Search Results

This chapter discusses the application of the needs assessment process within an organizational context. Social workers frequently assume administrative responsibilities soon after obtaining their Master of Social Work degrees. As social work managers, it is necessary at times to determine what skills or knowledge staff have or need. A staff training needs assessment is a specialized application of needs assessment that requires good familiarity and experience with the organization, its personnel, and programs. A needs assessment planning framework for identifying and discussing the key elements of the staff training needs assessment is presented. Factors to consider when designing the process, strategies for assessing staff training needs, as well as precipitants for conducting a staff needs assessment are examined.

This chapter begins by detailing the changes in policies of training and skills development in the seven case study companies. It discusses new systems of induction training, multi-skilling, and training in generic skills. It outlines the various pressures for change, including new external labour market conditions, different government policies on training, and weakened role of trade unions. It is argued that the new managerial approaches to skills and training are closely intertwined with other areas of employment organization. Changes in work organization, the recruitment of agency temps, and changes in pay scale are important factors in explaining the way new training policies have been designed and implemented. Finally, the chapter assesses the effectiveness of these new policies against employees' experience of reconstructed patterns of skill development and training provision.

This chapter covers what is required to set up an IPS program in a mental health agency. Two methods are described. In one way, IPS is added to the current menu of services. In the other way, IPS replaces another service such as rehabilitative day treatment. Organizationally, mental health services are provided by treatment teams, and employment specialists join one or two teams. The teams meet weekly to discuss client situations and make recommendations on the clients’ service plans. Vignettes are provided to illustrate examples of team support. Careful planning is required when deciding to implement IPS. Specific steps are outlined, for example incorporating employment in the agency’s mission statement, determining financing, anticipating effects of IPS on other programs, determining the staffing pattern and training needs, tracking employment outcomes, and monitoring fidelity to the model.

This chapter discusses training in healthcare organizations. The aim of training in healthcare is to improve outcomes for patients. Training should result in individual learning and enhanced educational performance. Organizations must be able to demonstrate that they train and supervise staff in an ongoing manner. Individuals should be given time to undertake training, but professionalism also implies self-directed development.

People from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds have a right to receive services that are culturally competent. Cultural competence refers to services that are sensitive to and tailored for the cultural context of the person receiving services. The illustration in this chapter highlights some of the key features of cultural competence when a young man expresses interest in returning to school. The workforce of the mental health agency must include employment specialists and other practitioners who are bilingual/bicultural to provide services to people with similar backgrounds. The agency provides education and training to all staff members to sensitize them to their own cultural beliefs and biases and to introduce them to the customs, values, belief systems, social networks, communication, and behaviors of clients from different cultures and backgrounds. For example, the meaning of work is different for people from different cultures and backgrounds. Similarly, family roles and responsibilities are different and need to be understood by employment specialists who are trying to help with goals of school and work.

Most studies of cultural influences in palliative care have related mainly to people coming to terms with a cancer-related diagnosis. Some of the work undertaken can be applied to non-cancer patients but more research is needed specifically with non-cancer patients. This chapter examines the meaning of culture and ethnicity, the experience of becoming ill, and the way in which that may be culturally determined. It explores the importance of being aware of ethnocentricity together with two aspects of care where some research has been undertaken: pain and communication. Finally, it looks at staff needs and training, managerial issues, and suggestions for further research in this area of care.

This chapter discusses the three major components of education and training consultation: 1) information and referral services; 2) multidisciplinary coordination and interagency collaboration; and 3) staff development and in-service training. It discusses how this model expands school personnel’s knowledge base, professional assets, and technical abilities by 1) linking persons with a need or problem to a service that will meet the need or solve the problem; 2) strengthening student assistance teams and building interagency collaboration; and 3) supporting professional development. The chapter discusses how the model is consistent with universal and targeted RtI approaches to intervention. Suggested readings and resources are offered for the school social worker who wishes to learn more about information and referral services, multidisciplinary coordination and interagency collaboration, and staff development and training consultation models.

There is agreement among researchers and policy makers that child welfare services have been slow to effectively implement ESIs. The authors argue that ‘implementation matters’ and present empirical evidence for the impact of high quality implementation on program outcomes. The chapter examines a variety of issues that make implementation a complex and difficult endeavour in child welfare settings. The authors discuss ways to improve implementation through the use of common elements of interventions and supporting planned and appropriate adaptation of interventions in the service setting, as well as utilizing frameworks of implementation to guide implementation efforts. Finally, the authors identify critical components of implementation such as staff recruitment and selection, staff training and support, intervention and related staff evaluation.

Many prison systems in sub Saharan Africa are products of their colonial legacy with men and women housed in insanitary, crumbling buildings which are often little changed since the 19th century. This chapter provides examples from The Gambia and also Mozambique, where the author delivered a lecture to 300 prison officer recruits sitting on the ground in the open air under a group of great baobab trees. The chapter also describes the traumatic changes in South African prisons in the immediate aftermath of the apartheid era and what the author discovered when he was invited, in company with the Commissioner of Prisons for Uganda, to advise on the process of change which was needed to move the prison service from an apartheid to a multicultural model and how in the course of the visit he met the first black prison commissioner, a former schoolmaster from Soweto.

The hope for the winning line and excitement about the result are the key factors that seduce players, some occasionally and others habitually, to continue the game beyond their resources in time and especially money. The impulse to continue can be restrained by pre-commitments that set an advance limit to amounts of time and money to be spent on the game. The studies reviewed in this chapter indicate that some pre-commitment strategies can be effective if properly managed. Such programs are likely to have an optimal effect when the warnings are dynamic and combined with personalized information collected through player tracking, when the programs are made mandatory and non-selective; when providers take responsibility for product safety, consumer protection, and harm avoidance (e.g., by way of proactive interventions); and when there are restrictions on what types of games operators are actually allowed to provide and under what conditions.

Game operators systematically attempt to attract customers and make them spend more money. The availability of gambling in terms of the ease of customers’ access to games influences both the amount of gambling and the problems arising from it. Regulations on game features, controlling access to funds and other inducements, risk awareness tools, exclusion policies, staff training, limit-setting, and marketing restrictions have been proposed as methods to counteract the effect of ready availability. In policy terms, efforts to regulate availability are usually combined with rules on game features and situational elements: when new opportunities to participate are created, game designs and situational characteristics also change, and in some cases policy changes aimed at reducing gambling activity are implemented to lower the risks for those who play.