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The Scottish Government has taken steps to revolutionise its body of law on 'trust and succession' and housing. The recent Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Act 2024 has severally impacted the issues of appointment and removal of trustees, fiduciary duties of trustees, rights of beneficiaries, and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investments in Scotland; while the proposed new Housing (Scotland) Bill 2024 has the proclivity of influencing rent, rent control areas, eviction and homelessness in Scotland. Accordingly, this paper focuses on exploring the potential impacts of these legislative reforms on the lives of the Scottish people. Do they 'make' or 'mar' the proprietary rights of the Scottish people? Are all the provisions useful to Scotland's rental market? Will the proposed 'ask and act' approach address homelessness in Scotland? This paper will also be important to jurisdictions that may intend to modernise their property law and housing regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents summaries of various papers related to dermatology. One paper aims to compare the prevalence of naevi in schoolchildren in Australia and Scotland and examine the relationship between naevus prevalence and sun exposure. Schoolchildren, aged 13-15 years, from 5 schools in Glasgow, Scotland, and 2 schools in Brisbane, California, were enrolled in the study. Another paper focuses on community/hospital action on scabies management. This paper analyzes the case histories of children referred in a two year period to try to identify new approaches for better management of this condition.

Social work in the twenty-first century is maturing as a global profession. This comparative study offers an original contribution to the evolving discussion in the field of international social work. The paper makes visible the socio-spatial dimensions and contested interpretations of international and indigenous knowledge through the experiences of social work students in the Global South and Global North. Drawing on findings from an online survey completed by undergraduate and postgraduate Nigerian and Scottish social work students (n  = 142), the paper provides insights into the students' experiences, expectations and perceived challenges. The Nigerian students critiqued the international (Western) knowledge informing their learning and practice, questioned the absence of indigenous knowledge and were aware of the importance, and challenges, of working with cultural diversity. The Scottish students showed little criticality of the Western (local) knowledge underpinning their learning and practice, did not prioritise learning about international social work and highlighted tensions between working with a culture of neoliberalism and social work values and social justice. We call for raising awareness of the epistemological foundations of what is included/excluded in curriculum and why, making the 'local' visible through re-balancing and contextualising the use of international and indigenous knowledge within social work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Annual Scientific Meeting of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland takes place this year at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, Glasgow, UK (13th-15th May 2009), under the presidency of Professor Michael Horrocks. To view the abstracts from this meeting, please click the pdf link on this page. Copyright © 2009 British Journal of Surgery Society Ltd. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Annual Scientific Meeting of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland takes place this year at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, Glasgow, UK (13th-15th May 2009), under the presidency of Professor Michael Horrocks. To view the abstracts from this meeting, please click the pdf link on this page. Copyright © 2009 British Journal of Surgery Society Ltd. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 41st Annual Scientific Meeting of the Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland was held in Edinburgh, UK 22nd - 24th November 2006. The prize abstracts from this meeting are published in the print edition of BJS (vol 94: issue 2, February 2007). To view all other abstracts from this meeting, please click the pdf link on this page. Copyright © 2007 British Journal of Surgery Society Ltd. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the implementation of the 'Prevent Duty' in Scotland. Using archival research into Parliamentary debates, as well as research interviews with Scottish government representatives and healthcare professionals, the paper sheds light on the constitutional politics surrounding the Counterterrorism and Security Act 2015 which resulted in the markedly different applications of Prevent between England and Scotland. The divergence of the policy between the nations, and the constitutional anomalies which facilitated a specifically Scottish Prevent program, have remained unaddressed in the academic literature—partly because of a mistaken assumption by researchers that the Prevent Strategy equally applies to all nations (given that Westminster legislates for the UK on matters of defence and security). To fill this gap in knowledge, this paper explores how the Scottish government was able to leverage the devolution settlement and associated constitutional conventions to implement a modest P/CVE program—dropping some components of the English and Welsh Prevent programs entirely. The paper contributes to studies on British constitutional conventions and the nature of inter-governmental politics in the UK by highlighting the surprising freedom to manoeuvre Scotland can enjoy, with regards to reserved policy areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies documented collections of red-sulphur gem casts by Christian Dehn (1696–1770) that have survived unrecognized in three British country houses: Burton Constable in Yorkshire, Burghley House in Lincolnshire, and Mountstuart on the Isle of Bute in Scotland. All three collections resulted from Grand Tours to Italy, where, in Rome, Dehn's workshop supplied bespoke collections of casts representing engraved gemstones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Capsule Reviews are intended to provide a short succinct review of each paper in the issue in order to bring the content to a wider readership. The Capsule