Showing papers on "Formal relationships published in 2007"

Care in the context of marriages in later life : an analysis of experiences and perceptions

Abstract: This study is concerned with care in the context of later life marriages. Taking a qualitative approach, it explores how forty spouses experienced and made sense of care within their marriages. From the data that these spouses provide in joint interviews, it identifies how they supported and cared for each other and how they sought to maintain their relationships and life styles in the face of disability. It also reflects on how within their care experiences these men and women strove'to preserve not only their spousal roles and identities but also their autonomy as couples. Thus it emphasises that they experienced and made sense of care both as individuals and as couples and how this duality resulted in care practices and constructs that supported and challenged gendered care expectations. This study also looks at the couples' support networks, in particular what care the spouses were prepared to accept from whom and teases out their reasons for their choices. This reveals that they understood care in terms oftheir relationships; it was about being a spouse, a relative, a friend and a neighbour. Hence, their acceptance and provision of care were underpilUJ.ed by their values and moral principles, and in particular reciprocity and fairness, that structured their personal and formal relationships. Within this context the use of services offered them a morally acceptable means ofmeeting their care needs and protecting their informal relationships. This study also gathered interview data from fifteen home service providers to examine how they experienced supporting older couples and how they understood the use ofthis service by such service users. From a comparison ofthese data with how the spouses perceived serviceuse, significant implications for social policy and care practice emerge.

Creating task queries for concrete resources using alias selection fields specifying formal resources and formal relationships

Abstract: A solution is proposed for facilitating the selection of execution servers to be used in a scheduler for submitting the execution of jobs. Each job is defined by a corresponding descriptor. The descriptor specifies the execution servers to be used by the jobs in a formal way (through their properties); in addition, the descriptor may also include the definition of formal relationships to be satisfied by the execution server with other resources of the system (in turn defined in a formal way through their properties). A query is created according to the descriptor for selecting (concrete) execution servers having the desired properties and satisfying the desired relationships with the resources of the system. This query is then run on a central database, wherein all the concrete execution servers, resources and relationships are defined. In this way, it is possible to obtain a list of concrete execution servers eligible to execute the job in a single transaction.

Continuity of care after involuntary admission: does integration of mental healthcare matter?

Abstract: Objectives To evaluate continuity of care after acute involuntary admission. The correlation between deinstitutionalization, patients not receiving appropriate mental healthcare (discontinuity of care), and involuntary hospitalizations has been frequently hypothesized, but not often tested [1]. The effect of deinstitutionalization may be counterbalanced by integration of services [2]. We expected better continuity of care and fewer readmissions after deinstitutionalization in areas where services have better collaborative or formal relationships.

Chapter 10 Human Communities and Wildfires: A Review of Research Literature and Issues

Abstract: Wildfire researchers have typically focused on the formal social relationships and organizational structures of community and community leadership in analyzing fire preparedness and planning. This may be reasonable given the policy positions of natural resource agencies charged with management of wildfires on large public lands, particularly in the American West. When fires are allowed to burn on public lands, there are inherent risks to communities located in the path of the burn. Formal relationships between federal and state agencies and local communities (particularly with local government leaders and other people in positions of authority and power), therefore, are critical in maintaining clear communications, in reducing potential dangers, and in providing appropriate responses when wildfire dangers occur. The scholarly research in this area has a clearly applied focus, and much of it also has a “top-down” orientation that reflects the resource agency funding that underwrites this work. The relevance is clear: resource managers are charged to identify persons and groups “with a stake” in the outcome of resource management policies, and to evaluate the outcomes of agency-designed educational and outreach programs for affected publics.

The Perceived Effectiveness of Mentoring by Company Grade Officers in the United States Air Force

Abstract: : Businesses and organizations are continuously trying to make people more productive by using mentoring. The benefits of mentoring include higher levels of career satisfaction, incomes, promotions, self-efficacy and productivity. Past research has supported two general approaches referred to as informal and formal mentoring. Informal mentoring relationships are spontaneous and occur between two people without the involvement of the organization. Formal relationships are managed and sanctioned by the organization. The United States Air Force has a formal mentoring program. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the perceptions of mentoring effectiveness by company grade officers in the United States Air Force. Specifically, this thesis sought to determine the perceived effectiveness of mentoring by participants in a formal mentoring relationships compared to participants in informal mentoring relationships using secondary data collected by the Defense Manpower Data Center. The results indicated that formal mentoring was perceived as more effective than informal mentoring in overall mentoring and career development functions. The results for psychosocial mentoring were insignificant. Results suggested that the current formal mentoring program is effective in terms of CGOs perceptions of general and career related mentoring.