Joint Agency Research Articles

G128 Why did my baby die? Bereaved parents' understanding of cause of death

Aims Since 2008, in England, all unexpected infant deaths must be investigated jointly by police, health and social services aiming to establish the full cause and relevant contributory factors for the death. This study aims to learn of bereaved parents’ experiences of this joint agency approach (JAA) and their understanding of the cause and contributory factors for their infant’s death. Methods Bereaved parents, whose unexpected infants’ deaths were investigated by a JAA were eligible to participate in the study. Case records from all agencies were analysed, JAA professionals were interviewed and parents were invited to complete questionnaires or have in-depth interviews. Qualitative data were analysed using a Framework Approach. Results There were 101 eligible families of whom 23 were recruited, 16 families had in-depth interviews, 5 completed questionnaires and 2 allowed case note access only. 27 Professionals were interviewed. The median time between infants’ deaths and interview or questionnaire completion was 33 weeks; all interviews took place between 2011–3. 7 cases had a medical cause for death, 16 cases were classified as SIDS or unascertained. The JAA determined modifiable contributory factors in 15/16 SIDS or unascertained deaths but in only 1 medically explained death. Learning the cause for the death was very important to most families. While most parents understood medical causes for the death; the concept of SIDS or unascertained deaths was more difficult. Despite this, several parents did have a good understanding of the relevant modifiable contributory factors for their infant’s death even when these related to parental actions such as co-sleeping. However, often parents seemed to either not understand the role of these actions or failed to disclose them. Some parents blamed themselves for the death, blamed health care professionals or felt blamed by professionals. Self–blame was not related to cause of death or parental understanding of contributory factors but associated with parental anxiety and depression. Conclusion After SIDS or unascertained deaths, parents do not always understand the cause of death and relevant contributory factors. When parents understand these issues, professionals can be reassured that this does not result in parents blaming themselves.

Investigating Unexpected Child Deaths: An Audit of the New Joint Agency Approach

Key Practitioner Messages The joint agency approach should be used to investigate all unexpected child deaths Practitioners should ensure that final case discussions are not unduly delayed so that parents do not have to wait several months for information on the cause of their child's death. All bereaved parents should be given the opportunity to have a follow‐up appointment with the paediatrician responsible for managing sudden unexpected death in children.

How does it feel to act together?

This paper on the phenomenology of joint agency proposes a foray into a little explored territory at the intersection of two very active domains of research: joint action and sense of agency. I explore two ways in which our experience of joint agency may differ from our experience of individual agency. First, the mechanisms of action specification and control involved in joint action are typically more complex than those present in individual actions, since it is crucial for joint action that people coordinate their plans and actions. I discuss the implications that these coordination requirements might have for the strength of the sense of agency an agent may experience for a joint action. Second, engagement in joint action may involve a transformation of agentive identity and a partial or complete shift from a sense of self-agency to a sense of we-agency. I discuss several factors that may contribute to shaping our sense of agentive identity in joint action.

Intentional joint agency: shared intention lite

Philosophers have proposed accounts of shared intentions that aim at capturing what makes a joint action intentionally joint. On these accounts, having a shared intention typically presupposes cognitively and conceptually demanding theory of mind skills. Yet, young children engage in what appears to be intentional, cooperative joint action long before they master these skills. In this paper, I attempt to characterize a modest or ‘lite’ notion of shared intention, inspired by Michael Bacharach’s approach to team–agency theory in terms of framing, group identification and team reasoning. I argue that the account of shared intentions this approach yields is less cognitively and conceptually demanding than other accounts and is thus applicable to the intentional joint actions performed by young children. I also argue that it has limitations of its own and that considering what these limitations are may help us understand why we sometimes need to take other routes to shared intentions.

Bridging and Enriching Top-down and Participatory Learning: The Case of Smallholder, Organic Conservation Agriculture Farmers in Zimbabwe

This article discusses the combined use of top-down and participatory learning approaches during the course of a 42-month organic conservation agriculture project that is being implemented in eight districts of Mashonaland East Province in Zimbabwe. The initial 18-month project was extended by a further 24 months in order to build on what had been achieved by deepening organic conservation agriculture practices, by increasing the understanding of, and access to, markets, and by expanding farmer agency. The top-down approach involves farmer representatives, known as ‘access farmers’ in the project, undergoing training at training centres and then returning to their respective farmer associations to train other farmers in what they have learnt. Participatory learning includes farmer-to-farmer learning within and among associations, and trainers learning from, and acting on, farmer experiences. Expansive learning, which combines, and goes beyond, both approaches and allows for joint learning, innovation and agency, has been used to support the associations to learn about, practise and benefit from organic conservation agriculture. This was stimulated by change laboratory workshops being conducted with each of the 32 farmer associations formed during the first 18 months of the project. The main argument in the present article is that combining these seemingly opposite approaches to learning is feasible and is essential for accelerating practice-oriented changes in agriculture. The concept that appears to enable this linkage is dialectics.