Reviews were compiled by Fairouz Kamareddine. Professor Kamareddine is an Associate Editor of The Computer Journal and is based in the Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Capsule Reviews are intended to provide a short succinct review of each paper in the issue in order to bring the content to a wider readership. The Capsule Reviews were compiled by Fairouz Kamareddine. Professor Kamareddine is an Associate Editor of The Computer Journal and is based in the Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Health Impact Assessment is a key approach used internationally to identify positive or negative impacts of policies, plans and proposals on health and well-being. In 2020, HIAs were undertaken in Scotland and Wales to identify the potential health and well-being impacts of the 'stay at home' and physical distancing measures implemented at the start of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. There is sparse evidence evaluating whether the impacts predicted in HIAs occur following policy implementation. This paper evaluates the impacts anticipated in the COVID-19 HIAs against actual observed trends. The processes undertaken were compared and predicted impacts were tabulated by population groups and main determinants of health. Routine data and literature evidence were collated to compare predicted and observed impacts. Nearly all health impacts anticipated in both HIAs have occurred in the direction predicted. There have been significant adverse impacts through multiple direct and indirect pathways including loss of income, social isolation, disruption to education and services, and psychosocial effects. This research demonstrates the value of prediction in impact assessment and fills a gap in the literature by comparing the predicted impacts identified within the HIAs with observed trends. Post-COVID-19 recovery should centre health and well-being within future policies and decisions. Processes like HIA can support this as part of a 'health in all policies' approach to improve the health and well-being of populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population‐level disease risk varies between communities, and public health professionals are interested in mapping this spatial variation to monitor the locations of high‐risk areas and the magnitudes of health inequalities. Almost all of these risk maps relate to a single severity of disease outcome, such as hospitalization, which thus ignores any cases of disease of a different severity, such as a mild case treated in a primary care setting. These spatially‐varying risk maps are estimated from spatially aggregated disease count data, but the set of areal units to which these disease counts relate often varies by severity. Thus, the statistical challenge is to provide spatially comparable inference from multiple sets of spatially misaligned disease count data, and an additional complexity is that the spatial extents of the areal units for some severities are partially unknown. This paper thus proposes a novel spatial realignment approach for multivariate misaligned count data, and applies it to the first study delivering spatially comparable inference for multiple severities of the same disease. Inference is via a novel spatially smoothed data augmented MCMC algorithm, and the methods are motivated by a new study of respiratory disease risk in Scotland in 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family group conferences (FGCs) in child welfare share decision-making with family members by bringing the immediate and wider family together to make a plan to meet a child's needs. This paper reports survey findings on FGC provision in the UK in 2022 and explores whether in England the presence of an FGC service and the rate of FGC provision is associated with the rate of children in care, entering care, in kinship foster care and leaving care. Seventy-nine per cent (n  = 167) of local authorities in the UK provided FGCs to families, and 14 per cent (n  = 29) did not. Services that were more established offered a more diverse range of FGCs. The introduction of FGCs in English local authorities was associated with a higher rate of children in care, but also higher rates of kinship foster care, a key goal of FGCs where it is not possible for children to stay with their parents. Higher rates of FGCs were associated with more children leaving care, possibly due to reunification with birth families. To understand in more detail, the circumstances of children in and leaving care in local authorities with FGCs, individual data linkage studies are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines possible mechanisms behind the spike in racially or religiously-aggravated (RR) offences after the Brexit vote. It adds to the current literature in five significant ways: (1) it provides the first Brexit-related RR hate crime comparison between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; (2) it reports on results from a national-level panel model that adds to the debate in the literature on whether pro-leave or pro-remain areas saw greater increases hate crimes; (3) it assesses the role of demographic characterises on the variation in hate crime; (4) it compares the effect of the vote with other 'trigger events'; and (5) it uses social media data to control for variation in hate crime victim and witness reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Capsule Reviews are intended to provide a short succinct review of each paper in the issue in order to bring it to a wider readership. The Capsule Reviews were compiled by Fairouz Kamareddine. Professor Kamareddine is an Associate Editor of The Computer Journal and is based in the Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The debated link between severe respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection in early life and asthma has yet to be investigated within a social inequity lens. We estimated the magnitude of socioeconomic disparity in childhood asthma which would remain if no child were admitted to hospital for bronchiolitis, commonly due to RSV, during infancy. Methods The cohort, constructed from national administrative health datasets, comprised 83853 children born in Scotland between 1 January 2007 and 31 June 2008. Scottish Index for Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) was used to capture socioeconomic position. Emergency admissions for bronchiolitis before age 1 year were identified from hospital