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This chapter offers information on social work education in Great Britain. In Britain it will only take two years to become a qualified social worker. Despite considerable lobbying from within the profession and outside, culminating in a proposal for a three-year training period put forward in 1987, the government refused to extend the length of basic training for social workers. The Diploma in Social Work is the professional qualification for all social workers in Great Britain and for probation officers in Northern Ireland. Diploma in Social Work programs are based at universities and colleges of higher education. As with most other courses of study, students have the option of full-time or part-time study, or they can gain the social work qualification at home through a distance learning program. All social services departments have a training plan, which has to be submitted to the Department of Health who then allocate a Training Support Grant for social services staff to each local authority in Great Britain. Training plans have to be developed after a training needs analysis, of individual staff, of staff groups and of the needs of the service as a whole. Training is a good way of stretching boundaries, therefore, social services should take a responsibility for making sure that training takes place locally across sectors and that staff from different agencies, including the independent sector, are able to participate in programs.

As the number of disasters and crises affecting the tourism industry increases, it is becoming necessary to understand the nature of these disasters and how to manage and limit the impacts of such incidents. This paper defines crises and disasters before discussing the area of crisis communication management and crisis communication in the tourism industry. The paper then applies the foot and mouth disease (FMD) which occurred in the United Kingdom to crisis communication theory at a national level (by examining the response of the British Tourist Authority) and at a local level (by examining the response of a District Council). The response was limited in part because of a lack of preparedness, but also due to the nature of the foot and mouth outbreak, and the speed and severity of international media coverage. Action was taken in the emergency phase of the crisis and was reactive involving inconsistency in developing key messages to stakeholders, partly due to confusion and a lack of information at the national level. Recovery marketing was also limited due to the length of time of the disease outbreak. This paper provides lessons for destinations and organisations are discussed which may help develop crisis communication strategies for tourism organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the establishment of social work within primary health care settings in Great Britain, following the passage of the National Health Service and Community Care Act in 1990. Although the improvement of relationships between social workers and primary health care teams has been promoted for a number of years, the advent of formal policies for community care has made this a priority for both social services and health. This paper presents interim findings from the evaluation of three pilot projects in Nottinghamshire, Great Britain. These findings are analysed from three linked perspectives. The first is the extent to which structures and organisations have worked effectively together to promote the location of social workers within health care settings. The second is the impact of professional and cultural factors on the work of the social worker in these settings. The third is the effect of interpersonal relationships on the success of the project. The paper will conclude that there is significant learning from each of these perspectives which can be applied to the future location of social workers to primary health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the press in Great Britain. The press is still a vital force in Great Britain. Despite expanding radio and television, a deep recession, and the long list of failed ventures, newspapers retain enough social and political importance for new titles to be started. In mid-1992, for instance, there was a sudden expansion of the regional Sunday paper market. Eleven weekday morning papers have national coverage; there are regional morning papers covering Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and parts of England, as well as local evening and morning papers, local weekly paid-for papers and local weekly free papers. "Tabloid" papers fall into two groups: the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and Today are often referred to as "mid-market" papers, serving people with middle incomes. Although livelier typographically than the broadsheets, they contain longer and more complex news and feature items than the Sun, the Daily Mirror/Daily Record and the Daily Star. Broadcasting in Great Britain whether publicly or commercially funded, is required to be "impartial," that is, not to take an overtly political editorial stance.

This chapter examines the issues of state or party control, notably the secrecy of the ballot in the electoral process in Great Britain. People's votes are secret at the point of voting but the administration of the ballot allows the authorities to make retrospective checks on how individual people voted an official provision which may be open to abuse. The registration number of everyone voting is recorded on the counterfoil of their ballot paper. After the local count, the counterfoils and ballot papers, bearing each person's vote, are sealed in parcels and dispatched to the care of the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery and kept at a secure location in Greater London. Thus, it is possible for the authorities to identify who any one individual has voted for and perhaps more pertinently which individuals have voted for any particular candidate. There are several ways in which the government of the day has an advantage over the other political parties contesting an election. There must be an election every five years but the current Prime Minister can choose when it falls within that period. The Prime Minister can also decide the length of the campaign period. By convention, governments contemplating major changes at local level were bound to set up an independent commission and to undertake substantial consultation, seeking to base change at least on the legitimacy of a broad political consensus.

This article focuses on the issue of mediation in divorce settlement in Great Britain. Mediation is a process intended to enable couples themselves to decide, subject to their right to independent legal advice, to resolve or minimise the issues in dispute between them. In December 1993 the government issued a consultative Green Paper on divorce reform and mediation. This was followed in 1995 by a White Paper. These documents were precursors of the present Family Law Bill. The Family Law Bill envisages divorce on the basis of a divorce order or a separation order after a period of one year for reflection and consideration. The bill provides a power for the court after it has received the statement of marital breakdown to direct the parties to attend a meeting explaining mediation and provide them with an opportunity to make use of mediation. Mediation organisations are anxious to ensure that the government provides funding for mediation so that it is universally available. Such funding seems unlikely unless it is diverted from the money currently used to fund legal aid.

This chapter examines the opportunities and problems associated with adopting information and communications technologies networks in the British National Health Service. To focus the analysis, the paper considers the practical implications of networking in primary care--where the greatest volume of healthcare is provided--and adopts an economic perspective to analyse current developments. General Practitioners are currently having to make decisions about linking their practices to networks, and the central role of General Practitioners in healthcare means that the success of networks will stand or fall on the decisions they take. So this paper considers a situation where networks are not yet available, and people have to make decisions about designing and joining them. The next section provides some contextual background about the National Health Service. The following section considers the key relationships that General Practitioners have with patients and other actors, and identifies some of the potential costs and benefits to General Practitioners of joining networks. The chapter then moves to a different perspective, and examines the benefits that networks may bring to General Practitioners and other users, drawing on the network economics literature. The final section outlines the main economic issues that will influence the course of developments in the National Health Service over the next few years.

The development of package tourism has been a significant feature in the post-war expansion of tourism. The package tour provides many benefits to both travelers and tourism service groups and has become one of rite greatest influences in the travel and tourism industry. This paper provides a comparative profile of package and non-package travelers from the United Kingdom. The profiles were developed using sociodemographics, travel characteristics, and information sources. In contrast to earlier studies on packaged vacations, travel philosophy, benefit sought, and product preference were included to understand the choice and decision-making patterns of package and non-package travelers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on research methods courses at diploma level. One is not required to carry out a piece of research involving the collection of new data. The critical analysis of a research paper should draw upon all the skills and knowledge of the research process. Thus the authors' credentials should be borne in mind: are their qualifications and experience appropriate to the topic being researched? Was the study carried out in Great Britain or the U.S. or somewhere else, and is this relevant to professional practice? There is a huge variety of research journals that publish health-related material and they vary in quality, especially in the processes or standards of peer review that are applied to articles submitted for publication by researchers. The better known and international journals--such as the British Medical Journal, the Journal of Advanced Nursing or the Journal of the American Medical Association to name but a few--generally apply rigorous standards of review of articles submitted. One should not automatically assume, however, that because a research paper appears in a prestigious journal that it is necessarily true or beyond reproach and should also consider who it was that funded the study; funding organizations range from charities, research councils and local sources to commercial companies such as drug and appliance manufacturers.