Intending to Aid

Courts and commentators are notoriously puzzled about the mens rea standards for complicity. Accomplices intend to aid, but what attitude need they have towards the crimes that they aid? This paper both criticizes extant accounts of the mens rea of complicity and offers a new account. The paper argues that an intention can commit one to an event’s occurrence without committing one to promoting the event, or making it more likely to take place. Under the proposed account of the mens rea of complicity, an accomplice must have an intention that commits him to the crime’s occurrence, but need not commit him to making it more likely that the crime occurs. The paper traces the implications of this view both for several difficult complicity cases, and for ongoing debates among philosophers of action about the necessary and sufficient conditions of joint agency.

Interpreting a client satisfaction survey on shared agency in plan-based practice at the welfare office

Client satisfaction surveys are criticized for their tendency to generate positive feedback. This is probably due to the prevailing practice of interpreting the results in a routine manner. In this article I compare distance-oriented and method-conscious interpretation. I favour method-conscious interpretation, which utilizes accrued knowledge of the systematic skewness of information collected through a client satisfaction survey. It also pays attention to the way in which the studied phenomenon's special features, situation, and context affect the results. The operationalization of this survey has been guided by the ideal of shared agency in plan-based practice. The concept of plan-based practice refers to goal- and change-oriented, structured, and phased practice. Shared agency emphasizes dialogical, collaborative, and joint agency between the client and the worker in a helping process. When combined, these ideals lead to joint and systematic action by the client and worker. The combination of plan-based practice and shared agency emphasizes the presence of the client's views and actions in the process of getting help. The ideal holds that the client and worker share the assessment, goal-setting, and choice of working methods associated with a change-oriented working mode. I demonstrate that even if client feedback seems to indicate satisfaction, a method-conscious interpretation provides a more viable way to apply the results to organizing services. The study's data includes client satisfaction feedback (3036 instances) received by welfare offices in Lapland. The client feedback is in the form of experiential self-evaluation of received services immediately after the service events.

Naturalizing joint action: A process-based approach

Numerous philosophical theories of joint agency and its intentional structure have been developed in the past few decades. These theories have offered accounts of joint agency that appeal to higher-level states (such as goals, commitments, and intentions) that are “shared” in some way. These accounts have enhanced our understanding of joint agency, yet there are a number of lower-level cognitive phenomena involved in joint action that philosophers rarely acknowledge. In particular, empirical research in cognitive science has revealed that when individuals engage in a joint activity such as conversation or joint problem solving, they become aligned at multiple levels (e.g., behaviors, or cognitive states). We argue that this phenomenon of alignment is crucial to understanding joint actions and should be integrated with philosophical approaches. In this paper, we sketch a possible integration, and draw out its implications for understanding of joint agency and collective intentionality. The result is a process-based, dynamic account of joint action that integrates both low-level and high-level states, and seeks to capture the separate processes of how a joint action is initiated and sustained.

Comparing Dutch Case management care models for people with dementia and their caregivers: The design of the COMPAS study

BackgroundDementia care in the Netherlands is shifting from fragmented, ad hoc care to more coordinated and personalised care. Case management contributes to this shift. The linkage model and a combination of intensive case management and joint agency care models were selected based on their emerging prominence in the Netherlands. It is unclear if these different forms of case management are more effective than usual care in improving or preserving the functioning and well-being at the patient and caregiver level and at the societal cost. The objective of this article is to describe the design of a study comparing these two case management care models against usual care. Clinical and cost outcomes are investigated while care processes and the facilitators and barriers for implementation of these models are considered.DesignMixed methods include a prospective, observational, controlled, cohort study among persons with dementia and their primary informal caregiver in regions of the Netherlands with and without case management including a qualitative process evaluation. Inclusion criteria for the cohort study are: community-dwelling individuals with a dementia diagnosis who are not terminally-ill or anticipate admission to a nursing home within 6 months and with an informal caregiver who speaks fluent Dutch. Person with dementia-informal caregiver dyads are followed for two years. The primary outcome measure is the Neuropsychiatric Inventory for the people with dementia and the General Health Questionnaire for their caregivers. Secondary outcomes include: quality of life and needs assessment in both persons with dementia and caregivers, activity of daily living, competence of care, and number of crises. Costs are measured from a societal perspective using cost diaries. Process indicators measure the quality of care from the participant’s perspective. The qualitative study uses purposive sampling methods to ensure a wide variation of respondents. Semi-structured interviews with stakeholders based on the theoretical model of adaptive implementation are planned.DiscussionThis study provides relevant insights into care processes, description of two case management models along with clinical and economic data from persons with dementia and caregivers to clarify important differences in two case management care models compared to usual care.

