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Residents of older people's homes furnish their rooms with belongings that are associated with meaningful relationships. Previous research shows how material culture symbolises residents' past and existing relationships, helping residents to remain embedded within familial and social networks. Less attention has been paid to how relationships are actively (re)constituted through socio-material interactions, and to the potential for objects to facilitate new relationships. This article presents findings from an ethnographic study into the everyday experiences of residents of an older people's home in northern England. Using observations of daily life and in-depth interviews with residents, it demonstrates how residents used material culture in gift-giving, divestment practices and in mundane social interactions. In this way, residents used objects to not only maintain relationships with family members outside the home, but form new relationships inside the home with other residents and members of staff. Combining theories of materiality, relationality and social practice, I argue that residents' interactions with material culture helped to facilitate new social interaction and meaningful relationships. This is important in a social context where loneliness has been identified as a significant threat to residents' mental and physical health. Residential homes for older people can develop guidance on practical activities and strategies that can use material culture to increase social interaction and enhance quality of life for residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Residential homes encourage new residents to bring belongings with them, so that they can personalise their room and ‘feel at home’. Existing literature on material culture in residential homes views objects as symbols and repositories of home and identity, which can facilitate a sense of belonging in residents through their display in residents' rooms. I suggest that this both misunderstands the processual and fluid nature of home and identity, and conceptualises objects as essentially passive. This article uses ethnographic data and theories of practice and relationality to argue that rather than the meaning of home being inherent in objects, or felt subjectively by residents, meaning is generated through ongoing, everyday interactions between the two. I show that residents became at home by acquiring new things –as well as displaying existing possessions – and also through interacting with mundane objects in everyday social and relational practices such as cleaning and hosting. I conclude that being at home in older people's residential homes need not be so different from being at home at other stages of the life course and in other settings. This challenges conceptualisations of older people's homes – and older age itself – as somehow unknowable and unfamiliar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The harmful effects of heavy drinking on health have been widely reported, yet public opinion on governmental responsibility for alcohol control remains divided. This study examines UK public attitudes towards alcohol policies, identifies underlying dimensions that inform these, and relationships with perceived effectiveness. A cross-sectional mixed methods study involving a telephone survey of 3477 adult drinkers aged 16–65 and sixteen focus groups with 89 adult drinkers in Scotland and England was conducted between September 2012 and February 2013. Principal components analysis (PCA) was used to reduce twelve policy statements into underlying dimensions. These dimensions were used in linear regression models examining alcohol policy support by demographics, drinking behaviour and perceptions of UK drinking and government responsibility. Findings were supplemented with a thematic analysis of focus group transcripts. A majority of survey respondents supported all alcohol policies, although the level of support varied by type of policy. Greater enforcement of laws on under-age sales and more police patrolling the streets were strongly supported while support for pricing policies and restricting access to alcohol was more divided. PCA identified four main dimensions underlying support on policies: alcohol availability, provision of health information and treatment services, alcohol pricing, and greater law enforcement. Being female, older, a moderate drinker, and holding a belief that government should do more to reduce alcohol harms were associated with higher support on all policy dimensions. Focus group data revealed findings from the survey may have presented an overly positive level of support on all policies due to differences in perceived policy effectiveness. Perceived effectiveness can help inform underlying patterns of policy support and should be considered in conjunction with standard measures of support in future research on alcohol control policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims The concept of national drinking culture is well established in research and policy debate, but rarely features in contemporary alcohol policy analysis. We aim to demonstrate the value of the alternative concept of social practices for quantitatively operationalizing drinking culture. We discuss how a practice perspective addresses limitations in existing analytical approaches to health-related behaviour before demonstrating its empirical application by constructing a statistical typology of British drinking occasions. Design Cross-sectional latent class analysis of drinking occasions derived from retrospective 1-week drinking diaries obtained from quota samples of a market research panel. Occasions are periods of drinking with no more than 2 hours between drinks. Setting Great Britain, 2009-11. Cases A total of 187 878 occasions nested within 60 215 nationally representative adults (aged 18 + years). Measurements Beverage type and quantity per occasion; location, company and gender composition of company; motivation and reason for occasion; day, start-time and duration of occasion; and age, sex and social grade. Findings Eight occasion types are derived based primarily on parsimony considerations rather than model fit statistics. These are mixed location heavy drinking (10.4% of occasions), heavy drinking at home with a partner (9.4%), going out with friends (11.1%), get-together at someone's house (14.4%), going out for a meal (8.6%), drinking at home alone (13.6%), light drinking at home with family (12.8%) and light drinking at home with a partner (19.6%). Conclusions An empirical model of drinking culture, comprising a typology of drinking practices, reveals the dominance of moderate drinking practices in Great Britain. The model demonstrates the potential for a practice perspective to be used in evaluation of how and why drinking cultures change in response to public health interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims To explore how the concept of lay epidemiology can enhance understandings of how drinkers make sense of current UK drinking guidelines. Methods Qualitative study using 12 focus groups in four sites in northern England and four sites