The role of the voluntary,community and social enterprise sector in Early Help: Critical reflections from embedded social care research

The independent review of children's social care (2022) has proposed a radical reset of England's children's services, shifting a remote, assessment heavy system towards one that works alongside communities to help prevent statutory interventions. However, notions around the harnessing of community resources to deliver Early Help are often underpinned by assumptions regarding the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector and the ease with which such organizations can be integrated into preventative strategies. This paper reports findings from embedded research within a unitary authority in Southwest England during remodelling of its Early Help service to work more collaboratively with local VCSE organizations. The study generated data from ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 95 participants, including local parents, service providers, VCSE organizations and Council leaders. The findings illustrate that families value the compassionate, responsive and flexible support available within many VCSE settings. However, differences in practice cultures, regulatory pressures on statutory providers, the need to (re)build trust in communities and sensitivities around power-sharing and resourcing meant negotiating VCSE sector integration was fraught with complexities. Few studies have gained such privileged access to a Local Authority's remodelling of Early Help services, and this paper has significant insights for the debates surrounding the independent review of children's social care (2022) and its recommendation to bring services ‘closer to communities’.     

Maximum likelihood estimation for the generalized poisson distribution when sample mean is larger than sample variance

The generalized Poisson distribution (GPD), studied by many researchers and containing two parameters θ and λ, has been found to fit very well data sets arising in biological, ecological, social and marketing fields. Consul and Shoukri (1985) have shown that for negative values of λ the GPD gets truncated and the model becomes deficient; however, the truncation error becomes less than 0.0005 if the minimum number of non-zero probability classes ≥ 4 for all values of θ and λ and the GPD model can be safely used in all such cases. The problem of admissible maximum likelihood (ML) estimation when the sample mean is larger than the sample variance is considered in this paper which complements the earlier work of Consul and Shoukri (1984) on the existence of unique ML estimators of θ and λ when the sample mean is smaller than or equal to the sample variance.     

City dwelling wild bees: how communal gardens promote species richness

Urban areas consist of wide expanses of impervious surfaces which are known to negatively affect insect biodiversity in general, but green spaces within cities have the potential to provide necessary habitat and foraging resources. Although, communal gardens were primarily intended to provide fresh, regional food to denizens, these green islands also host a surprisingly high number of wild bee species.

The gardens were characterized based on structural elements such as flower frequency, the relative percentage of lawn, trees, shrubs, planted crops and infrastructure (e.g. seating possibilities or garden houses). Further, the effects of different landscape structures surrounding the gardens and distance to the city center were analyzed on the total wild bee species richness and functional traits. Focusing on these putative influencing factors, statistical analyses calculating random decision forests along with generalized linear mixed models were applied. With 113 observed wild bee species, communal gardens provide habitat for a quarter of all known species in Vienna. In conclusion, results revealed that only elements within the gardens had an effect on species richness, with flower frequency as the major positive driver. The examined communal gardens promote and conserve wild bees independent from the location within the city or garden size. Furthermore, these green patches are important sanctuaries, hosting rare and threatened species as well as remarkably special wild bee communities.

     

Friendship and subjective well-being in Spain: A cross-national comparison with the United States

This paper empirically examines three propositions which are derived from network theory, particularly the relationship between friends' network and happiness level as a subjective well-being indicator. Using friendship network data obtained from 1985 NORC General Social Survey for the U.S., and from 1993 CIRES Social Survey for Spain, a cross-national comparison between Spain and the U.S. was performed. Results are compared with previous major Davis' and Burt's works for the U.S. It was found that there was a significant, strong association between happiness and friends' network size for both countries, and that there was not a great happiness difference between them. However, close friendship has a contrary effect on happiness when data from both countries are compared. Concerning socioeconomic status, happiness increased with income, although this effect was higher in Spain than in the U.S.Financial support for this project was provided by the Department of Sociology, UMA, and University Computer Center. I am indebted to Juan A. Villena and Mary Oliver for helpful comments on early drafts, and to R. Hidalgo for computing assistance.     

MONITORING OF WORKERS AND PRODUCT MARKET COMPETITION: THE ROLE OF WORKS COUNCILS

Often the consent of worker representations, such as works councils, is required before firms are allowed to install technologies that monitor workers' behavior. Absent monitoring, workers produce low output, while at the same time receiving an information rent. To gain the works council's consent to the installation of a monitoring technology, firms need to compensate workers for the lost information rent. Hence, by making it more costly to produce high output, works councils can serve firms as an instrument to commit to low output levels. This provides a rationale for why works council rights are not opposed more strongly by employers. (JEL D43, D86, J83, L13)     

Corporeal Interactions in VRChat: Situational Intensity and Body Synchronization

Erving Goffman's work on interaction in everyday life focuses on joint spatio-temporal and face-to-face situations and denies the constitution of social situations via mediatized interaction. In contrast, we argue that shared immersive media such as Social Virtual Reality enable intense, delocalized forms of co-present interactions that constitute closeness and intimacy. By discussing Goffman in the context of current works that open up his perspective for mediatization, we present an understanding of social situations that focuses on intensity and synchronized embodiment—physical, digital, and corporeal. On the Social VR platform VRChat, synchronized bodies allow for intimate corporeal practices, such as cuddling, dancing, or cybersex. Virtual Reality technology facilitates delocalized forms of affective-bodily interaction, thereby contributing to the social negotiation of mediatized closeness and intimacy—despite physical distance. Our findings are based on a digital ethnographic analysis of lifeworlds and practices of enthusiast VRChat-users, combined with qualitative semi-structured interviews.     

Finance and the Sources of Growth at Various Stages of Economic Development

This article studies the effects of financial development on the sources of growth in different groups of countries. Recent theoretical work shows that financial development may affect productivity and capital accumulation in different ways in industrial versus developing countries. This hypothesis is tested with panel data from 74 countries using GMM dynamic panel techniques. Results are consistent with the hypothesis: finance has a strong positive influence on productivity growth primarily in more developed economies. In less developed economies, the effect of finance on output growth occurs primarily through capital accumulation.