Stress in Social Services: Mental Wellbeing, Constraints and Job Satisfaction

Correspondence to Margaret Coffey, Liverpool Hope University College, Room AEW 098, Hope Park, Liverpool L16 9JD, UK. E-mail: coffeym{at}hope.ac.uk Summary The public sector is facing an impending shortage of staff,because young people no longer want to work in it and nearlya third of its workforce is over 50 years of age. Staff workingwithin the public sector report that stress is the biggest singlefactor affecting their decision to leave. This research notereports the findings of a recent study carried out in two socialservice departments in the north-west of England. The primaryaim of the research was to explore work-related stress, usinga ‘problem diagnosis tool’ to understand the stressorsexperienced by social services staff, and to inform the developmentof interventions aimed at reducing and/or eliminating them.This study used in-depth interviewing to develop a questionnaireincorporating a variety of measures to assess potential stressorsand mental well-being. The questionnaire response rate was 33per cent (n = 1234) and the results demonstrated statisticallysignificant differences between staffing grades. Staff workingwith children and families reported the highest levels of absenteeism,poorest well-being, and highest level of organizational constraints.Job satisfaction was low compared with established norms forvarious occupational groups. This grounded research baselineis a crucial step to inform specifically designed and targetedinterventions, which can be effectively evaluated from thisbaseline position.     

The functional capacity of healthcare workers with history of severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (SARS) complicated with avascular necrosis--case report

Two years after the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, 128 healthcare workers continued to present with musculoskeletal complaints and 38 workers were diagnosed with avascular necrosis (AVN) in different joints. 13 healthcare workers were referred to six designated Physiotherapy Departments of the Hospital Authority for a tailor-made standardized Functional Capacity Evaluation (FCE) from 2004 to 2005 on a voluntary basis. Job analysis, workers' self-perceived disability and functional capacity, non-material handling tests, and the cardiopulmonary fitness test were performed. Retrospective review of the FCE data showed that there were 17 AVN of hips, 16 AVN of knees, 3 AVN of shoulders. All patients had AVN of lower limb joints. Nearly full ranges of movement (ROM) were observed in the knees involved, but the hip range was decreased for most subjects suffering from hip AVNs. Most workers (n=12) could not complete the cardiopulmonary test due to intolerable joint pain. Six workers' self-perceived physical demands level (PDC) matched with the physical demands level identified by the FCE. 12 healthcare workers attained a sedentary physical demands level and were unable to match with their previous job demands. One staff was classified as light physical demands and managed his original duty. Four workers had returned to work at the time FCE was performed. The tailor-made FCE added information to facilitate the return-to-work planning for the staff. Four more workers returned to work with modified duties one year after the FCE.     

The workhouse populations of Lancashire in 1881

This article investigates the characteristics of the workhouse populations in Lancashire in 1881. The analysis is based on the snapshot view provided by the 1881 census and, despite the limitations of such an approach, this large-scale survey reveals significant variations in the experience of poverty and local relief policies in a largely industrial region that had been at the forefront of the anti-poor law movement. The workhouse populations are shown to be diverse, and contrast markedly with pauper populations previously studied. Lancashire's Poor Law Unions are divided into three types: conurbation, urban industrial and rural. These three groups appear to represent three different patterns of workhouse residency. The workhouse populations in rural Lancashire are broadly similar to those discussed elsewhere, being dominated by elderly males. However, urban industrial workhouse populations contained large numbers of adults of working age and the absence of children from workhouses in the conurbation is particularly striking.     

'The Tip of the Ice Berg': Children's Complaints and Advocacy in Wales--An Insider View from Complaints Officers

This paper is based on findings of a Welsh Assembly Governmentfunded review of children’s independent advocacy servicesin Wales with reference to their involvement in complaints madeby children, or by their parents or carers on their behalf,about local authority social services. It draws, primarily,upon qualitative interviews with local authority children’scomplaints officers, whose task is to receive complaints orconcerns, field these to appropriate social services staff,maintain oversight of their progression and keep complainantsinformed of developments. The paper describes the challengesthat complaints officers perceive children encounter in movingcomplaints forward, especially in a context where independentadvocacy services are involved and where these services areviewed with some suspicion by social services staff. It suggeststhat complaints officers play a pivotal part in managing thesometimes contested and complex interface between service providerand child and may do so from a position of limited authorityand influence. The role of complaints officers in engaging withcomplainants and their advocates, and with those colleaguesimplicated in complaints, has rarely been the topic of research.This paper provides accounts from these key staff that helpilluminate the tensions and difficulties that can enter thechildren’s complaints process.     

Research project on advocacy and autism

This article presents the findings of a qualitative research project about the difficulties in accessing advocacy faced by adults labelled as having autism and Asperger's Syndrome in the Northwest of England. It is also an example of partnership working between three organisations. The article examines both the process of team-led (emancipatory) research and the project findings. Seven main themes emerged throughout the research: late diagnosis and lack of service support; bad experiences with systems of care; feelings of 'not belonging' (identity issues); barriers around communication and sensitivity towards individuals; lack of awareness and access to advocacy and rights; difficulties of 'fitting into' what is already available; and interest in developing knowledge around advocacy. Examination of the main themes pointed to a disturbing link between poor service response, episodes of crisis and mental ill health. The Carlisle People First Research Team is made up of 6 researchers who are labelled as having 'learning difficulties' who work in partnership with one other researcher.     

