Contesting public accountability: A dialogical exploration of accountability and social housing

This paper analyses the interaction between neoliberal inspired reforms of public services and the mechanisms for achieving public accountability. Where once accountability was exercised through the ballot box, now in the neoliberal age managerial and market based forms of accountability predominate. The analysis identifies resistance from civil society campaigns to the neoliberal restructuring of public services which leads to public accountability (PA) becoming a contested arena. To develop this analysis a re-theorisation of PA, as a relationship where civil society seeks to control the state, is explored in the context of social housing in England over the past thirty years. Central to this analysis is a dialogical analysis of key documents from a social housing regulator and civil society campaign. The analysis shows that the current PA practices are an outcome of both reforms from the government and resistance from civil society (in the shape of tenants’ campaigns). The outcome of which is to tell the story of the changes in PA (and accountability) centring on an analysis of discourse. Thus, the paper moves towards answering the question – what has happened to PA during the neoliberal age?

The Role of Subjectivity and Knowledge Power Struggles in the Formation of Public Policy

There is a growing incentive for sociologists to demonstrate the use value of their research. Research ‘impact’ is a driver of research funding and a measure of academic standing. Academic debate on this issue has intensified since Burawoy’s (2004) call for a ‘public’ sociology. However the academy is no longer the sole or primary producer of knowledge and empirical sociologists need to contend with the ‘huge swathes’ of social data that now exist (Savage and Burrows, 2007). This article furthers these debates by considering power struggles between competing forms of knowledge. Using a case study, it specifically considers the power struggle between normative and empirical knowledge, and how providers of knowledge assert legitimacy for their truth claims. The article concludes that the idea of ‘impact’ and ‘use-value’ are extremely complex and depends in the policy context on knowledge power struggles, and on how policy makers want to view the world. © The Author(s) 2012

Exploring public awareness and perceptions of palliative care: a qualitative study

Background: Research suggests that the public appear to be confused about the meaning of palliative care. Given the ageing population and associated increase in the number of patients requiring palliative care, it is vital to explore the public's understanding of this concept. Health-promoting palliative care seeks to translate hospice and palliative care ideals into broader public health practice.

Aim: To explore public perceptions of palliative care and identify strategies to raise awareness.

Design: An exploratory qualitative approach. Participants: Semi-structured telephone interviews were undertaken (N = 50) with members of the public who volunteered to participate in the study. The interviews focused on knowledge and perceptions of palliative care, expectations of palliative care services and the identification of strategies to raise public awareness of palliative care. The interviews were audio recorded and content analysed.

Results: Most participants had a general knowledge of palliative care, largely influenced by their own personal experience. They identified that palliative care was about caring for people who were dying and maintaining comfort in the last days of life. Participants expectations of services included the following: holistic support, symptom management, good communication and practical support to enable choice and carer support. Key aspects identified for promoting palliative care were the development of understanding and use of the term itself and targeted educational strategies.

Conclusion: Experience of palliative care generates understanding in the general public who also have ideas for increasing knowledge and awareness. The findings can inform policymakers about strategies to raise public awareness of palliative care.

The link between the learning organisation and curriculum innovation:A comparative study of public and private primary schools in Greece

This article examines the relationship between the learning organisation and the implementation of curriculum innovation within schools. It also compares the extent of innovative activity undertaken by schools in the public and the private sectors. A learning organisation is characterised by long-term goals, participatory decision-making processes, collaboration with external stakeholders, effective mechanisms for the internal communication of knowledge and information, and the use of rewards for its members. These characteristics are expected to promote curriculum innovation, once a number of control factors have been taken into account. The article reports on a study carried out in 197 Greek public and private primary schools in the 1999-2000 school year. Structured interviews with school principals were used as a method of data collection. According to the statistical results, the most important determinants of the innovative activity of a school are the extent of its collaboration with other organisations (i.e. openness to society), and the implementation of development programmes for teachers and parents (i.e. communication of knowledge and information). Contrary to expectations, the existence of long-term goals, the extent of shared decision-making, and the use of teacher rewards had no impact on curriculum innovation. The study also suggests that the private sector, as such, has an additional positive effect on the implementation of curriculum innovation, once a number of human, financial, material, and management resources have been controlled for. The study concludes by making recommendations for future research that would shed more light on unexpected outcomes and would help explore the causal link between variables in the research model.