records. Yearly indicators of asthma/wheeze from ages 2 to 9 years were created using dispensing data and hospital admission records. Results Using latent class growth analysis, we identified four trajectories of asthma/wheeze: early-transient (2.2% of the cohort), early-persistent (2.0%), intermediate-onset (1.8%) and no asthma/wheeze (94.0%). The estimated marginal risks of chronic asthma (combining early-persistent and intermediate-onset groups) varied by SIMD, with risk differences for the medium and high deprivation groups, relative to the low deprivation group, of 7.0% (95% confidence interval: 3.7–10.3) and 13.0% (9.6–16.4), respectively. Using counterfactual disparity measures, we estimated that the elimination of bronchiolitis requiring hospital admission could reduce these risk differences by 21.2% (4.9–37.5) and 17.9% (10.4–25.4), respectively. Conclusions The majority of disparity in chronic asthma prevalence by deprivation level remains unexplained. Our paper offers a guide to using causal inference methods to study other plausible pathways to inequities in asthma using complex, linked administrative data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social work education has again been subject to scrutiny and review across the UK. Different countries have set about this task in different ways. In England, we can observe a top-down process driven by government; in Scotland, the approach has evolved more collaboratively. This paper discusses the recent Review of Social Work Education in Scotland within the broader pressures and opportunities of public service reform. At the heart of the review findings is a simple but timely conclusion: we need to realise a shared approach to professional learning, across the social work career path. This means moving beyond recent preoccupations with social work education, and polarising approaches to reform, towards a genuinely co-owned approach in which professional learning is a shared responsibility and a central feature of what it is to be a social work professional. In closing, the paper considers how we might realise a shared approach to professional learning in Scotland and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violence against women constitutes a significant public health problem affecting an estimated 35% of women worldwide (WHO, 2013); the scale of the problem and its ongoing intransigence indicate the need for critical and transformative approaches that confront the cultures that support gender violence and lead to change. The present paper analyses a program run in Scottish primary schools for 10–12 year olds called RESPECT that was successful in making pupils alert to and critical of gendering norms and practices. Analysis reveals that the teaching plans and activities of RESPECT are highly consistent with a critical pedagogical approach (Freire, 2005 ; Matthews, 2014), and indicates the value of combining the theoretical approaches of critical pedagogy, feminism and critical health literacy in public health campaign materials aimed at challenging the cultural bases of gender violence in ways that promote health in an educational setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Capsule Reviews are intended to provide a short succinct review of each paper in the issue in order to bring the content to a wider readership. The Capsule Reviews were compiled by Fairouz Kamareddine. Professor Kamareddine is an Associate Editor of The Computer Journal and is based in the Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Soft' policing focuses on the non-coercive elements of policing, typically community engagement, situated knowledge and negotiated order maintenance. Although soft policing as a philosophy has been critiqued, recent work by McCarthy (2014. "Soft" Policing: The Collaborative Control of Anti-Social Behaviour. New York: Palgrave Macmillan). has argued that it is a useful concept for examining the ways that the police can work in partnership. It is therefore timely to examine the ways that soft policing can be applied in a rural policing context. This paper informs these debates by arguing that in some rural communities soft policing is the primary mechanism for tackling antisocial behaviour (ASB). Due in part to the challenges associated with policing large rural beats, police officers in some rural environments have clearer opportunities to engage with the community, use their situated community knowledge, and negotiate order. Thus through critical examination of the response of the police to ASB in rural Scotland, the paper argues that the soft policing agenda is useful for explaining some of the nuanced and complex ways that the police in rural Scotland tackle ASB. The paper begins by exploring the recent resurgence in soft policing literature, before the concept of soft policing in the context of rural Scotland is discussed. The paper concludes by exploring what the implications of these findings are for wider policing policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically reflects on the Scottish Adult Support and Protection (ASP) study, a research project conducted at a time when ‘adult protection’ was understood in Scottish policies to be the professional response to ‘abuse’. During the course of analysing the ASP study data, it became apparent that practitioners themselves did not necessarily construct ‘abuse’ and ‘adult protection’ concerns as coterminous categories. Some examples are recounted to illustrate the potentially more partial, less linear relationship between these categories in practice than in policy constructions. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research into professionals' constructions of ‘adult protection’ concerns. It explains why such research would have continuing, if not greater, relevance in the context of recent Scottish policy moves to reconceptualise adult protection as a response not to ‘abuse’, but to ‘harm’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This section offers news briefs on the activities of French Studies-related societies. The sixth annual Women in French in Scotland (WIFIS) meeting was held on October 13, 2007 at the Glasgow Women's Library. An international colloquium was held from October 19 to 21, 2007 at Aix-en-Provence, organized by the Emile Zola Society in cooperation with the University of Aix-en-Provence. Sartre Society calls for papers to be presented at its annual conference on September 19, 2008 in Central London.

