older frequent emergency department attenders Kuratorsarbete på akutmottagning i förenade kungadömet Storbritannien och Sverige: en utvärdering utifrån brukarperspektivet hos äldre mångbesökare på akutmottagningen

Social work based in hospital emergency departments (EDs) in Sweden and the UK reflects a wider European social/health care policy trend. A key focus is on diverting older frequent ED attenders from ‘inappropriate’ hospital re-attendance or emergency admission, because of social care problems. However, previously there has been no evaluation of the significance of ED social work for health and well-being, from the standpoint of older frequent ED attenders themselves. In a preliminary way, our paper provides this through drawing on a small scale Swedish/UK study. Its comparative account of service user feedback underscores the importance of ED social work as a facet of European social work. It indicates that ED social work contributes to the quality of care within emergency departments, acts as a key access point to social services, and can promote both short and longer-term health. At the same time, some serious shortcomings emerge. These include under-developed referral systems, and limitations to community based services following ED social work assessment, which reflect the under-resourcing of social care provision in both countries. Moreover, service users’ experience in both Sweden and the UK reveals the risk of ED social work with older frequent ED attenders being used as a substitute for follow-up medical/nursing care when that is also required.     

Do women have longer conversations? Telephone evidence of gendered communication strategies

We investigate whether there are systematic gender differences in communication behavior by telephone. First, we report a study of anonymized billing records of 3103 subscribers to a large mobile operator in Italy and Greece over 2 years from 2006 to 2008. Faced with identical tariffs, women make fewer calls than men, and their calls last 16% longer controlling for other factors. Secondly, we report a study of some 92,000 person-days of calls to call-center employees of a large consumer services company operator at four sites in Germany. Calls randomly allocated to women last 15% longer than those of men controlling for other factors. There is no evidence, however, that this results in the women being any less effective employees than the men; indeed, in operations involving sales where it is possible to measure productivity by this criterion, female employees make slightly more sales per shift than men. It appears instead to reflect systematic gender differences in communication strategies, though it may reflect also an element of preference by both men and women for speaking to women. The findings of both studies are highly statistically significant and are found across all age groups. The magnitude of gender differences is sensitive to the costs of communication. The results have implications for possible explanations of gender clustering in the labor market.     

Risk and punishment: The recent history and uncertain future of actuarial,algorithmic, and “evidence‐based” penal techniques

In recent decades, risk prediction has proliferated in the penal realm. Risk instruments currently guide an array of correctional decisions—such as participation in diversion programs, the provision of correctional services, and probation and parole supervision levels—and are being increasingly utilized or considered in pretrial detention and criminal sentencing. This article reviews empirical and theoretical accounts of the proliferation and effects of risk in the penal realm and also reflects on ongoing debates about the promises and perils of risk. Risk techniques have impacted the practices, discourses, and logics of punishment. Yet they have not triggered the abandonment of rehabilitative approaches (or retributive ones), nor have they replaced human judgment with a rationalized utopia or iron cage. This article also offers several interventions that complicate and further our understandings of risk. First, it highlights the complex entanglements between, on the one hand, actuarial and algorithmic risk instruments and, on the other, subjective, moral, and affective methods of evaluation. Second, it calls for increased attention to the performative effects of risk technologies: to the ways in which assessments not only report on but also create and alter the social world. The article concludes by reflecting on emerging topics and directions for future research.     

On the Social and Financial Effects of the Transformation of Microfinance NGOs

This article examines the social and financial performance of an international sample of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which transformed into microfinance institutions (TMFI). It shows that recent calls for the transformation of NGOs into TMFIs help improve the financial sustainability and the breadth of outreach of microfinance activities. However, this transformation hinders the depth of the services provided by TMFIs. This is especially significant in the case of bank-TMFIs and suggests that although the transformation might increase the financial independence of TMFIs, it might cause a mission drift that both NGOs and policy-makers ought to consider.     

Need to know vs. need to share: information technology and the intersecting work of police,fire and paramedics

Emergency preparedness concerns over inadequate emergency interoperability among police, fire and emergency medical services (EMS) have led to the adoption of shared information technologies. Using a social worlds/arenas framework, I ethnographically study police, fire and EMS, as ‘users’ of technology, to understand how they interact with their technologies, and the ways in which their respective organizational contexts, cultures and practices shape technological functioning and collaborative action. From this analysis, I uncover social world contexts (ideologies) and individual actions (social legitimation and hierarchy of credibility) that alter technological functioning and create impediments to emergency interoperability. I further highlight an important ideological disconnect between the design and in-situ application of emergency technologies. I conclude by discussing the extent to which policies and technological innovations cannot, in and of themselves, address emergency preparedness concerns.     

Implementing a Trauma Recovery Framework for Youths in Residential Treatment

This paper describes an intervention designed to address the special needs of youths with histories of maltreatment and exposure to family and community violence. The primary components of the model include an enhanced therapeutic community environment and a psychoeducation program that is aimed at changing non-adaptive cognitive and behavioral patterns which developed as means of coping with traumatic experiences. The implementation of the model and proximal effects on the therapeutic communities and youths are being examined in comparison to standard residential services. Initial perceptions of staff illustrate the challenges in applying an intervention that calls for changing the organizational culture.