UK social housing and housing market in England:a statistical review and trends

Around 80% of the 63 million people in the UK live in urban areas where demand for affordable housing is highest. Supply of new dwellings is a long way short of demand and with an average annual replacement rate of 0.5% more than 80% of the existing residential housing stock will still be in use by 2050. A high proportion of owner-occupiers, a weak private rental sector and lack of sustainable financing models render England’s housing market one of the least responsive in the developed world. As an exploratory research the purpose of this paper is to examine the provision of social housing in the United Kingdom with a particular focus on England, and to set out implications for housing associations delivering sustainable community development. The paper is based on an analysis of historical data series (Census data), current macro-economic data and population projections to 2033. The paper identifies a chronic undersupply of affordable housing in England which is likely to be exacerbated by demographic development, changes in household composition and reduced availability of finance to develop new homes. Based on the housing market trends analysed in this paper opportunities are identified for policy makers to remove barriers to the delivery of new affordable homes and for social housing providers to evolve their business models by taking a wider role in sustainable community development.

Organizational challenges of community associations:applying nonprofit research to real-world problems

Can voluntary and nonprofit research be helpful for local community associations (CAs) seeking to respond to organizational challenges and problems? This paper builds on a study of an organizational crisis in an English CA to explore this question. The events which precipitated and prolonged the crisis seemed inexplicable to outside observers. Yet the study found that much of what occurred could be explained in the light of earlier theories and research. The paper concludes that voluntary and nonprofit scholarship, as well as generic organizational theories, has the potential to be helpful for community association members and activists in anticipating and responding to organizational problems. But scholars need to do more to disseminate existing research findings; to make them accessible and to adapt them to the distinctive needs and real world problems of community associations.

The boundaries of reporting sustainable development in social housing

The Registered Social Landlord (an independent housing association in the UK) examined here was widely recognized as providing an example of good governance. The organization was using extensive internal reporting, both corporate and quasi-governmental in language, to try to accurately capture different aspects of performance. This article reveals that reporting sustainable development has boundaries to be overcome, particularly in measuring performance of environmental and community activities. © 2008 The Authors.

Spatially clustered associations in health GIS

Overlaying maps using a desktop GIS is often the first step of a multivariate spatial analysis. The potential of this operation has increased considerably as data sources and Web services to manipulate them are becoming widely available via the Internet. Standards from the OGC enable such geospatial mashups to be seamless and user driven, involving discovery of thematic data. The user is naturally inclined to look for spatial clusters and correlation of outcomes. Using classical cluster detection scan methods to identify multivariate associations can be problematic in this context, because of a lack of control on or knowledge about background populations. For public health and epidemiological mapping, this limiting factor can be critical but often the focus is on spatial identification of risk factors associated with health or clinical status. Spatial entropy index HSu for the ScankOO analysis of the hypothetical dataset using a vicinity which is fixed by the number of points without distinction between their labels. (The size of the labels is proportional to the inverse of the index) In this article we point out that this association itself can ensure some control on underlying populations, and develop an exploratory scan statistic framework for multivariate associations. Inference using statistical map methodologies can be used to test the clustered associations. The approach is illustrated with a hypothetical data example and an epidemiological study on community MRSA. Scenarios of potential use for online mashups are introduced but full implementation is left for further research.

Spatially clustered associations in health related geospatial data

Overlaying maps using a desktop GIS is often the first step of a multivariate spatial analysis. The potential of this operation has increased considerably as data sources an dWeb services to manipulate them are becoming widely available via the Internet. Standards from the OGC enable such geospatial ‘mashups’ to be seamless and user driven, involving discovery of thematic data. The user is naturally inclined to look for spatial clusters and ‘correlation’ of outcomes. Using classical cluster detection scan methods to identify multivariate associations can be problematic in this context, because of a lack of control on or knowledge about background populations. For public health and epidemiological mapping, this limiting factor can be critical but often the focus is on spatial identification of risk factors associated with health or clinical status. In this article we point out that this association itself can ensure some control on underlying populations, and develop an exploratory scan statistic framework for multivariate associations. Inference using statistical map methodologies can be used to test the clustered associations. The approach is illustrated with a hypothetical data example and an epidemiological study on community MRSA. Scenarios of potential use for online mashups are introduced but full implementation is left for further research.

