Attachment Style, Therapeutic Alliance and Recovery in forensic mental health: the A-STAR study and clinical research portfolio

Background: Research suggests that forensic mental health services and staff can play an important role in the recognition and intervention with attachment-related behaviours to promote engagement and recovery. There is a lack of literature exploring whether the attachment needs of forensic service-users are recognised and, associations between attachment style and factors predictive of recovery. Aims: This study aimed to examine the extent to which service-users and keyworkers agree about service-users’ attachment and to identify whether attachment was associated with service attachment, working alliance, ward climate and recovery. Methods: Twenty-two service-users from low and medium secure forensic services, completed questionnaire measures of their attachment style, service attachment, working alliance, ward climate and experiences of recovery. Nineteen keyworkers completed measures of the service-users attachment style and working alliance. Results: There was strong agreement between service-users and staff for attachment anxiety (ICC=0.71) but poor agreement for attachment avoidance (ICC=0.39). Service attachment was associated with more positive perceptions of staff support (r=0.49) and avoidant attachment was associated with lower ratings of recovery (r=-0.51). Correlations between attachment style and service attachment, working alliance and ward climate were small and non-significant. Conclusions: A focus on staff training to support recognition of the nature and impact of avoidant attachment styles is indicated. The findings suggest that interventions to enhance staff - service-user relationships may be important for service attachment and indeed promotion of a recovery focused orientation amongst service-users high in avoidant attachment may improve wellbeing and outcomes.

A cyber exercise post assessment framework: In Malaysia perspectives

Critical infrastructures are based on complex systems that provide vital services to the nation. The complexities of the interconnected networks, each managed by individual organisations, if not properly secured, could offer vulnerabilities that threaten other organisations’ systems that depend on their services. This thesis argues that the awareness of interdependencies among critical sectors needs to be increased. Managing and securing critical infrastructure is not isolated responsibility of a government or an individual organisation. There is a need for a strong collaboration among critical service providers of public and private organisations in protecting critical information infrastructure. Cyber exercises have been incorporated in national cyber security strategies as part of critical information infrastructure protection. However, organising a cyber exercise involved multi sectors is challenging due to the diversity of participants’ background, working environments and incidents response policies. How well the lessons learned from the cyber exercise and how it can be transferred to the participating organisations is still a looming question. In order to understand the implications of cyber exercises on what participants have learnt and how it benefits participants’ organisation, a Cyber Exercise Post Assessment (CEPA) framework was proposed in this research. The CEPA framework consists of two parts. The first part aims to investigate the lessons learnt by participants from a cyber exercise using the four levels of the Kirkpatrick Training Model to identify their perceptions on reaction, learning, behaviour and results of the exercise. The second part investigates the Organisation Cyber Resilience (OCR) of participating sectors. The framework was used to study the impact of the cyber exercise called X Maya in Malaysia. Data collected through interviews with X Maya 5 participants were coded and categorised based on four levels according to the Kirkpatrick Training Model, while online surveys distributed to ten Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) sectors participated in the exercise. The survey used the C-Suite Executive Checklist developed by World Economic Forum in 2012. To ensure the suitability of the tool used to investigate the OCR, a reliability test conducted on the survey items showed high internal consistency results. Finally, individual OCR scores were used to develop the OCR Maturity Model to provide the organisation cyber resilience perspectives of the ten CNII sectors.