"Ask a Policeman": Community Consultation in Practice

This article examines the development of police-community consultation arrangements in one large county in southern England: arrangements made under Section 106 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. It analyses the various responses of the main parties in the process: the police, the police authority, and the local committees themselves; and considers the extent to which the practice of consultation relates to wider claims for the enhancement of police accountability. The main conclusions are that, at least in the force area concerned, the predominant conflict was not, as might have been expected, between police representatives and the local community, but rather between the police authority and the local committees, for which they were formally responsible. In so far as such tensions can occur, the article argues for a more cautious approach to the question of the democratic accountability of the police to the extent that the police authority is to be entrusted with a central role in the reform of the current system of police accountability.     

Therapeutic Use of Fact Sheets in Family Therapy with Children and Adolescents With Functional Somatic Symptoms

Functional somatic symptoms signal distress and reflect an activation of the body's stress‐regulation systems. Many different types of stressors – physical, emotional or both – may activate the body's stress‐regulation systems. If stress‐related disruptions are extreme or are not limited in time, functional somatic symptoms may emerge, signalling that the body remains in a state of activation and somatic distress. In this paper, we describe the development of therapeutic fact sheets, which are used as part of our multimodal, family‐based, rehabilitation intervention for children and adolescents presenting with functional somatic symptoms. The fact sheets provide information about functional somatic symptoms – including their assessment and treatment – from a stress‐system framework. They are used in the context of a family intervention to facilitate engagement with the family and to reduce parental anxiety and reactivity. Whilst the fact sheets were initially developed for parents, over time we found that the sheets were also useful in managing anxiety in the medical and school systems. A key goal of this article is to share this resource with other clinicians working with children/adolescents with functional somatic symptoms.     

I'm going back to work: back injured clients' perceptions and experiences of their worker roles

This study aimed to elicit perceptions and experiences of facilitators and barriers that affected individuals who received back rehabilitation and their ability to resume their worker roles. Qualitative research methods were used in order to explore the research question. Participants were selected by means of simple random sampling and the data were collected by means of semi-structured focus groups. Some factors that were seen as facilitatory in maintaining the worker role of an individual who received back rehabilitation included injury management strategies, a positive work culture and having meaningful/satisfactory work experiences. Factors or barriers that prevented individuals from resuming their worker roles included physical and psychosocial stressors of the job, a lack of education by the employer and inadequate workplace policy. The results indicated that occupational therapists need to reassess their role within the wider context of the helping professions where they should become more involved in on-the-job evaluations, work placements and training of individuals who received back rehabilitation.