Background Children's second-hand smoke (SHS) exposure in the home is highest in socio-economically disadvantaged areas. Personalized household air-quality measurements can promote changes in smoking that reduce SHS exposure. The 'First Steps 2 Smoke-free' (FS2SF) intervention is the first to trial this approach delivered as part of health professionals' routine work. This paper reports the findings of qualitative interviews with participants that explored their experiences of the intervention and why outcomes varied. Methods 120 women were recruited from the NHS First Steps Programme, which supports disadvantaged mothers. They received either personalized feedback on their home air quality and advice on reducing SHS or standard SHS advice. Qualitative interviews with 15 mothers were analyzed thematically using the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, Behaviour (COM-B) model. Results The intervention increased women's capability to change home-smoking behaviour, through increasing awareness and salience of SHS risks to their children, and motivation to act. However, taking effective action was constrained by their limited social and environmental opportunities, including others' smoking in the home. Conclusions The FS2SF intervention was ineffective as it was unable to fully address the precarious, complex life circumstances that make creating a smoke-free home particularly difficult for women experiencing intersecting dimensions of disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent publication has laid the groundwork for future studies of printers' flowers. This paper begins by using the evidence of flowers to show that two seemingly unrelated printed fragments in the Beinecke Library come from a single book. An attempt to identify the printer then reveals the largely unexplored extent to which London printers' ornaments migrated to Scotland in the 1590s and came back in 1603, and that leads in turn to some new biographical facts about the printer Robert Waldegrave. An appendix looks at some later copies of Robert Granjon's best-known six-part combinable flower, which have too often been mistaken for the originals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British forestry is threatened by numerous pests and diseases. This study investigated the potential for re-introduction of aerial pesticide applications for landscape-scale disease management. In North Scotland in 2013 and 2015, copper oxychloride was applied to Pinus sylvestris L. stands infected with Dothistroma septosporum (Dorogin) Morelet. Helicopters distributed ultra-low-volume (ULV) applications of product via Micronair rotary atomisers, following methods used against D. septosporum in P. radiata D. Don stands in New Zealand. Product deposition was quantified on paper catchers and in foliage, soil and water. Catchers 100 m beyond the plot boundaries intercepted 0.5 per cent of within-plot mean deposition. Foliar analysis revealed slightly elevated copper concentrations (+0.07 μg g−1 dw) 250 m outside plot boundaries. Copper in foliage and needle litter remained above background levels for 109 and 157 weeks after application, respectively, longer than recorded during New Zealand operations. Concentrations in the soil increased over 3 years' monitoring, whilst deposition into water traps resulted in copper concentrations well within limits set by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. No deleterious impacts on vascular and non-vascular ground and canopy flora were recorded. Copper fungicide applications significantly reduced foliar infection at both sites but did not affect needle retention. Further ground-based trials will investigate the efficacy of other actives. In Britain, such aerial operations have not occurred for two decades: this study demonstrated aerial and ground teams have the necessary expertise for their re-introduction, whilst highlighting areas needing further optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The selection, preparation and consumption of food are everyday experiences; however, the social and symbolic meaning attached to such practices varies widely. This paper presents findings from a research project which aimed to explore how such food practices were experienced, produced and maintained within residential children's homes in Scotland. Data were generated over a year-long fieldwork period during which participant observation was undertaken alongside qualitative interviews and/or focus groups with sixteen children and forty-six adults. The paper emphasises the importance of food and food practices to the ways in which children and staff living and working in residential care manage, express and contain feelings and emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Excessive exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun in summer can cause skin cancer and in Britain there are around 1500 new cases of non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) each year, caused by exposure to solar UV at work. Little is known about the magnitude of UV exposure amongst outdoor construction workers in Britain, although this is one of the