Transgressing Contemporary Boundaries:The Narrator as True Custodian of Cultural Knowledge in Ulster Society

Historically in Gaelic culture, the bard was greatly valued and admired as an important and integral part of society. Travelled, schooled and specifically trained in their art, the bard helped ensure identity and reassurance for Gaelic families by grounding them both temporarily and spatially into their landscape. Entrusted with the duty and responsibility of recording place and event, the bards worked without writing and by transgressing man-made boundaries, travelled throughout the land weaving their histories into the very fabric of society.

Now no longer with us, we find ourselves without the distinguished chronicler to undertake this duty. Yet the responsibility of the Gaelic bard is one still shared by all artists today; to facilitate memory and identity, whether good or bad. Many Ulster writers, by happenstance and geography have found themselves located in a place of painful histories. An immediate difficulty for those local writers becomes manifest by being intrinsically implicated into those histories – whilst having first-hand knowledge and comprehension beyond that of the outsider, the local writer is automatically damned by association and relationship, thereby tarnishing their voice in comparison to the perceived impartiality of others.
Some writers however have successfully sought ways to escape this limitation and have worked in ways that can transgress the restrictions of prejudgement. John Hewitt, by purposely becoming a self-imposed tourist was able to distance himself to write impartially about the past, recognising that ’the place without its ghosts is a barren place.’1 In ‘The Colony’,2 tradition, peoples and mapping of the land are all narrated by Hewitt in a similar way to the Gaelic bardic topographic poems of Sean O'Dubhagain and Giolla Na Naomh O'Huidhrin3 in compiling a rich cultural atlas.

Similarly the Belfast poet and novelist Ciaran Carson also writes and records the city from an intermediary position; that of translator. Mediating between reader and aisling,4 Carson himself takes the reader on a journey into name, meaning, time and place, focusing primarily on the city of Belfast, familiar in name but impenetrable in depth to most.

Furthermore, this once-forgotten tradition to chronicle is now being continued by the new breed of Irish crime writers where the likes of Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville and Adrian McKinty can, by way of the crime novel, accurately record contemporary society. Thus, ghost estates, listed buildings, archaeological digs, street and city have all provided setting and subject matter for recent novels. Moreover by choosing the ‘outsider from within’ as their chief protagonist, whether detective or criminal, each author is able to transgress the boundaries of prejudice and preconception that hinder genuine understanding and knowledge.

Looking in turn at the Gaelic bard, the twentieth century Ulster poet and the new breed of Irish crime writer, the authors will outline the real value of the narrator, by being able to act as cultural transgressor beyond the seeming and alleged as the true chronicler in society, and then with specific reference to city and countryside in Ireland, as a valuable custodian of knowledge in architecture and place.

Keywords
Architecture, Crime Fiction, Cultural Atlas, Place, Poetry.

1 From ‘The Bloody Brae’, a one act play written by John Hewitt in the 1930’s.
2 Hewitt, J. (1968) published in Collected Poems 1932-67. London:McGibbon & Kee.
3 Lengthy and detailed medieval Gaelic poems composed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries first edited by John O'Donovan in 1862 for the Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society in Dublin.
4 The aisling is the Irish song or poem genre when the poet is visited by their muse in a daydream or dream-vision state.

Public knowledge and perceptions of connected health

Rationale, aims and objectives: This study aims to examine the public's knowledge and perceptions of connected health (CH).

Methods: A structured questionnaire was administered by face-to-face interview to an opportunistic sample of 1003 members of the public in 11 shopping centres across Northern Ireland (NI). Topics included public knowledge of CH, opinions about who should provide CH and views about the use of computers in health care. Multivariable analyses were conducted to assess respondents' willingness to use CH in the future.

Results: Sixty-seven per cent of respondents were female, 31% were less than 30 years old and 22% were over 60 years. Most respondents had never heard of CH (92%). Following a standard definition, the majority felt CH was a good idea (≈90%) and that general practitioners were in the best position to provide CH; however, respondents were equivocal about reductions in health care professionals' workload and had some concerns about the ease of device use. Factors positively influencing willingness to use CH in the future included knowledge of someone who has a chronic disease, residence in NI since birth and less concern about the use of information technology (IT) in health care. Those over 60 years old or who felt threatened by the use of IT to store personal health information were less willing to use CH in the future.

Conclusion: Increased public awareness and education about CH is required to alleviate concerns and increase the acceptability of this type of care.