PURPOSEAs part of their inspection of care homes in England, the statutory inspector (the Care Quality Commission [CQC]) makes a judgement on the quality of the home's leadership. Their view is critical as it is intended to inform consumer choice and because the statutory nature of inspection means these views hold considerable authority. The purpose of this paper is to look at the content of a selection of reports and seek to determine what the CQC understands by the concept of "good leadership".DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACHA purposive sample of recent CQC inspection reports was selected and subjected to a qualitative content analysis. Inspections are structured around five main questions. The resulting themes describe areas of focus within the section of reports that feature the question "Are they well-led?".FINDINGSInspection reports were found to focus on four main themes: safety and quality of care; day-to-day management of staff; governance and training in the home; and integration and partnership working. In the discussion section, the authors reflect on these themes and suggest that the CQC's view of leadership is rather limited. In particular, while an emphasis is placed within the literature and policy on the importance of leadership in delivering change and quality improvement, little attention is paid to this within the leadership section of inspection reports.RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONSThe authors' research is based on a small-scale sample of inspection reports; nevertheless, it suggests a number of avenues for further research into the way in which leadership and management capabilities are developed and monitored in the sector.ORIGINALITY/VALUEThe analysis in this report offers a view of how the inspection regime implements its own guidance and how it assesses leadership. The reports, as public-facing documents, are artefacts of the inspection regime and critical not just as evidence of the practice of inspection but as influence on care home operations and the choices of care home residents and their families.

The Bundeswehr Command and Staff College (BCSC) facilitated the Gamification of Strategic Thinking seminar from 11. Nov 2020 - 24. March 2021 with students from the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) and Staff Officers from the Bundeswehr Office for Defence Planning. This paper describes the seminar from construction to end, the sophisticated online facilitation, and the results and evaluation. Thereby, it contributes to discussing how to implement commercial of the shelf (COTS) conflict simulations (wargames) to education, particularly for political science and management. The seminar used the COTS board game 'Scythe' as the strategy development and strategy implementation environment. Seminar goals were applying management tools like SWOT-Analysis, Kanban Board, and the OODA-Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) to strategy development and strategy implementation in a competitive environment characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). Six Teams consisting of five players each competed at the end of the seminar for three days, had to use the decision-making process several times, and faced the consequences of past decisions. Furthermore, four team members had to Red-Team other competitors and learned how to implement this (business) Wargaming technique into the decision-making cycle. Finally, all participants had to develop a strategy, either their own or their adversary's strategy. The seminar was conducted in eight sprints, following the Scrum framework for agile project management in an agile education approach. Students had to practice an agile mindset, followed the scrum events Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective, taking care of the Project Backlog, honouring the Scrum Values courage, focus, commitment, respect, and openness. The lead author planned the seminar as a distributed learning experience with an onpremises final. However, due to COVID-19, the TUHH and the BCSC cancelled the on-premises final. As a result, the lead author had to facilitate the complete seminar entirely distributed using various web 2.0 collaboration tools like Slack, Trello, Zoom and, of course, WhatsApp. The seminar was evaluated regarding the Learning Objective-Game Design framework and the Agile Education approach. This paper provides a new perspective on combining agile education, using a Scrum framework as the organisational overlay over the curriculum, and explicit gamification, using a COTS wargame. It is an update to the ECGBL 2020's paper. In comparison to serious games, explicit gamification is supposed to provide the element of fun by design.

This chapter aims to provide a summary and critical commentary of reforms to the system of adult social care in England. The drivers of reforms, economic and demographic pressures, are classically 'wicked' in the way that they interface, are non-linear and overlap. The chapter focuses on the period since 2010, which saw a labour government replaced by a conservative-liberal democrat coalition and later replaced by a conservative government in 2015. It provides reference to longer-term reforms and changes, particularly where they reflect ambitions that cross party-political lines. The chapter considers concerns or challenges that result from these reforms from the points of view of both users of care services and professionals involved in their delivery. It discusses the suitability of the ethic of care as a response to the challenges raised, paying close attention to the quality and effectiveness of caring relationships.

This chapter uses findings from a study of the experiences of people living with a diagnosis of Inflammatory Bowel Disease to illustrate a discussion about the management of patients learning to live with a chronic condition. It focuses on a broader discussion of dependency in order to offer suggestions for how the process of 'becoming' someone that lives with such a condition should be supported. The chapter begins with an unpacking of key features of dependency, using Eva Feder Kittay's terminology of 'inevitable' and 'derivative' dependency as a starting point. It offers some considerations of the relationship between the wicked features of managing dependency and the efforts of those with a responsibility to organize and manage care services. The notion of dependency is often used as a shorthand justification of a normative judgment whereby a situation, policy or action is wrong when it places the subject in a position of being dependent.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to understand the nature of support that helps older people continue living in their own homes for as long as they wish to.Design/methodology/approach– The research made use of a participatory approach in which service users, service providers and commissioners were involved in the design of the approach in addition to contributing to the research as participants in their own right.Findings– This paper presents analysis from the research which focuses on the importance of caring relationships for providing a support mechanism. The authors question whether budget cuts and efficiency drives within statutory care providers preclude the notion of caring relationships.Practical implications– The authors suggest, in the light of the evidence presented, that statutory service providers should acknowledge the role that caring relationships play in providing support for older people. Whilst budget cuts make providing support for caring relationships more challenging, the authors suggest that there is scope for delivering services and support in ways which promote the types of interactions which better support older people living independently.Originality/value– The analysis presented here provides a distinctive, timely and thoughtful insight into support for older people at a time when public sector budgets are under increasing pressure.

PURPOSEThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of reforms designed to address economic and demographic challenges in England with reference to the authors' own empirical work providing a critique of their impact and suggesting a way to improve the quality of social care for older people.DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACHThe research was a qualitative study conducted in a participatory manner in which older people were positioned as co-creators of the research study. This involved setting the scope of the study and identifying and refining the themes used in the analysis of an inquiry board and interviews.FINDINGSThe research findings highlight the threat of recent moves that emphasise "independence" and "self-management" particularly as they risk marginalising some groups of older people and reducing the quality of care. An alternative approach drawn from the ethics of care is suggested.RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONSThe research study focused on a narrow selection of older people and future work will wish to explore concepts of "care" and "independence" in additional contexts and of reforms in other geographies.PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONSThe researchers argue that the current reform agenda threatens the quality of care services and suggest improvements to the way in which services might be organised and presented.SOCIAL IMPLICATIONSIt is intended that the research will contribute to social policy debates and particularly those that focus on social care. The study also looks to contribute to current work in the fields of critical gerontology, feminist ethics and the management of public services more generally.ORIGINALITY/VALUEThe paper presents a novel and critical viewpoint of current social care policy in England and will therefore be of interest to policy-makers and to professionals.

This chapter reflects on the findings from a research project that sought to understand the impact of preventative services on the lives of older people in one part of the UK. Amongst other findings was the critical role played by ‘caring networks’, which provided older people with resources to support themselves as they continued to live at home. The authors argue that the crucial role played by these relationships, the statutory obligation of public services to provide care to older people and the pressure to control public spending in the current economic climate results in an ethical obligation on the public sector to actively support caring networks in a systematic way. The chapter explores the notion of caring relationships within a context of caring of older people and is informed by a feminist ethical perspective. Questions of the nature of the caring relationship are addressed, including the role and obligations taken on by those entering into a caring relationship with an older person. The study draws on empirical evidence as well as on arguments drawn from previous studies and from ethical theory. This chapter is likely to be of interest to social work and health care professionals, to local authority and government representatives as well as those working in related fields.

In commissioned research, the aim of researchers is to generate work that influences the policy development process and is useful to policy-makers. The choice of research approach for projects commissioned by policy-makers has important implications for both these areas. This paper is a reflexive account of the authors' experiences in running a commissioned research project and explores how the decision to adopt a participatory approach to commissioned research can impact on the relationship between researchers, participants and policy-makers and how, in turn, this may affect the project's potential impact on policy creation and development.

This paper explores the experience of two academics commissioned, by a public body engaged in policy formulation, to carry out research to inform the policy process. During the presentation of qualitative data to the public body, one representative exclaimed "it's not true!" The report was buried and we were rejected. We did not fully appreciate the implications of making recommendations from research that conflicted with existing policy interests. We suggest that the rejection of the report exposes the impact of lack of understanding of the political processes at play in policy-making. Meetings had been held and the use of qualitative methods had been agreed by all parties yet these meetings failed to prevent the rejection of the research. The paper concludes that the key challenge is in convincing policy makers of the validity and usefulness of qualitative evidence and offers tentative suggestions of how this task might be approached.

This article explores English policy on widening participation in higher education (HE), drawing on insights from a research study into higher education transitions and ‘dual sector’ institutions. Although further and higher education in England are divided into two sectors, it is possible for one institution to offer both further and higher education. This article examines the nature of transitions in such ‘dual sector’ institutions, and explores the shaping and structuring of HE transitions, as well as students’ experience of such transitions. The article draws on empirical research from a two‐year study which investigates the changing shape and experience of HE in England, and students’ experience of moving between different levels of study. The study includes four case‐study ‘dual sector’ institutions, and this article considers one of these institutions in more detail. The article discusses a number of different forms of transition which arise out of the analysis of the data – institutions in transition, transitions in institutions, and individual student transitions – and draws on Bourdieu’s theoretical ideas to argue that the work that transition is doing in the case‐study institutions might be seen as involving processes of ‘positioning’, whereby institutions and individuals work at defining their place within higher education. Since such positioning both highlights and helps to create a differentiated and stratified system, the article concludes by pointing to the unsettling and complex issues this raises in relation to social justice and equity.

Part I of this two-part paper provides an overview of the HAZUS-MH Flood Model and a discussion of its capabilities for characterizing riverine and coastal flooding hazard. Included is a discussion of the Flood Information Tool, which permits rapid analysis of a wide variety of stream discharge data and topographic mapping to determine flood-frequencies over entire floodplains. Part II reports on the damage and loss estimation capability of the Flood Model, which includes a library of more than 900 damage curves for use in estimating damage to various types of buildings and infrastructure. Based on estimated property damage, the model estimates shelter needs and direct and indirect economic losses arising from floods. Analyses for the benefits of flood warning, levees, structural elevation, and flood mapping restudies are examples of analyses that can be performed with the Flood Model.

Part I of this two-part paper provided an overview of the HAZUS-MH Flood Model and a discussion of its capabilities for characterizing riverine and coastal flooding. Included was a discussion of the Flood Information Tool, which permits rapid analysis of a wide variety of stream discharge data and topographic mapping to determine flood-frequencies over entire floodplains. This paper reports on the damage and loss estimation capability of the Flood Model, which includes a library of more than 900 damage curves for use in estimating damage to various types of buildings and infrastructure. Based on estimated property damage, the model estimates shelter needs and direct and indirect economic losses arising from floods. Analyses for the effects of flood warning, the benefits of levees, structural elevation, and flood mapping restudies are also facilitated with the Flood Model.