Staging language: An introduction to the sociolinguistics of performance

Staged performance involves the overt, scheduled identification and elevation of one or more people to perform, with a clearly demarcated distinction between them and the audience. It involves the agentive use of language, building on the foundation of existing social meanings. Staged performances tend to be linguistically stylized, pushing the limits of language creativity. They have the potential to trigger significant sociolinguistic effects, circulating novel forms and contributing to language change. The paradigms used in this theme issue for approaching language performance include Bakhtin's notion of Stylization, Bell's Audience and Referee Design, Silverstein's Indexicality, Agha's Enregisterment, and Bauman's construct of Discursive Culture. Themes that run through the articles include: a concept of identity that is part product, part process; the centrality of the audience; the reflexivity of staged performance; and the importance of non‐linguistic modalities such as music and appearance. The language analysis in this collection of papers concentrates mainly on phonological features of varieties of English, finding instances of selectivity, mis‐realization, overshoot and undershoot in their performances of a range of targeted dialects.     

The Path to Asylum in the US and the Determinants for Who Gets In and Why*

The migration of political asylum seekers into the United States has long been a salient political topic; however, social scientists have yet to examine this process in its entirety and in the context of political changes since September 11, 2001. Previous research shows that humanitarian and strategic interests are important for decisions made by asylum officers but that research overlooks the decisions made by immigration judges. Here we examine decisions made by both asylum officers and immigration judges using data from a global set of countries, from 1999 to 2004. We find that the waning importance of human rights is more pronounced for asylum officers than for immigration judges after the attack on the World Trade Center. We also find that language heritage, specifically for asylum seekers from English‐, Spanish‐, and Arabic‐speaking countries, substantially affects acceptance rates made by both decision‐makers between the two time periods of our study.     

Avoiding responsibility: The politics and discourse of European development policy

This book deals with an important subject. Regrettably, it doesnot do so in a wholly successful way. The author's general purposeis to steer a path between a normative–ethical approachto the topic and a political–scientific one, and the mainmethodological stance adopted is a version of discourse analysis.Drawing, in particular, on the work of Laclau and Mouffe, sheexamines two discursive ‘moments’ in European developmentdiscourse, or two different ways of justifying European developmentpolicy – responsibility and efficiency. The first, atleast in the early stages of European policy, entailed a paternalisticsense of European concern for its former colonial possessions,while the latter legitimizes     

Optimal orthogonal-array-based latin hypercubes

The use of optimal orthogonal array latin hypercube designs is proposed. Orthogonal arrays were proposed for constructing latin hypercube designs by Tang (1993). Such designs generally have better space filling properties than random latin hypercube designs. Even so, these designs do not necessarily fill the space particularly well. As a result, we consider orthogonal-array-based latin hypercube designs that try to achieve optimality in some sense. Optimization is performed by adapting strategies found in Morris & Mitchell (1995) and Ye et al. (2000). The strategies here search only orthogonal-array-based latin hypercube designs and, as a result, optimal designs are found in a more efficient fashion. The designs found are in general agreement with existing optimal designs reported elsewhere.     

Rural studies: Modernism, postmodernism and the ‘post-rural’

In response to Philo [(1992b), Neglected rural geographies: a review. Journal of Rural Studies8, 193–207), who calls for rural studies to take the study of ‘others’ more seriously, we argue the need to take postmodernism more seriously. The paper focuses upon the production of knowledge about rural areas by academics. In the narrative that we provide here, the ‘rural’ had a strong presence until Pahl's critique of the rural-urban continuum which both diminished the status of the rural and emphasised the role of class in shaping particular spaces. Newby and his colleagues applied class analysis to agriculture, likewise undermining the significance of the rural. Further applications of general social theory, such as the political economy and restructuring approaches, show how modernist rural studies seem to be fighting a losing battle to posit the indispensability of the significance of the urban-rural division as an explanation; articulating and rearticulating the divide within a whole range of processes: economic, social and cultural. Rural social scientists have woven this modernist narrative, but, as Philo shows, one effect has been the neglect of certain social groups, cultures and identities. However, in contrast to Philo, we argue that a rather fundamental reassessment of social scientific approaches to the rural is required if these ‘neglected others’ are to be satisfactorily considered. We believe a ‘sociology of postmodernism’ would offer a more reflexive perspective on the processes which give rise to ‘the rural’. We thus call for an end to the use of universal or global concepts such as ‘rural’ (or the ‘urban’) and for a concern with the way places are ‘made’. This will entail a focus on ‘power’ as certain actors impose ‘their’ rurality on others. We term this the study of the ‘post-rural’.