What do Care Managers do?--A Study of Working Practice in Older Peoples' Services

Correspondence to A. Weinberg, School of Community Health Sciences and Social Care, University of Salford, Allerton Building, Frederick Rd Campus, Salford, Greater Manchester M6 6PU, UK. Summary This paper explores the principal activities of local authoritystaff undertaking the role of care manager. It is based on asample of staff in a social services department specializingin older people's services. Data were obtained by asking staffto complete a diary schedule in which thirty-four job relatedactivities were grouped into five broad categories on the basisof previous research. A 57 per cent response rate was achieved.Analysis of the data revealed several findings of note. First,excluding travel, care managers spent 64 per cent of their workingweek in direct and indirect user and carer related activities.Second, administrative tasks occupied 32 per cent of their time.Third, care managers spent 27 per cent of their time in assessmentactivities compared with 7 per cent in monitoring and reviewingactivities and 5 per cent in counselling and support. Fourth,care managers spent 4 per cent of their time liaising with healthstaff. These findings are discussed in the light of previousresearch and a shift is noted in the nature of the direct contactwith the service user. The methodological limitations of thestudy are explored and the implications of these findings forusers and carers and the development of care management arrangementsare discussed.     

Civility Proxies and Social Tolerance in American Marketplaces

Acknowledging the wide–ranging possibilities for diversity in commercial and retail environments, researchers and scholars have long asked the familiar questions of "public for whom" and "public for what," understanding how much social tolerance in public space is commonly and informally negotiated by its users. Private interests have long played a strong role in controlling behavior in publicly used commercial spaces, and one of the most visible forms of such control has been the appearance of posted signs and notices throughout America's marketplaces that exhort people to be nice and to act appropriately—to clean up after themselves, to give (or not give) donations or tips, to not solicit, or to refrain from loitering. Such civility proxies have the potential to circumvent the public, face–to–face responsibility for and engagement with civility, and may likewise subvert the mutual trust and presumption of equality that civility can promote. Tolerance of diversity in public, therefore, may be impeded when the policing of civility is usurped by entities that are not direct public space participants. This article proposes that when public civility is dictated by signs–as–proxies instead of by the general public, the public realm's civility negotiation process that promotes social tolerance can be undermined by private interests.     

The Social Mobility of Women: a Causal Model of Socioeconomic Success*

This paper extends the analysis of socioeconomic achievement initiated by Blau and Duncan and subsequently developed by both Jencks and Rainwater. The major extensions are the specification of models for female heads of household in the labor force and the inclusion of several previously neglected predictors of socioeconomic achievement including some which require panel data. Our analysis suggests that a different model is needed for females than for males and that a different model is needed for black females than for white females. The evidence also suggests that the socioeconomic success of women is more fixed by background, education, and occupational factors, and is less a function of individual ability than is the case for men. The evidence supporting this conclusion is particularly compelling for black women.     

Alternative fuels for automobiles—The medium-term realities

The purpose of this article is to clarify the medium-term alternative fuels available as a serious proposition for the future development of the automobile. The recent past has shown that a political oil supply crisis might arise at any time and Government energy planners need to consider all the options for reducing our almost total dependence on petrol and developing the widening range of fuels now becoming available.     

Prevention and treatment of osteoporosis in women

Osteoporosis affects one in three women. There has been some confusion among women and health professionals about the management of osteoporosis since the publication of the Women's Health Initiative and Million Women studies. This guidance regarding estrogen-based and non-estrogen-based treatments for osteoporosis responds to the controversies about the benefits and risks of individual agents. Treatment choice should be based on up-to-date evidence and targeted to individual women's needs.     

Change agents or defending the status quo? How senior leaders frame workplace gender equality

Senior leaders are usually understood to be ideally positioned to drive the organizational changes needed to promote workplace gender equality. Yet seniority also influences leaders' values and attitudes, and how they interpret evidence of inequalities, determine organizational priorities, and design and implement remedies. This article examines leaders' perceptions of workplace gender equality using system justification theory to explain survey data from Australia's public sector (n = 2292). Multivariate analysis indicates that male and female leaders more positively rate the gender equality climate in their agencies, compared with lower-level staff, and that male leaders show most propensity to defend the status quo. Findings call into question the effectiveness of change strategies that rely on leadership and buy-in of those whose privilege is embedded in existing arrangements, and problematize dominant organizational approaches casting senior leaders as effective change agents for gender equality. The article helps to explain gendered power dynamics, which produce and sustain organizational inequalities and make workplace equality so hard to achieve, and points to ways to strengthen practical approaches to promote equality in organizations.     

Work and rest in the long-distance road transport industry in Australia

Abstract

To date management of fatigue in professional drivers has largely focused on strategies that limit the amount of time spent on the job. These approaches have, however, not taken into account the well-documented effect of time of day. Consequently, the likely impact of the pattern and timing of work and rest has received little attention. The results revealed that the group of drivers who did the shortest trips and worked the shortest weekly hours were the lowest reporters of fatigue, although longer hours were not always associated with the highest reporting of fatigue. In contrast, the shortest working hours were associated with earliest onset of fatigue. For all drivers, the influence of circadian rhythms was evident in the occurrence of fatigue, with better management of the problem evident among drivers who were able to arrange the timing of rest to more closely coincide with periods of fatigue. Thus, time of day appeared to be a more important influence in determining effective rest than did period of work. These findings raise questions about the validity of the assumption underlying work hour regulations for long-distance drivers which, currently, are universally based on duration of work.     

Bayesian Alternatives to the F Test for Two Population Variances

Bayesian alternatives to the classical F test comparing two population variances are explored. Shoemaker (2003 Shoemaker , L. H. ( 2003 ). Fixing the F test for equal variances . The Amer. Statistician 57 : 105 – 114 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) suggested two adjustments to the F test due to it being very sensitive to the normal assumption of the two populations. A simulation study is performed to compare the Bayesian alternatives to the F test and Shoemaker's adjusted F tests as well as to the Levene/Brown–Forsythe and the squared rank nonparametric tests. The Bayesian alternatives assume a normal parent distribution and non informative priors and the conjugate prior for the variances; in addition, an exponential power distribution is considered as the parent distribution with a non informative prior for the variances. The latter looks to be very promising provided that a suitable value of a parameter which measures the extent of non normality is chosen.