A community-based approach to supply chain design

The role of beneficiaries in the humanitarian supply chain is highlighted in the imperative to meet their needs but disputed in terms of their actual decision-making and purchasing power. This paper discusses the use of a beneficiary-focused, community-based approach in the case of a post-crisis housing reconstruction programme. In the community-based approach, beneficiaries become active members of the humanitarian supply chain. Implications of this community-based approach are discussed in the light of supply chain design and aid effectiveness. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.

The corporatization of community pharmacy:implications for service provision, the public health function, and pharmacy's claims to professional status in the United Kingdom

Background Pharmacy has experienced both incomplete professionalization and deprofessionalization. Since the late 1970s, a concerted attempt has been made to re-professionalize pharmacy in the United Kingdom (UK) through role extension—a key feature of which has been a drive for greater pharmacy involvement in public health. However, the continual corporatization of the UK community pharmacy sector may reduce the professional autonomy of pharmacists and may threaten to constrain attempts at reprofessionalization. Objectives The objectives of the research: to examine the public health activities of community pharmacists in the UK; to explore the attitudes of community pharmacists toward recent relevant UK policy and barriers to the development of their public health function; and, to investigate associations between activity, attitudes, and the type of community pharmacy worked in (eg, supermarket, chain, independent). Methods A self-completion postal questionnaire was sent to a random sample of practicing community pharmacists, stratified for country and sex, within Great Britain (n = 1998), with a follow-up to nonresponders 4 weeks later. Data were analyzed using SPSS (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) (v12.0). A final response rate of 51% (n = 1023/1998) was achieved. Results The level of provision of emergency hormonal contraception on a patient group direction, supervised administration of medicines, and needle-exchange schemes was lower in supermarket pharmacies than in the other types of pharmacy. Respondents believed that supermarkets and the major multiple pharmacy chains held an advantageous position in terms of attracting financing for service development despite suggesting that the premises of such pharmacies may not be the most suitable for the provision of such services. Conclusions A mixed market in community pharmacy may be required to maintain a comprehensive range of pharmacy-based public health services and provide maximum benefit to all patients. Longitudinal monitoring is recommended to ensure that service provision is adequate across the pharmacy network.

Designing post-disaster supply chains:learning from housing reconstruction projects

Post-disaster housing reconstruction projects face several challenges. Resources and material supplies are often scarce; several and different types of organizations are involved, while projects must be completed as quickly as possible to foster recovery. Within this context, the chapter aims to increase the understanding of relief supply chain design in reconstruction. In addition, the chapter is introducing a community based and beneficiary perspective to relief supply chains by evaluating the implications of local components for supply chain design in reconstruction. This is achieved through the means of secondary data analysis based on the evaluation reports of two major housing reconstruction projects that took place in Europe the last decade. A comparative analysis of the organizational designs of these projects highlights the ways in which users can be involved. The performance of reconstruction supply chains seems to depend to a large extent on the way beneficiaries are integrated in supply chain design impacting positively on the effectiveness of reconstruction supply chains.