main groups at risk. The aim of this paper is to summarise measurements of erythema-weighted UVB radiation amongst construction workers in Scotland and the Southeast of England and interpret the data in terms of the risk of NMSC. The measurements were made as part of an intervention study using short mobile phone text messages to alter worker behaviour to either reduce UV exposure in summer or increase serum vitamin D in winter; the intervention is only briefly reported here. Data were collected from 67 workers from 9 worksites, of whom 41 provided measures of UV exposure for 758 working days. Daily exposure ranged from 0 to 13.47 standard erythema dose (SED), with the mean exposure for outdoor workers being 2.0 SED and the corresponding value for indoor workers being 0.7 SED. These data were obtained from a sensor located on the back of the workers hard hat; others have measured exposure on the wrist or upper arm and these locations probably, on average, have higher levels of UV exposure. It is likely that an outdoor construction worker in Britain could accumulate sufficient solar UV exposure over 30–40 years of work to more than double their risk of NMSC. We argue that employers in Britain should take a more proactive approach to manage sun safety and they should take responsibility for skin health surveillance for their workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deemed consent for organ donation has long been discussed as a potential solution to the shortage of organs for transplantation, with several countries having implemented it. In Great Britain, Wales was the first nation to introduce such a system, having done so in 2015. Now, the other two nations are following suit. In this paper, I compare the approaches of England and Scotland in moving to systems of deemed consent for organ donation. After outlining both sets of legislation, I focus on three points on which the two nations differ. First, the role of those close to the deceased in the consent process and the extent to which clinicians are required to consult them ahead of consent being deemed. Second, the role of government ministers in ensuring widespread public awareness. Third, the ways in which the two nations responded to the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to the implementation of deemed consent. I conclude that on all three points, the Scottish approach is preferable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The landscape for social work is continually changing and working with asylum seekers remains a highly charged and contested area of practice. This paper compares the role of social workers working with asylum seekers in statutory and voluntary-sector settings in the UK. Institutional practices suggest a divide between statutory settings and charitable organisations. However, based on empirical qualitative research and in-depth interviews with thirty-four social workers in Scotland and the south-east of England that explored dominant discourses influencing their practice, we suggest considerable similarities in the different sectors. Austerity measures for local authorities (LA) and voluntary agencies have resulted in the closure of specialist teams and reduced funding for social workers. Findings highlight politicised dominant narratives when working with asylum seekers and we argue for alternatives that promote a more nuanced perspective of entitlement and human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Capsule Reviews are intended to provide a short succinct review of each paper in the issue in order to bring it to a wider readership. The Capsule Reviews were compiled by Fairouz Kamareddine. Professor Kamareddine is an Associate Editor of The Computer Journal and is based in the Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Facilitated by increased trade between Asia and Europe, handwoven shawls from the Kashmir region of the Indian subcontinent became desirable clothing for Europeans during the mid-eighteenth century. By the 1770s, European manufacturers had picked up on this trend, producing textiles that imitated Kashmiri shawls but sold at lower prices to meet a wider market. In this article, I investigate the imitation Kashmiri shawl industry of one of the most prominent European centers of shawl production—the town of Paisley, Scotland—to study the designing of its products between 1805 and 1870. I examine the training and sources used by Paisley's 'pattern drawers'—as the industry's designers were then called—to answer the question: How much did Paisley's pattern drawers rely on the patterns of their competitors—European and Asian—to produce their own work? And did all Paisley pattern drawers pirate others' work? The answer will provide insight into the intertwined nature of imitation and innovation, and moral assessments of copying from European versus Asian products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offers information on the Symposium of Early English Keyboards held at the University of Aberdeen in April 2005. Celebration of the Festival of Organs and Virginals; Schedule of recitals by international performers; Topics of the lectures.

