Guidance Notes and Best Practice Guides
HO: A new pocket guide to the UK law on female genital mutilation will soon be made available to girls at risk to help them speak out against the practice. The leaflet (A Declaration Against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) for Families and Girls) is designed to slip in the back of a passport allowing girls to present it as a formal document to friends or family reminding them that FGM is against the law in the UK.
It will also set out what the penalties are for offenders, including a maximum 14 year custodial sentence, as well as advice on help & support.
It will also set out what the penalties are for offenders, including a maximum 14 year custodial sentence, as well as advice on help & support.
NE: A new industry-backed leaflet on funding & support for lowland beef & sheep farmers was launched recently at the National Sheep Show. It provides clear & helpful information on how environmental management through Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) and Catchment Sensitive Farming (CSF) can complement farming practices and provide business benefits.
The leaflet provides, all in one place, an overview of information & new scheme developments relevant to lowland beef & sheep farming. It covers all the key sources of grant aid, incentive schemes, and advice to improve both the economic productivity and environmental sustainability of this specific sector.
This is the first in a series piloting a new approach to providing farmers with information about changes to RDPE funded socio-economic & agri-environment schemes. If it’s successful, similar leaflets will be produced for other farming sectors in consultation with the industry.
NICE: A report published recently by the All Parliamentary Group on Dementia has found a ‘shocking’ variation in the number of people with dementia who are diagnosed. In England, just 41% of people receive a diagnosis, and in parts of Wales diagnostic rates are as low as 32%.
Quoting evidence from GPs and specialists, the report says that some people are having to wait more than a year to get assessed in a memory clinic. The NICE pathway on dementia says that memory assessment services, provided by a memory assessment clinic or community health teams, should be the single point of referral for people with dementia.
A range of implementation tools are available to support NICE's recommendations on dementia, including a guide for commissioners on memory assessment services.
A range of implementation tools are available to support NICE's recommendations on dementia, including a guide for commissioners on memory assessment services.
TNA: The National Archives is inviting archive services in England to participate in the piloting of the new draft Archive Service Accreditation Standard. The draft standard will be piloted in a range of archives in each of the home nations, from September to December 2012.
CIPD: The Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) has launched a FREE stress management tool, developed with the Health & Safety Executive (HSE), designed to help equip managers with the skills to manage positively and prevent stress in their staff. CIPD research identified stress as the number 1 cause of long-term sickness absence & poor management is one of the top causes of work-related stress.
The tool, available on the CIPD/AXA PPP Employee health and wellbeing website, is designed to hold up a mirror to managers so they understand how their behaviour impacts on the people they manage – and provides on-line learning materials to help them improve their management style.
ICO: The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has recently published a new plain English Guide to the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) to help public authorities better understand how to apply them.
The EIR provide the public with a right of access to environmental information held by public authorities, which would not be considered for disclosure under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act.
The types of information people can request includes information relating to land development, air quality, energy production & waste management. While public authorities have 20 working days to respond to EIR & FOI requests, there are some important differences between the 2 regimes, including that EIR also prevents statutory bars from applying, meaning that requests cannot be refused due to the prohibitions on disclosure within other legislation.
