Birmingham Community Research Articles

Birmingham community mental health team for the homeless

Mental health services have been criticised for failing to respond to the needs of the rising number of homeless mentally ill. We report on the first year of referrals to a community mental health team established to meet the needs of the severely mentally ill homeless in Birmingham. Most users had a psychotic disorder and a lengthy history of unstable housing, and experienced a range of other disadvantages. Although the team is successfully reaching its priority group, examination of other characteristics of users has highlighted a number of issues which should inform the future planning and development of the service.

Iron and Steel: Class, Race, and Community in Birmingham, Alabama, 1875- 1920.

Iron and Steel: Class, Race, and Community in Birmingham, Alabama, 1875- 1920.

Iron and Steel: Class, Race, and Community in Birmingham, Alabama, 1875-1920.

Iron and Steel: Class, Race, and Community in Birmingham, Alabama, 1875-1920.

Iron and Steel: Class, Race, and Community in Birmingham, Alabama, 1875–1920. By Henry M. McKivenJr. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Pp. xiii, 223. $37.50, cloth; $14.95, paper.

Iron and Steel: Class, Race, and Community in Birmingham, Alabama, 1875–1920. By Henry M. McKivenJr. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Pp. xiii, 223. $37.50, cloth; $14.95, paper.

Iron and Steel: Class, Race, and Community in Birmingham, Alabama, 1875-1920.

Iron and Steel: Class, Race, and Community in Birmingham, Alabama, 1875-1920.

Iron and steel: class, race, and community in Birmingham, Alabama, 1875-1920

In this study of Birmingham's iron and steel workers, Henry McKiven unravels the complex connections between race relations and class struggle that shaped the city's social and economic order. He also traces the links between the process of class formation and the practice of community building and neighborhood politics. According to McKiven, the white men who moved to Birmingham soon after its founding to take jobs as skilled iron workers shared a free labor ideology that emphasized opportunity and equality between white employees and management at the expense of less skilled black laborers. But doubtful of their employers' commitment to white supremacy, they formed unions to defend their position within the racial order of the workplace. This order changed, however, when advances in manufacturing technology created more semiskilled jobs and broadened opportunities for black workers. McKiven shows how these race and class divisions also shaped working-class life away from the plant, as workers built neighborhoods and organized community and political associations that reinforced bonds of skill, race, and ethnicity. |In this study of iron and steel workers in Birmingham, Alabama, in the years 1875-1920, McKiven examines the complex connections between race relations and class struggle that shaped the city's social and economic order. In particular, he traces the links between the process of class formation, on the one hand, and the practice of community building and neighborhood politics, on the other.

Ethnic differences in infant care practices and in the incidence of sudden infant death syndrome in Birmingham

Certain infant care practices have consistently been shown to play an important role in the aetiology of the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). In the UK, the incidence of SIDS amongst Asians is less than half that of whites. We conducted a questionnaire-based survey of 374 multiparous mothers from a multiracial community in Birmingham. We found that the majority of Asian infants slept in the parental bedroom at night, 94% compared to 61% of whites, whilst 33% of white infants slept alone compared to 4% of Asians. Three times as many white mothers as Asians placed infants prone (31% vs. 11%). We, therefore, observed marked differences in the infant care practices of Asians compared to whites in the UK, which may partly account for the low incidence of SIDS amongst infants of Asian origin.

Learning to hear voices: Listening to users of mental health services

This article reports findings from a User's Councils project developed as part of a multi-dimensional approach to the development of user-led community care services: the Birmingham Community Care Special Action Project (CCSAP). The evaluation of the user involvement dimension of CCSAP sought to answer three basic questions: Who was involved? How were they involved? What were the outcomes of involvement? This article highlights the particular significance of enabling users of mental health services to express a ‘voice’ which is recognized as valid by those professionally involved with their care. It identifies the different motivations and purposes which encourage users to become involved in user councils and emphasises the need for clarity and openness about the objectives to be achieved. It considers provider responses to those voices and discusses the importance of establishing means through which voice can be translated into action by those with responsibilities for services.

USER INVOLVEMENT IN COMMUNITY CARE: ORIGINS, PURPOSES AND APPLICATIONS

Whilst the drive towards public sector consumerism is intensifying, it is also evident that somewhat different ‘brands’ of consumerism are currently being marketed. This article develops a framework to assist in the disaggregation and understanding of the range of approaches to consumerism currently being pursued in the field of health and social care. Its principal elements concern the ideological origins of consumerism in this field; their purposes; and the forms through which consumer preference are expressed. This framework is applied to the Birmingham Community Care Special Action Project, a major developmental initiative which the authors have been studying. An important area for further investigation is the extent to which users and carers seek to exercise greater collective control over services as opposed to influencing the development of services more responsive to their individual needs.

Introducing New Stakeholders — User and Researcher Interests in Evaluative Research. A discussion of methods used to evaluate the Birmingham Community Care Special Action Project

This paper argues that public service evaluation should be considered a value-driven activity which has the objective of contributing to change. Researchers undertaking this type of work have legitimate interests to pursue through it and should be regarded as stakeholders in their own right. Reflecting a commitment to changing the balance of power between those who provide and those who receive services, the interests of service users as stakeholders should be enhanced through the research process. This requires a different type of relationship between the researcher and research ‘subjects’. An attempt to put these principles in practice in the context of the evaluation of a major initiative to enable users to have their say in the development of community care services is described.

The limits of influence: Ethnic minorities and the partnership programme

Abstract This article summarizes and highlights some of the findings of a recent survey on ‘Meeting the Needs of the Community’ carried out by Birmingham Community Relations Council. The survey was undertaken to obtain a consumer reaction from the voluntary sector of perceptions of the grant funding process of the Inner City Partnership (ICCP). Groups, particularly black groups, when contacted, did not perceive of themselves as successful in the process and are frustrated and resentful. Yet Birmingham Inner City Partnership Programme Annual Reviews suggest that the needs of the ethnic minorities are being met. The survey was an attempt to find out why there was this mismatch of perceptions. This article gives a brief background to ICCP; describes the research design and approaches and discusses some of the major findings and studies. It has been written with a thematic approach, examining three key areas of policy; the grant allocation to black communities, participation by black communities and the relat...

Infant coping with interpersonal stress: Specificity, developmental changes and stability

This study examines possible bidirectional relationships between emotion regulation and motives related to consuming palatable foods during adolescence. Participants included 79 adolescents (96% African American) who took part in Waves 2 and 3 of the Coping with Violence Study. The youth were recruited from four public middle schools serving low income, urban communities in Birmingham, AL. Participants completed self-report measures of emotion regulation and indicated different motives for consuming tasty foods and drinks at both waves. Results demonstrate that poorer emotion regulation at Wave 2 predicted more frequent endorsement of eating motives related to coping and conforming at Wave 3. Eating motives at Wave 2 were not associated with changes in emotion regulation at Wave 3. The results suggest that emotion regulation problems in adolescence may contribute to obesity and related negative outcomes through greater consumption of unhealthy food for coping and social conformity reasons.

A Therapeutic Community in Birmingham (England

A Therapeutic Community in Birmingham (England