Garscube House, near Glasgow, once contained one of the most distinguished collections of continental Old Master paintings in Scotland. Formed in the 1820s and 1830s by Sir Archibald Campbell of Succoth (1769-1846), 2nd Baronet, the collection was visited by Waagen on his tour of Britain in 1851, but was dispersed after the Second World War. The present paper seeks to reconstruct the collection, largely on the basis of a manuscript inventory, published as an appendix to this paper at http://www.jhc.oxfordjournals.org. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The relationship between the police and the news media is an integral part of how police forces communicate into the public sphere. Using, as a benchmark, Chibnall's influential account of English crime reporting, Law-and-Order News, and drawing on Habermas's concept of the public sphere, this paper examines the contemporary police–media relationship. It analyses the rise of police corporate communications against the apparent decline of specialist crime reporting drawing on interviews with crime reporters, police communications managers and a survey of police forces in England, Wales and Scotland. The paper concludes that ‘law-and-order news’ currently remains contested but the relationship is increasingly asymmetrical in favour of the police. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The global aging demographic is putting pressure on state-delivered health and social care services. As the austerity agenda in the UK cuts state-funded service provision for older people despite increasing demand, social enterprise has become a politically and economically attractive model for the sustainable delivery of some public services. Yet little is known about the impact of social enterprise on the health and wellbeing of older people. In this paper we address this gap in understanding and consider social enterprise activities as complex public health-promoting interventions. Our study aimed to understand what impact social enterprise activities had on the health and wellbeing of participants aged over 50, and also how that impact was created. To achieve this, we conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with a sample (n = 43) of staff, volunteers, clients and carers aged over 50 who were involved in activities delivered by three social enterprises. Using a thematic analysis to explore manifest and latent themes, two antecedents of subjective younger age emerged explaining how benefit was created, namely downward social comparison and identity. The social enterprise activities we studied benefited participants' health and wellbeing, impacting positively on participants' sense of purpose, social support, connectedness and inclusion. These health and wellbeing benefits can be considered as outcomes of complex public health interventions for older people, and we relate these outcomes to beneficial conditions within the intermediary social determinants of health. We conclude by discussing the future impact of social enterprise activities and current UK policy on the structural determinants of health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a move towards partnership working across the global north and south but there remain questions about how to do it most effectively. This paper reports on the findings from a project that built a partnership between women in Scotland and India in order to transfer knowledge about Indian Self Help Groups. By creating peer to peer relationships that challenged traditional roles of 'teacher' and 'learner', the project was effective in transferring learning from south to north and generating meaningful outcomes for those involved. Despite the contextual differences, the successful transfer of key components of the model, savings, and loans, has led to a sense of empowerment in the Scottish women that is comparable to their Indian counterparts. As the project continues, it will be important that the dialogue between the partners continues, so there is ongoing learning as the Scottish groups expand and develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of resilience is now routinely put forward by both policymakers and social activists as a way for communities to use and develop their resources and respond positively to change, including decarbonization to address climate change. The extent to which a community is able to utilize all its resources depends on the extent to which it feels empowered to take action and is a major determinant of its resilience. A narrative of community empowerment has recently emerged from Scottish Government, driven in part by the situation in Scotland, in which a skewed pattern of landownership and distant structure of 'local' democracy combine to disempower communities by disconnecting them from local resources and local representative democracy. Recent Scottish legislation appears to provide new opportunities for community groups to gain control of local assets, become more financially sustainable, undertake climate-related mitigation actions and overcome some of the current local democratic deficit. At the same time, an increasingly well-organized and networked community sector and some within the Scottish Government are actively exploring new ways to enable public participation and deliver public services. This paper analyses the current Scottish policy framework and aspirations for community empowerment and, through interviews with stakeholders, assesses the potential, this may provide for communities to become truly resilient and to actively engage with transformational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies 'key moments' over a forty-year period of the history of Scottish social work, from the publication of Social Work and the Community in 1966 to the outcome of the 21st Century Review contained in Changing Lives of 2006. A recurring theme is the Scottish dimension, for social work in Scotland needs to be understood as distinct in many important respects from social work elsewhere in the