in central Scotland. Participants were 66 male and female drinkers, aged between 19 and 65 years, of different socio-economic backgrounds. Data were analysed thematically using a conceptual framework of lay epidemiology. Results Current drinking guidelines were perceived as having little relevance to participants' drinking behaviours and were generally disregarded. Daily guidelines were seen as irrelevant by drinkers whose drinking patterns comprised heavy weekend drinking. The amounts given in the guidelines were seen as unrealistic for those motivated to drink for intoxication, and participants measured alcohol intake in numbers of drinks or containers rather than units. Participants reported moderating their drinking, but this was out of a desire to fulfil work and family responsibilities, rather than concerns for their own health. The current Australian and Canadian guidelines were preferred to UK guidelines, as they were seen to address many of the above problems. Conclusions Drinking guidelines derived from, and framed within, solely epidemiological paradigms lack relevance for adult drinkers who monitor and moderate their alcohol intake according to their own knowledge and risk perceptions derived primarily from experience. Insights from lay epidemiology into how drinkers regulate and monitor their drinking should be used in the construction of drinking guidelines to enhance their credibility and efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While previous research has suggested that health care assistants supporting palliative care work in the community regard the provision of emotional labour as a key aspect of their role, little research has explored the experiences of family carers who are the recipients of such support. Objective: To explore the emotional labour undertaken by health care assistants working in community palliative care from the perspectives of both health care assistants and bereaved family carers. Design: We conducted a qualitative interview study in 2011-2012 with bereaved family carers of cancer patients who had received the services of health care assistants in the community, and health care assistants who provided community palliative care services. Transcripts were coded and analysed for emergent themes using a constant comparative technique. Settings: Three different research sites in the United Kingdom, all providing community palliative care. Participants and methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 33 bereaved family carers and eight health care assistants. Results: Health care assistants view one of their key roles as providing emotional support to patients and their family carers, and family carers recognise and value this emotional support. Emotional support by health care assistants was demonstrated in three main ways: the relationships which health care assistants developed and maintained on the professional-personal boundary; the ability of health care assistants to negotiate clinical/domestic boundaries in the home; the ways in which health care assistants and family carers worked together to enable the patient to die at home. Conclusion: Through their emotional labour, health care assistants perform an important role in community palliative care which is greatly valued by family carers. While recent reports have highlighted potential dangers in the ambiguity of their role, any attempts to clarify the 'boundaries' of the health care assistant role should acknowledge the advantages health care assistants can bring in bridging potential gaps between healthcare professionals and family carers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malnutrition is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality, particularly among older people. Attention has focused on the inadequacies of food provision in institutions, yet the majority suffering from malnutrition live in the community. The aim of this study was to explore barriers and facilitators to food provision for older people receiving home care. It was a qualitative exploratory study using semi-structured interviews with nine home-care workers in June 2013 employed by independent agencies in a large city in northern England. Data were analysed thematically, based on the principles of grounded theory. Findings showed that significant time pressures limited home-care workers in their ability to socially engage with service users at mealtimes, or provide them with anything other than ready meals. Enabling choice was considered more important than providing a healthy diet, but choice was limited by food availability and reliance on families for shopping. Despite their knowledge of service users and their central role in providing food, home-care workers received little nutritional training and were not involved by healthcare professionals in the management of malnutrition. Despite the rhetoric of individual choice and importance of social engagement and nutrition for health and well-being, nutritional care has been significantly compromised by cuts to social care budgets. The potential role for home-care workers in promoting good nutrition in older people is undervalued and undermined by the lack of recognition, training and time dedicated to food-related care. This has led to a situation whereby good quality food and enjoyable mealtimes are denied to many older people on the basis that they are unaffordable luxuries rather than an integral component of fundamental care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Public knowledge of the association between alcohol and cancer is reported to be low. We aimed to provide up-to-date evidence for England regarding awareness of the link between alcohol and different cancers and to determine whether awareness differs by demographic characteristics, alcohol use, and geographic region.Methods: A representative sample of 2100 adults completed an online survey in July 2015. Respondents were asked to identify which health outcomes, including specific cancers, may be caused by alcohol consumption. Logistic regressions explored whether demographic, alcohol use, and geographic characteristics predicted correctly identifying alcohol-related cancer risk.Results: Unprompted, 12.9% of respondents identified cancer as a potential health outcome of alcohol consumption. This rose to 47% when prompted (compared to 95% for liver disease and 73% for heart disease). Knowledge of the link between alcohol and specific cancers varied between 18% (breast) and 80% (liver). Respondents identified the following cancers as alcohol-related where no such evidence exists: bladder (54%), brain (32%), ovarian (17%). Significant predictors of awareness of the link between alcohol and cancer were being female, more highly educated, and living in North-East England.Conclusion: There is generally low awareness of the relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer, particularly breast cancer. Greater awareness of the relationship between alcohol and breast cancer in North-East England, where a mass media campaign highlighted this relationship, suggests that population awareness can be influenced by social marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]