Regulation of labour market intermediaries and the role of social partners in preventing trafficking of labour

This report aims to contribute to the development of a best practice guide for public authorities on monitoring and enforcing rules and regulations relevant to labour market intermediaries to prevent trafficking for labour exploitation. The report brings together research findings on two main areas: how labour market intermediaries are regulated by public authorities in the different Member States, and to what extent social partners’ activities contribute to preventing trafficking for the purpose of labour exploitation. The main focus of the report is on trafficking for the purpose of labour exploitation and does not cover trafficking for sexual exploitation. The report is based on information provided by Eurofound’s network of European correspondents across all 28 EU Member States and Norwa

Information Effects and Mass Support for EU Policy Control

The European Union, it is often noted, suffers from a democracy deficit. Most critiques of EU democracy focus on problems of institutional design, such as the distance between the European public and the EU policy-making bodies, or behavioral factors like participation in European Parliament elections. However, democracy also requires an active and informed citizenry. In this paper, we examine the impact of an informed public on support for European-level policy competencies. Is public skepticism of EU authority shaped by a lack of knowledge, or are preferences over the locus of policy control unbiased by information? Our analysis of mass preferences for policy control over 27 issue areas reveals that, in every case, a paucity of knowledge about the EU depresses popular support for European policy jurisdiction. Further analyses show that possessing of information about Europe affects supports for EU control in issue areas clearly involving cross-border or regional problems rather than areas associated with the Single Marke

The introduction of “Safety Science” into an undergraduate nursing programme at a large university in the United Kingdom

Implementing safety science {a term adopted by the authors which incorporates both patient safety and human factors (Sherwood, G. (2011). Integrating quality and safety science in nursing education and practice. Journal of Research in Nursing, 16(3), 226-240. doi: 10.1177/1744987111400960)} into healthcare programmes is a major challenge facing healthcare educators worldwide (National Advisory Group on the Safety of Patients in England, 2013; World Health Organisation, 2009). Patient safety concerns relating to human factors have been well-documented over the years, and the root cause(s) of as many as 65-80% of these events are linked to human error (Dunn et al., 2007; Reason, 2005). This paper will describe how safety science education was embedded into a pre-registration nursing programme at a large UK university. The authors argue that the processes described in this paper, may be successfully applied to other pre-registration healthcare programmes in addition to nursing. ©2016 by De Gruyter

Commissioning for better outcomes in mental health care: testing Alliance Contracting as an enabling framework

Purpose Commissioning has been a central plank of health and social are policy in England for many years now, yet there are still debates about how effective it is in delivering improvements in care and outcomes. Social inclusion of people with experience of mental health is one of the goals that commissioners would like to help services to improve but such a complex outcome for people can often be undermined by contractual arrangements that fragment service responses rather than deliver holistic support. In this paper we discuss a form of commissioning, Alliance Contracting, and how it has been allied with a Social Inclusion Outcomes Framework (SIOF)in Stockport to begin to improve services and outcomes. Design/methodology/approach The paper is a conceptual discussion and case description of the use of Alliance Contracts to improve recovery services and social inclusion in mental health care in one locality. Findings The paper finds that the Alliance Contracting approach fits well with the SIOF and is beginning to deliver some promising results in terms of improving services Research limitations/implications This is a case study of one area and, as such, it is hard to generalise beyond that. Practical implications The paper discusses a promising approach for commissioners to develop locally to guide service improvements and better social inclusion outcomes for people. Originality/value This is the first paper to set out the use of alliance contracting and social inclusion measures to help improve services and outcomes for people experiencing mental health problem

The Discovery of a Giant H-alpha Filament in NGC 7213

The nearby Seyfert galaxy NGC 7213 has been imaged in H-alpha and HI with the CTIO 1.5 m telescope and with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), respectively. Optically NGC 7213 looks undisturbed and relatively featureless but the continuum-subtracted H-alpha image shows a 19 kpc long filament located approximately 18.6 kpc from the nucleus. The H-alpha filament could be neutral gas photo-ionized by the active nucleus, as has been suggested for the Seyfert galaxy NGC 5252, or shock-ionized by a jet interacting with the surrounding HI, as has been suggested for the radio galaxy PKS 2240-41. The HI map reveals NGC 7213 to be a highly disturbed system suggesting a past merging event.Comment: 14 pages including 4 figures and 1 table. Figures 1-4 are in jpeg format; Better quality images can be retrieved in postscript format at ftp://charon.nmsu.edu/pub/shameed/ ; Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Running up Blueberry Hill: Prototyping whole body interaction in harmony space

Musical harmony is considered to be one of the most abstract and technically difficult parts of music. It is generally taught formally via abstract, domain-specific concepts, principles, rules and heuristics. By contrast, when harmony is represented using an existing interactive desktop tool, Harmony Space, a new, parsimonious, but equivalently expressive, unified level of description emerges. This focuses not on abstract concepts, but on concrete locations, objects, areas and trajectories. This paper presents a design study of a prototype version of Harmony Space driven by whole body navigation, and characterizes the new opportunities presented for the principled manipulation of chord sequences and bass lines. These include: deeper engagement and directness; rich physical cues for memory and reflection, embodied engagement with rhythmic time constraints; hands which are free for other simultaneous activities (such as playing a traditional instrument); and qualitatively new possibilities for collaborative use