General Reports and Other Publications
DfE: The social work profession is more confident and more focused on improving outcomes for the most vulnerable, Chair of the Social Work Reform Board Moira Gibb said in her final report - 'Building a safe and confident future: Maintaining Momentum – A progress report from the Social Work Reform Board' .
The Social Work Task Force recommended comprehensive reform of the social work system to enable social workers to practise confidently & safely and the SWRB has been working to make the task force's recommendations a reality.
FRC: The Sharman Panel of Inquiry, established at the invitation of the Financial Reporting Council to consider Going Concern and Liquidity Risks: Lessons for companies and auditors, has published its final report & recommendations recently.
CBI: Successfully delivering care closer to the home could provide better, healthier outcomes for patients and help ease NHS budgetary pressures by saving £3.4bn a year, according to a CBI Public Services report, which sets out 8 recommendations to remove barriers in order to make the delivery of care close to the home more widespread.
The report’s claims include:
The report’s claims include:
* Remote working (including the effective use of smartphone technology) has the potential to save £1.9bn pa
* Wider adoption of homecare could save £1.3bn pa by lowering unnecessary hospital admissions & facilitating early discharge from hospital and supporting the elderly to live independently in their own homes
* Telecare & telehealth solutions could save £240m annually
ESRC: Over the next 20 years the proportion of older people living within the Bangladeshi & Pakistani communities in the UK will increase significantly. Most expect that their immediate family, particularly female family members, will provide the majority of care for them in their old age, according to new research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
The research by Professor Christina Victor of Brunel University, found very few, at best 5 to 10% of the older people within these communities who were interviewed received any form of formal care, apart from health services, from the wider community or government.
ESRC: We all tend to assume that refugees want to go home. But often refugees cannot just return to their home country when conflict ends. Many have spent decades in exile; many second & third-generation refugees have never seen the place which they are now expected to call home. Research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council shows that for many refugees a quick return isn't the right answer.
A recent survey suggests that up to 20% of the refugees who have returned to Afghanistan since 2001 may have since become displaced again. The solution, Dr Long says, is to stop thinking about refugee return as a permanent one-off move, and concentrate instead on developing new flexible approaches that encourage cross-border links, allowing refugees to become migrants. Refugees often spend decades living as part of a different community, and may have jobs or families there.
BIS: David Willetts has commented on the Finch Group report on expanding access to published research findings.
ESRC: The legal system needs to take greater account of new discoveries in neuroscience that show how a difficult childhood can affect the development of a young person’s brain, which can increase the risk adolescent crimes, according to researchers.
IfL: The Institute for Learning has published its response to the government’s consultation on revoking the 2007 further education workforce regulations covering continuing professional development (CPD), registration & teachers’ qualifications.
NAO: The National Audit Office has published a report examining the effectiveness of internal audit in central government, covering both main departments and their associated arm’s length bodies. Government is not getting the most out of the £70m it spends on internal audit because the service does not always focus on the right issues and it is often not of sufficient quality to be useful in decision-making.
LSIS: Leaders within the FE & Skills sector are being reminded to make use of an equality & diversity report. The Summary Workforce Diversity Report 2011 is available on the Learning & Skills Improvement Service website and is designed to advance equality & diversity in the workplace.
WAO: Welsh councils are good at asking the public what they think and carry out a great deal of public engagement exercises. But, despite this, many exercises fall short of enabling residents to help shape their local services, according to the Auditor General for Wales.
ScotGov: A new report has found that while the Clyde has clearly been impacted by human activities, it supports significant quantities of fish and is demonstrating some signs of recovery. The report also shows that the Firth of Clyde ecosystem has been altered by fishing, resulting in many more smaller fish particularly young whiting and a lack of larger predator species.
IPPR: On 19 June 2012, the energy & climate change select committee held public evidence sessions on the draft Energy Bill, to which IPPR made a submission covering carbon targets & emissions performance, feed-in tariffs and the 'contracts for difference' mechanism, the carbon price floor and energy efficiency measures.
JFR: New research published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) challenges the assertion that couples with children on benefits are economically better off if they split up.
The report, Does the Tax and Benefit System Create a Couple Penalty? finds that families on benefits are neither better nor worse off if they separate, while working families on low incomes are as likely to lose as to gain from living apart.
The report, Does the Tax and Benefit System Create a Couple Penalty? finds that families on benefits are neither better nor worse off if they separate, while working families on low incomes are as likely to lose as to gain from living apart.
PC&PE: The House of Lords Constitution Committee published their report on the Justice & Security Bill last week, ahead of the Lords' second reading of the Bill. The Committee raise 3 principal areas of concern with proposals in the Bill to extend Closed Material Procedures (CMP) to civil cases.
This would mean that the state would be able to present evidence without the other party in the case or their legal representatives having access to that evidence. The Committee state these proposals should be judged in the context of ‘fairness’ as the Government has indicated that is the rationale for extending CMP to civil cases.
PC&PE: Legislation 'more suited to the 1960s' is failing to protect park home residents – most of whom are elderly - from exploitation by unscrupulous owners, says the Communities and Local Government Committee.
The Committee found that a quarter of park home residents had experienced problems with maintenance, security or safety standards; that nearly a fifth of residents had experienced problems with the written contracts they had with site owners; and that residents had experienced intimidation by site owners or managers at a significant number of sites in the UK.
The Committee found that a quarter of park home residents had experienced problems with maintenance, security or safety standards; that nearly a fifth of residents had experienced problems with the written contracts they had with site owners; and that residents had experienced intimidation by site owners or managers at a significant number of sites in the UK.
TWF: A report published by The Work Foundation warns that the government’s response to the youth unemployment crisis is insufficient & fragmented, with responsibilities split across departments and a lack of co-ordination at a national level.
CBI: The leading business organisation, CBI Northern Ireland, recently published a report on the availability of finance to Northern Ireland businesses. The availability of credit is identified as an issue of increasing concern and one of the most significant challenges facing the Executive as it seeks to create 25,000 jobs over the life of the current Assembly.
DH: The NHS Medical Director’s expert group, which has been looking at PiP breast implants, has published its final report.
IFS: A new report, funded by the Welsh Government and published by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, examines the options available to the Welsh Government for reducing the generosity of council tax support.
LGA: Cllr Mehboob Khan, Chairman of the Local Government Association's Safer and Stronger Communities Board has responded to publication of the HMIC report 'A Step in the Right Direction: The policing of anti-social behaviour'.
CBI: The level of finance in the economy must increase if the UK is to secure sustainable growth, the CBI’s Director-General has said as he set out what needs to be done to achieve growth, support jobs and stop the recovery being choked off.
Civitas: The Government says Britain has a serious social mobility problem, but a new Civitas report shows this is wrong. The government's social mobility strategy is based on a flawed understanding of the evidence.
Social Mobility Delusions reviews the evidence on social mobility in Britain and finds Social Mobility is the norm in Britain, not the exception, and it occurs in both directions across the entire range of the occupational class structure
Social Mobility Delusions reviews the evidence on social mobility in Britain and finds Social Mobility is the norm in Britain, not the exception, and it occurs in both directions across the entire range of the occupational class structure
