Joining up children's services: safeguarding children in multi‐disciplinary teams

In this article we reflect on the complexity and the contested nature of the roles of multi‐disciplinary teams working with children. This is an increasingly important issue in the current UK child welfare policy environment. The article uses the theories of Etienne Wenger to understand data gathered from five multi‐disciplinary teams working with children. We explore key issues relating to location; information sharing; models of understanding; and professional identities. We hope to demonstrate that the teams addressed tensions creatively through their engagement with diversity while at the same time developing common team values. We argue that effective strategies for making multi‐disciplinary teams work will combine inter‐agency issues with internal team‐specific aspects. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Clarifying the merits of argument in evaluation practice

In prior writings, we have explored alternative means of justifying claims in evaluation practice. After a brief review of these previous investigations, we provide an analysis employing Toulmin's (1958) jurisprudence metaphor in the assessment of evaluative arguments. Applications and implications for evaluation practice are discussed.     

Children's services in the UK 1997–2003: problems,developments and challenges for the future

This article reviews developments in children's services since 1997 and considers their effect on children in need by examining government statistics, recent additions to the evidence‐base, and data from two studies conducted by the authors. It shows that there has been extensive service development, mainly beyond the Department of Health, and considerable effort to improve assessment and administrative data. The limits to what can be demonstrably achieved by children's services, particularly in a short period, are acknowledged, and it is argued that the approach of providing predominantly low level interventions to large groups may need re‐thinking if significant and lasting changes to children's development are to be secured. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficient Algorithms for Local Alignment Search

We present efficient algorithms for local alignment search in biological sequences. These algorithms identify maximal segment pairs (MSPs). Our algorithms have the potential of performing better than BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) and also are efficiently parallelizable. We employ Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs). Though several attempts have been made in the past to employ FFTs in sequence analysis, they fail to capture local similarities. Our algorithms employ FFTs in a novel way to identify local similarities. FFT-based techniques have the attractive feature of benefiting from ultrafast special purpose hardware available for digital signal processing.     

Spreading the word ... hospice information systems

The rapid spread of Saunders' thinking across the world has been facilitated by the Hospice Information service and library at St Christopher's Hospice which she helped to create and further enhanced by Help the Hospices. We have set this article in the context of the Web and other information systems as they are developing today. "Connecting people" and "collecting people's experiences" were terms often used by Cicely Saunders when she described the work of Hospice Information, a service that has in some measure contributed to the rapid spread of her thinking across the world and which is currently in close contact with palliative care workers in over 120 countries. Connecting--or networking--putting people and organizations in touch with each other for mutual benefit and collecting and disseminating people's experiences are central to our work as a U.K. and international resource on hospice and palliative care for professionals and the public. Add to these the crucial role of information provision and advocacy for patients, carers, and health professionals alike and we hope that you may begin to appreciate how our respective organizations have contributed to the spread of Cicely Saunders' vision.     

The Reform of Health Policy in China – Left Behind in the Race to Industrialize?

A major programme of health reform was announced in 2009. China is growing fast, and is beginning to engage with the international social policy community to discuss and review the consequences of rapid industrialization. As a specific part of social policy, health policy shares some of the characteristics of a policy area driven by the consequences of industrialization, but it also has its own particular features. This article reviews the general relationship between state and citizens in the health field by way of an introduction before focussing more specifically on Chinese patterns of health inequalities, and the pressures for reform. The 2009 reform of health policy and its dynamics are then presented, and the article concludes that there has been a deterioration in Chinese health policy, which threatens to undermine the benefits of economic growth for Chinese people.     

Translocality,Network Structure,and Music Worlds: Underground Metal in the United Kingdom

Translocal music worlds are often defined as networks of local music worlds. However, their networked character and more especially their network structure is generally assumed rather than concretely mapped and explored. Formal social network analysis (SNA) is beginning to attract interest in music sociology but it has not previously been used to explore a translocal music world. In this paper, drawing upon a survey of the participation of 474 enthusiasts in 148 live music events, spread across 6 localities, we use SNA to explore a significant “slice” of the network structure of the U.K.'s translocal underground heavy metal world. Translocality is generated in a number of ways, we suggest, but one way, the way we focus upon, involves audiences traveling between localities to attend gigs and festivals. Our analysis of this network uncovers a core‐periphery structure which, we further find, maps onto locality. Not all live events enjoy equal standing in our music world and some localities are better placed to capture more prestigious events, encouraging inward travel. The identification of such structures, and the inequality they point to, is, we believe, one of several benefits of using SNA to analyze translocal music worlds.