UK. The paper traces the evolution of a vision - of a unified profession promoting social equality - underlying Social Work and the Community, arguing that its redefinition in Changing Lives represents both a departure from the earlier, radical aspirations and an opportunity for Scottish social workers to re-examine the question of professionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the shift from a social to a medical function which occurred in nineteenth-century general hospitals has been explored, the occurrence of such a change in maternity hospitals has not been considered. Recent analyses of such institutions have examined particular aspects only, and thus give a somewhat static picture. This paper uses analysis of patient records (themselves an under-exploited resource) to explore the changing function of the Edinburgh Royal Maternity Hospital from a provider of shelter during childbirth to the destitute to a source of skilled medical care. It concludes that, although the Hospital had adopted the outward features of a medical institution by 1890, its casebooks suggest that its purpose only decisively changed in the early twentieth century, and thus can perhaps be more appropriately linked with national anxiety regarding the health of babies and their mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Founded on community development principles and practice, the ‘Breathing Space’ initiative aimed to produce a significant shift in community norms towards non-toleration and non-practice of smoking in a low-income area in Edinburgh, Scotland. The effectiveness of Breathing Space was evaluated using a quasi-experimental design, which incorporated a process evaluation in order to provide a description of the development and implementation of the intervention. Drawing on qualitative data from the process evaluation, this paper explores the varied and sometimes competing understandings of the endeavour held by those implementing the intervention. The paper examines the principles that underpin health promotion in the community setting, particularly the concepts of ownership, empowerment and participation, and their differential interpretation and employment by participants. The data illustrate how these varied understandings had implications for the joint planning and implementation of Breathing Space objectives. In addition, the different understandings raise questions about the appropriateness and viability of utilizing community development approaches in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon qualitative research with 100 smokers (50 male and 50 female) in two Scottish areas of disadvantage to investigate their perceptions and experiences of quitting. The fieldwork took place between 1999 and 2000, with data collected through in-depth individual interviews and the completion of a smoking day grid. While many interviewees wanted to quit, they drew on their understandings of habit and addiction to illustrate the difficulties which quitting posed. Addiction was referenced through accounts of actual and anticipated unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, while accounts of the difficulties associated with quitting drew primarily upon habitual usage and routine aspects of their lives. Interviewees reported interacting frequently with other smokers. They also highlighted how stressful aspects of their lives perpetuated habitual smoking and prompted relapse following periods of cessation. Although the contexts inhabited by the interviewees were crucial in inhibiting successful quitting attempts, these factors acted in conjunction with and exacerbated feelings of physiological dependence on tobacco. Interviewees were sceptical about the effectiveness of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) other than in the immediate or short term. For the most part, interviewees felt that NRT could not address aspects of their lives that appeared to support and sustain smoking in the long term. The paper concludes that in order to facilitate and sustain smoking cessation, tobacco control interventions need to tackle both nicotine addiction and the material circumstances experienced by disadvantaged smokers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how smoking among older smokers with a smoking-related illness is influenced by the wider cultural context of smoking. The paper draws upon a Scottish qualitative interview study to explore lifecourse changes in smoking-related beliefs and behaviours, in current smokers between the ages of 65 and 84 years with arterial disease. The respondents' understanding of smoking as a socially acceptable behaviour of their youth, had undergone dramatic change over the course of their lives. While some respondents continued to associate their current smoking with their, albeit reduced, participation in social activities, others now smoked at home alone and associated smoking with increasing levels of isolation in their lives. Through an examination of how social attitudes may contribute to smoking as a solitary activity, the paper highlights the implications of cultural context for the adaptive strategies that older people use to cope with the circumstances and conditions of later life. The paper concludes that the wider cultural context of smoking is influential in shaping smoking as either an isolated 'home' activity, or as a social' activity for those whose opportunities to smoke in the private sphere are limited by disapproved of significant others. Within the social context, however, these 'social' smokers experience further constraints which shape and reduce their smoking behaviour. The data suggest that in order to be successful with this group of smokers, further research is needed to identify aspects of the lives of older people that sustain smoking in later life. These data will be necessary to develop appropriate health promotion measures to successfully target aspects of lives that support smoking in later life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background