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’.     

Daily moods,health routines and recovery among employees working in the retail and services sector: A diary study

This study examined the quality and fluctuation of daily moods as well as health routines and means of recovery from work strain among employees (n = 38) working nonstandard, often unpredictable schedules in the retail and services sector in Finland. Data were collected via a background questionnaire and a one-week mobile diary. The results indicated that the daily moods of employees were relatively positive but varied greatly from day to day. Hectic working days, unpredictable changes in work schedules, and compounded responsibilities at home and work were reported as causes of daily strain stemming from work. In contrast, more sleep and exercise were positively associated with daily mood and, therefore, are likely to enhance recovery from work related strain. Additional activities employees reported as useful in recovering from work strain included low-effort leisure activities along with social activities with family and friends, as well as mastery experiences stemming from successful work experiences.     

第三部门及其与相关部门比较释义

第三部门是指以服务公众为宗旨,不以营利为目的,其所得不分配给内部成员,其自身具有合法的免税资格和提供捐赠人减免税的合法地位的组织.该文重点分析了第三部门的特征以及第三部门概念与非营利部门、中介组织和事业单位等概念之间的关系以及区别,同时针对第三部门当前的状况和存在的问题,应该完善法律,放松规制;依法管理,依法监督;提高人员素质,改善经营管理等措施,以便加深对我国第三部门的再认识,促进我国第三部门健康稳定的发展.     

Intersectoral Labor Mobility and the Growth of the Service Sector

One of the most striking changes in the U.S. economy over the past 50 years has been the growth in the service sector. Between 1950 and 2000, service‐sector employment grew from 57 to 75 percent of total employment. However, over this time, the real hourly wage in the service sector grew only slightly faster than in the goods sector. In this paper, we assess whether or not the essential constancy of the relative wage implies that individuals face small costs of switching sectors, and we quantify the relative importance of labor supply and demand factors in the growth of the service sector. We specify and estimate a two‐sector labor market equilibrium model that allows us to address these empirical issues in a unified framework. Our estimates imply that there are large mobility costs: output in both sectors would have been double their current levels if these mobility costs had been zero. In addition, we find that demand‐side factors, that is, technological change and movements in product and capital prices, were responsible for the growth of the service sector.     

A Bootstrap Mechanism for Response Masking in Remote Analysis Systems

National Statistical Agencies and other data custodian agencies hold a wealth of data regarding individuals and organizations, collected from censuses, surveys and administrative sources. In many cases, these data are made available to external researchers, for the investigation of questions of social and economic importance. To enhance access to this information, several national statistical agencies are developing remote analysis systems (RAS) designed to accept queries from a researcher, run them on data held in a secure environment, and then return the results. RAS prevent a researcher from accessing the underlying data, and most rely on manual checking to ensure the responses have acceptably low disclosure risk. However, the need for scalability and consistency will increasingly require automated methods. We propose a RAS output confidentialization procedure based on statistical bootstrapping that automates disclosure control while achieving a provably good balance between disclosure risk and usefulness of the responses. The bootstrap masking mechanism is easy to implement for most statistical queries, yet the characteristics of the bootstrap distribution assure us that it is also effective in providing both useful responses and low disclosure risk. Interestingly, our proposed bootstrap masking mechanism represents an ideal application of Efron's bootstrap—one that takes advantage of all the theoretical properties of the bootstrap, without ever having to construct the bootstrap distribution.