Background: The UK government is advocating the use of supported employment to help people on incapacity benefits back to work, with an emphasis on Individual Placement and Support (IPS) models. However there is little UK-based evidence on the key ingredients of effective support. Aim: To ascertain service users' views of what they found helpful about supported employment. Method: Interviews were carried out with 182 people with severe and enduring mental health problems who were actively engaged with one of the six supported employment agencies included in the study. Results: Three themes emerged: emotional support, practical assistance and a client-centred approach. Conclusion:The findings highlight the importance of the quality of support, particularly through interpersonal dynamics, which go beyond the organizational features emphasized in the IPS model. Declaration of interest:The study was financed from Higher Education European Social Fund Objective 3 resources and the six partner agencies made contributions in kind.

This study is the only comprehensive survey to date of the text communication preferences of deaf people who cannot or prefer not to use voice telephony in the United Kingdom. Respondents covered a wide age range, became deaf or hard of hearing at different ages, and had different communication preferences. Generally, respondents used several forms of text communication, selecting them for particular purposes. E-mail was the most widely used form of text communication, but SMS was the most used by younger respondents. The most prominent reasons for liking different forms of text communication were that they were easy or fast. Older respondents were more likely to give "not knowing how to" as a reason for not using particular forms of communication and would have liked more information about what text communication is available.

This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. allocation of funding to meet their needs, to discuss conditions and implications of personalisation policies within different contexts. Based on a theoretical framework exploring a democratic and a market discourse of personalisation policies the article provides a comparative analysis of the Norwegian and English cash-for-care schemes. While a crucial common change in the public sector's role towards at arm's length long-term-care services occurred, significant differences remain: while English residents are given greater choice and control from the beginning of the allocation of cash-for-care they also face more insecure circumstances due to the simultaneously stimulated care provider market. The Norwegian case, however, shows a possibility of increasing choice and control without a large diversity in a care provider market. Permanent repository link

User participation has become one of the most important concepts in the social care sector in many European countries, but the literature has mostly paid attention to disabled people or those with mental health problems. This article compares the user participation policies directed at social care for older people in Norway and England. Using a discourse analytical approach, a selection primarily of White papers from the 1960s until today are analysed. The analysis draws on the literature's discourse discussion, including a democratic/rights based discourse (full citizenship), a consumer discourse (consumers’ rights to choose welfare services), a co-production discourse (users and state/local authorities partnerships), and nuances of these discourses. The analysis shows that, while both countries start with variations of a democratic discourse, Norway develops a temporary and weak consumer discourse in a middle phase, then moves to co-production in current times. England, on the other hand, develops a comprehensive consumer discourse but also a surprisingly strong co-production discourse – the idea of a ‘Big Society’ – in early and current times.

Longitudinal data contained in the National Child Development Study (NCDS) cohort was used in a Department of Education and Science (DES) funded investigation of whether changes of school adversely affect children's attainment and behaviour. There have been a number of studies which have investigated these effects but the results have been conflicting and confusing. Recently a series of major studies has shown that it may be especially dangerous to draw conclusions based on expost fucto data in this field. This research note discusses some aspects of the research methodology adopted in this study to overcome the deficiences of some of the earlier mobility projects. The findings, based on a series of multivariate analyses, support the view that differences in the academic attainment of children who change school generally existed prior to the move.