care homes collect extensive data about their residents, and their care, in multiple ways, for multiple purposes. We aimed to (i) identify what data are routinely collected and (ii) collate care home managers' views and experiences of collecting, using and sharing data. Methods we examined data collected in six care homes across Lothian, Scotland. We extracted the meta-data, cross-referenced definitions and assessed the degree of harmonisation between care homes and with data sets currently in use in Scotland and internationally. We interviewed care home managers about their views and experiences of collecting, using and sharing data. Results we identified 15 core data items used routinely, with significant heterogeneity in tools and assessments used, and very limited harmonisation. Two overarching themes were identified of importance to the development of a care home data platform: (i) the rationale for collecting data, including to (a) support person-centred care, (b) share information, (c) manage workforce and budget and (d) provide evidence to statutory bodies and (ii) the reality of collecting data, including data accuracy, and understanding data in context. Discussion considerable information is collected by care home staff, in varied formats, with heterogeneity of scope and definition, for range of reasons. We discuss the issues that should be considered to ensure that individual resident-level form the strong foundations for any data platform for care homes, which must also include, robust infrastructure and clear interoperability, with appropriate governance. It must be co-produced by academics, policy makers and sector representatives, with residents, their families and care staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Capsule Reviews are intended to provide a short succinct review of each paper in the issue, in order to bring the content to a wider readership. This issue's Capsule Reviews were compiled by Fairouz Kamareddine. Professor Kamareddine is an Associate Editor of The Computer Journal and is based in the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the devolution referendum campaign in Scotland, with reference to the launch of the referendum on September 19, 1997. Circumstances surrounding the introduction of the referendum; Significance of the result of the referendum; Historical context of the referendum; Rationale for formulating a referendum; Details on a White Paper stipulating the government's proposal for a Welsh Assembly.

With the publication of Paper 30 (CCETSW 1991) and the development of Dip.S.W. programmes which incorporate a strong emphasis on equal opportunities, it might be reasonable to expect that social work training is now going to take on board the issue of gender. Dip.S.W. programmes are immersed in concerns about anti-discriminatory practice and aim to provide up-to-date training for an up-to-date profession. This paper is based on a study of the Dip.S.W. programmes running in Scotland in 1991/92. This was when the first Dip.S.W. qualified social workers emerged from the new training. Do these social workers have a new way of looking at issues such as gender? This paper argues that the Dip.S.W. programmes are focusing on practice issues while ignoring the issues within the profession. Practice issues cannot be separated out in this way. Social work cannot be anti-oppressive as long as the social work profession itself continues to oppress its female workforce. Dip.S.W., as it is currently provided, does not offer the prospect of a change in the gender imbalance of the profession and thus it will not make a difference to how emerging Dip.S.W. social workers can tackle the issue with colleagues or clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Capsule Reviews are intended to provide a short succinct review of each paper in the issue in order to bring to a wider readership. The Capsule Reviews were compiled by Fairouz Kamareddine. Professor Kamareddine is an Associate Editor of The Computer Journal and is based in the Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We evaluate the impact of a price floor for alcohol introduced in Scotland in 2018, using a difference-in-differences strategy with England as a control group. We show that the policy led to the largest reductions in alcohol units purchased among the heaviest drinkers—the group who, at the margin, are likely to create the largest externalities from drinking. The price floor is well targeted at heavy drinkers because they buy a much greater fraction of their units from cheap products and switched away from these products strongly, with only limited substitution towards more expensive products. We show that if the marginal external cost of drinking is at least moderately higher for heavy than lighter drinkers, then a price floor outperforms an ethanol tax. However, more flexible tax systems can achieve similar reductions in externalities to the price floor, but avoid the large transfers from public funds to the alcohol industry that arise under the floor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss various reports within the issue on topics including child protection in Europe, resilience and burnout in child protection social work, and evidence-based practice in social work.

This paper argues for a broad evolutionary political economy understanding of local and regional path creation. We adopt a multi-actor and multi-scalar perspective, focusing on the roles of the state and regional policy interventions in mediating the creation of growth paths. The framework interprets attempts in North East England and Scotland to support path creation in the offshore wind sector through evolutionary inspired contextual policies. We demonstrate that the realisation of the these policies remains crucially conditioned by the dynamic and complex interplay between the national political economy of energy market regulation, industrial policy and inter-regional asymmetries in the governance of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]