Categories Of Clients Research Articles

Remote Ticketing (“telebilletique”): Individual Support for The Development of New Services Linked With Public Transport

New products such as Personal Digital Assistant (Newton by Appel, Amstrad...), Bi-Bop (France, Italy), cellular radio-telephone, note-books, etc..., are the frame of a new world of communication called Persormal Media. RATP, being the promotor of one of them (remote ticketing) wishes to use this tool make urban fonctions, as a whole, easier to its customers. Therefore RATP is considering, on the basics of such remote ticketing systems, the development of services linked with public transport, that would widen the field of activity of the Company by facilitating the kwonledge and the use of the urban environment. These guidelines would moreover combine with the will of more individualized relationships with its clients, and better adjusted answers to the needs of each category of client.

British nurses in behavioural psychotherapy: a 20-year follow-up.

A postal survey was carried out of all nurse behaviour therapists trained on the English National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting course in adult behavioural psychotherapy (ENB 650) since its inception at Maudsley Hospital London, in 1972. All trained therapists currently in practice in the UK were surveyed, and 113 of 142 eligible respondents returned questionnaires. These were examined to elicit the professional profiles and working practices of the therapists, and to identify similarities and differences between therapists trained in the four training centres in the UK. It was found that the majority of nurse therapists remain in clinical practice after training, and continue to further their education and clinical expertise. There has been a general shift towards cognitive and short-term interventions, and towards practice based on primary care, with general practitioners providing most referrals. There were significant differences between the centres in terms of a number of the therapeutic techniques used, diagnostic categories of clients seen, and several elements of working practice, including referral source and numbers of clients seen and treated. The implications of the findings for clinical practice and for nursing in behaviour therapy are discussed.

Do long-term space plans meet the needs of the mission to planet earth?

A total of 46 documents from Canada, Europe, Japan, the USA and international bodies have been reviewed in preparation for Canada's Long Term Space Plan. This article provides a general overview of these documents, which describe actual or planned Earth-observation initiatives at national and international levels. A major finding is that resource managers are underrepresented vis-a-vis other client categories in both national and international Earth-observation plans. In order to overcome this gap, an expanded vision of the International Space Year theme ‘Mission to Planet Earth’ is recommended. Key issues of concern to resource managers are higlighted, eg more attention to their satellite data requirements and the need for improved data access.

The Operations Management Challenge in the Delivery of Complex Human Services

Focuses on the problems associated with the dynamic harmonization of the actions of two or more complex and different human service agencies, in such a way that service packages are regularly reviewed in order to meet the changing needs of the client. Co‐ordinating the interventions of practitioners from different professions, employed by different organizations and working on the same cases, poses great challenges to operations managers. Elements of solutions currently being tested include the definition of a detailed delivery process common to all providers of human services to a given category of clients, the personalization of contact points between professionals (i.e. the human‐service equivalent of just‐in‐time in manufacturing) and the use of individualized service plans.

The Fieldwork Team Response: An Investigation into the Relationship between Client Categories, Referred Problems and Outcome

SUMMARY This paper concerns a study of the outcome achieved following fieldwork responses to referred client problems within particular client categories. The evidence from the study demonstrates that while referred client problems initiate the social work response, administratively assigned client groups were a better determinant of outcome. It is shown that the category of a case is more directly related to outcome than is the problem referred. If social work is to be predominantly based on client categorization then polarization will result, represented by an increasingly professional child care practice and a more basic servicing role for the worker with elderly and handicapped people. This presents dangers for the organization of teams, the allocation of resources, and the training of social workers. Taking account of client problems as part of caseload manage ment should reduce this effect. The day to day fieldwork practice of social work in Britain is an import ant area for research into client problems. The need to reconsider the basic elements of practice is evidenced by the 'production of welfare' (Davies and Knapp, 1988) which emphasizes the need for 'efficiency' in community care and that efficiency is contingent on 'cost-effective' practices; yet if individual social worker client contacts are based on cost-effectiveness rather than benefit to clients, then the work achieved is of a second order. Renshaw (1988), in voicing the need for individual

Worldwide network of countertrade services

This paper presents an analysis of the global countertrade service industry that has emerged in recent years to cater to the needs of international marketing managers. Faced with an increasing number of countertrade demands, marketing managers are required to accept a wide range of commodities in payment for the goods they sell. Lacking the expertise to market these countertraded commodities, marketing managers seek the assistance of countertrade service organizations. These organizations provide a variety of services and specialize by product category and by geographic region served. Based on 1988 data, this analysis focuses on the services offered, products handled, regions covered, and clients served by these firms. Ninety-three organizations providing countertrade services make up the countertrade service industry. These organizations have 93 headquarters and 22 branch offices located in 62 cities situated in 27 countries. They offer four categories of services, handle six categories of products, cover eight regions of the world, and service 13 categories of clients.

Observing client-therapist interaction in behaviour therapy: development and first application of an observational system.