Use of medications with anticholinergic activity and self-reported injurious falls in older community-dwelling adults

Objectives: To assess the association between the use of medications with anticholinergic activity and the subsequent risk of injurious falls in older adults. Design: Prospective, population-based study using data from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing. Setting: Irish population. Participants: Community-dwelling men and women without dementia aged 65 and older (N = 2,696). Measurements: Self-reported injurious falls reported once approximately 2 years after baseline interview. Self-reported regular medication use at baseline interview. Pharmacy dispensing records from the Irish Health Service Executive Primary Care Reimbursement Service in a subset (n = 1,553). Results: Nine percent of men and 17% of women reported injurious falls. In men, the use of medications with definite anticholinergic activity was associated with greater risk of subsequent injurious falls (adjusted relative risk (aRR) = 2.55, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.33-4.88), but the risk of having any fall and the number of falls reported were not significantly greater. Greater anticholinergic burden was associated with greater injurious falls risk. No associations were observed for women. Findings were similar using pharmacy dispensing records. The aRR for medications with definite anticholinergic activity dispensed in the month before baseline and subsequent injurious falls in men was 2.53 (95% CI = 1.15-5.54). Conclusion: The regular use of medications with anticholinergic activity is associated with subsequent injurious falls in older men, although falls were self-reported after a 2-year recall and so may have been underreported. Further research is required to validate this finding in men and to consider the effect of duration and dose of anticholinergic medications.

Transgressing community:the case of Muslims in a twenty-first-century British city

This paper draws on ethnographic research carried out in Birmingham, UK – a city significant for its sizeable Muslim population and its iconic role in the history of minority ethnic settlement in Britain – to consider how associations of place and ethnicity work in different ways to inform ideas about ‘Muslim community’ in twenty-first-century Britain. The paper charts happenings around a local event in an area of majority Asian settlement and how representations of the area as a place of Muslim community were used to implicate it in the ‘war on terror’. The paper goes on to show how this sensibility is disrupted by Muslims themselves through alternative engagements with space and ethnicity. The paper argues that these offer a ground for making Muslim community in ways that actively engage with histories and patterns of ethnic settlement in the city rather than being determined by them.

Living well to the end:a phenomenological analysis of life in extra care housing

OBJECTIVES: To understand older adults' experiences of moving into extra care housing which offers enrichment activities alongside social and healthcare support. DESIGN: A longitudinal study was conducted which adopted a phenomenological approach to data generation and analysis. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted in the first 18 months of living in extra care housing. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used because its commitment to idiography enabled an in-depth analysis of the subjective lived experience of moving into extra care housing. Themes generated inductively were examined against an existential-phenomenological theory of well-being. RESULTS: Learning to live in an extra care community showed negotiating new relationships was not straightforward; maintaining friendships outside the community became more difficult as capacity declined. In springboard for opportunity/confinement, living in extra care provided new opportunities for social engagement and a restored sense of self. Over time horizons began to shrink as incapacities grew. Seeking care illustrated reticence to seek care, due to embarrassment and a sense of duty to one's partner. Becoming aged presented an ontological challenge. Nevertheless, some showed a readiness for death, a sense of homecoming. CONCLUSIONS: An authentic later life was possible but residents required emotional and social support to live through the transition and challenges of becoming aged. Enhancement activities boosted residents' quality of life but the range of activities could be extended to cater better for quieter, smaller scale events within the community; volunteer activity facilitators could be used here. Peer mentoring may help build new relationships and opportunities for interactive stimulation. Acknowledging the importance of feeling-empathic imagination-in caregiving may help staff and residents relate better to each other, thus helping individuals to become ontologically secure and live well to the end.

Transgressing community:the case of Muslims in a twenty-first-century British city

This paper draws on ethnographic research carried out in Birmingham, UK - a city significant for its sizeable Muslim population and its iconic role in the history of minority ethnic settlement in Britain - to consider how associations of place and ethnicity work in different ways to inform ideas about 'Muslim community' in twenty-first-century Britain. The paper charts happenings around a local event in an area of majority Asian settlement and how representations of the area as a place of Muslim community were used to implicate it in the 'war on terror'. The paper goes on to show how this sensibility is disrupted by Muslims themselves through alternative engagements with space and ethnicity. The paper argues that these offer a ground for making Muslim community in ways that actively engage with histories and patterns of ethnic settlement in the city rather than being determined by them.