A category system for coding the interaction in psychotherapy (CIP) is presented. Six therapists carried out 64 standardized intake sessions with clients presenting with chronic insomnia. The sessions were fully coded by three raters using the CIP. The 19 client categories as well as the 18 therapist categories showed sufficient reliability with kappa coefficients of 0.80 and 0.79 respectively. The frequencies of the client and the therapist categories of the first versus the second half of the interview were compared. Shifts in the behavioural patterns of therapists and clients during the course of the interviews are in accordance with the given rationale of the session. Correlations between the observational data and subjective ratings of the participants are further evidence for the utility of the CIP.

AIDS: An Overview for Rehabilitation Counselors

This article presented an overview of AIDS. The disability involves three diagnoses: HIV Antibody Positive Tests, AIDS Related Complexes and AIDS. AIDS is transmitted through sexual intercourse, sharing unclean needles and use of contaminated blood. AIDS is incurable although the use of Azidothymidine (AZT) has shown some promise. Three categories of clients involving four stages of reaction are presented. Rehabilitation counselor interventions and vocational implications are discussed.

Measurement of Social Work Case-Loads

A description is given of work undertaken in conjunction with Lancashire Social Services Department in order to develop a formula to be used as a basis for allocating social workers between social work teams. The basis of the work is a census of elderly and physically handicapped clients. Statistical analyses then lead to categories of clients that have significantly different workload implications. The categories are weighted to reflect their workload implications and their priority in a way that allows the relative needs of social work teams to be estimated.

The Other Italian Experiment: Neighbourhood Social Work in the Health and Social Services

Following recent legislation, most social workers in Italy are now responsible for giving a service to the population of a given geographical area rather than to any particular category of client. The findings suggest that there is some experimentation with regard to the organisation and composition of neighbourhood teams and that the trend, not without problems, is towards social workers becoming the ‘gatekeepers’ to financial and other resources in the Social Service Sector for the local population.

Allocating the Home Help Services

Does good just mean helpful to client or the effective application of scientific methodology? From first point of view, this is a useful book; most of it describes a comprehensive survey of 1000 home help clients, discussing questions asked and results obtained. Clients are categorised by age, disability, extent of help from family and many other factors, and current allocation of services to these categories is fully discussed and illustrated by graphs. A discussion of home helps' gen? eral comments and secondary results occupies a quarter of book. There is less discussion ofthe actual allocation procedures: methods using present levels and ideal levels of service are employed, some considering mix of actual clients, others adjusting for mix of population. From latter view of O.R., book is slightly disappointing. The methods used are somewhat crude, although it could be argued that they were all that were required or that could be implemented; survey results are stated with little indication of their significance, statistically or otherwise; and although much emphasis is laid on present allocation of home helps between categories of clients, there is no scientific assess? ment of their actual needs. This would have been especially valuable as some current discrepancies were uncovered, for example some categories having a 'lot' of family help were provided with more home help than those receiving 'little' family help. In conclusion, while probably not of much value to O.R. workers outside Social Services, this book will give food for thought and practical help to those responsible for allocating public service resources between geographical areas, and for home help organisers comments made in passing on what it's really like will be of much value. It also provides a case study in which academics (from Exeter University) worked with management and workers to find solutions acceptable to both. More importantly, per? haps, it shows that peculiar admixture of rational thought and sympathetic sensitivity to people's needs that this type of study requires.

Social psychiatry and social work.

For the purpose of this discussion, ‘social psychiatry’ is defined as an attitude or a perspective; its activity or services is ‘community mental health’. The social work methods, casework, group-work, and community organization, will be considered as contributors to community mental health. Social work is an ideological forerunner of social psychiatry; the notion of the interdependence of psychic and social factors as determinants of human behaviour. Claims of exclusivity in community mental health made by psychiatry are being questioned by psychiatrists themselves. Social work can participate in providing community mental health services through its traditional methods regardless of category of client, and in contributing a better understanding of some of the social determinants of mental illness through research. With the chronic mental patient in the realm of rehabilitation and provision, with the ambulatory patient, social work's goal would be rehabilitation and provision, but in addition, there would be secondary prevention. With the ‘mental illness prone’, social work through its traditional methods makes but a minimal contribution, The goal being primarily preventive. Contribution is being made through formal and informal consultative activities with related professions in places where the target population can be reached. The role of social work can be enhanced if new developments bear fruit. At times society is the patient and the intervention should be directed at the reduction or elimination of the social pathologies and at the malfunctioning of our social systems. Social work thus might intervene in the social structure through the creation of new services and the more effective delivery of these services, the designing of new policies and programs in social welfare, the participation in urban planning and urban renewal and the participation in the creation of change in the ‘culture’ of society. The problems which remain involved are the functional differentiation among the several mental health professions, the deployment and interrelationships of professional and sub-professional personnel in social welfare and the implication for professional education. In conclusion the following questions are raised: what societal problems cause what categories of the population to be more prone to mental illness and emotional upheaval. Are we correct in placing under the rubric ‘mental illness’ some of the by-products of our urban highly technological civilization and would interdisciplinary epidemological research coupled with experimental intervention programs be appropriate to obtain answers to questions such as the ones posed above?