Afterlife Beliefs and Ego Integrity as Two Mediators of the Relationship Between Intrinsic Religiosity and Personal Death Anxiety Among Older Adult British Christians

The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy of afterlife beliefs and ego integrity as two mediators of the negative relationship between intrinsic religiosity and personal death anxiety in later life. One hundred forty-three older adult British Christians responded to both initial and follow-up postal surveys containing questions on their religious and death attitudes. Structural equation modeling analysis showed that intrinsic religiosity predicted lower personal death anxiety via fostering more benign afterlife beliefs and ego integrity. This study demonstrated that intrinsic religiosity had a negative indirect effect on personal death anxiety through the joint agency of more benign afterlife beliefs and greater ego integrity. It also provided empirical evidence in support of the role of intrinsic religiosity in promoting psychosocial well-being in later life.

Joint agency reactions to sudden infant deaths can be successful

Joint agency reactions to sudden infant deaths can be successful

Managed Networks and Integrated Children's Services ‐ Case Study of Devon

This article explains how joint agency services for children with special needs have been operating in Devon for a number of years. The business processes and ICT systems underpinning the service are described and specific key worker services are explained. The Fair Access to Carers' Breaks model explains how Devon has allocated financial resources to meet individual users' needs. This will be relevant to any authority looking for a transparent means of distributing equitably financial resources such as the additional resources provided by Aiming High for Disabled Children. The article goes on to describe how child and adolescent mental health services were added to the joint agency service and how the choice and partnership approach (CAPA) has virtually removed the waiting list for this service in Devon. The article then describes how further integration of services will be achieved by establishing early response and further response services which will include the Public Health Nursing Service and Education staff.

Responding to unexpected infant deaths: experience in one English region

AimNew national procedures for responding to the unexpected death of a child in England require a joint agency approach to investigate each death and support the bereaved family. As part...

Joint Agency: Intersubjectivity, Sense of Control, and the Feeling of Trust

In this paper, I am going to be concerned with the capacity of human beings to act jointly. In particular, I will focus on the phenomenal aspect of collective action. I shall suggest that the experience of being jointly engaged with another is complex: it comprises both a practical grasp of oneself and of the other person as single agents participating in the joint pursuit, and an experience of collective immersion in the activity, which includes a sense of joint control. This suggestion gives rise to a number of puzzles: firstly, what is the relation between jointly engaged agents' awareness of self and other and their sense of a joint engagement? Secondly, how are we to substantiate the idea of a sense of joint control if it is also obviously true that I don't, however close our psychological and bodily attunements, have control over your doings? I shall argue that a satisfactory solution to these puzzles is possible only if we take seriously the notion of a perceptually constituted “intersubjective perspective” that is shared by the participants in joint activities and gives rise to an attitude of mutual trust.

Relations among Security and Law Enforcement Institutions in Indonesia

Indonesia is not often considered a state where security management is well conducted. The dominant perception appears to be that law enforcement and security institutions cooperate poorly. In part, this trend is informed by academic works on the past behaviour of security forces in some of Indonesia's troubled areas, like Ambon, Papua and Central Sulawesi, to name a few. (1) Some authors argue that in these cases, unclear boundaries of jurisdiction and poor internal command and control, frustrated efforts to coordinate security forces. However, we can perhaps question whether conflict zones provide a sound basis for our impressions of the relationships among police and military forces. Much of the best evidence that demonstrates poor inter-institutional cooperation occurs in the years after 1998, at a time of acute crisis in Indonesia and in the institutions themselves. This fact prompts us to consider how state security actors interact today when managing security problems. Scholars contributing to the debate about security sector reform in Indonesia have offered potential explanations for why Indonesia's police and military forces do not interact well. Part of the security sector reform literature has discussed the problem of grey areas or a supposed lack of clarity in the job descriptions of the police and the Indonesian military. The literature also identifies another potential problem with the high autonomy between security and law enforcement actors. To the contrary however, this article finds that while agencies at the sub-national level are indeed highly autonomous, autonomy does not vitiate inter-institutional cooperation. In the case studies examined government security actors also respect one another's jurisdictional boundaries. Where inter-institutional cooperation does take place, regional government plays an important role as a facilitator. Regional government is able to use mechanisms under its own authority (particularly joint agency committees) to involve national government agencies in resolving local problems. This system in turn depends on broad consensus over the job descriptions of the different actors. Accordingly, the Indonesian police are the lead agency in combating most threats to order and stability. The police possess statutory and normative supremacy, while the military and regional government act to back up the police. This article outlines the relations between the three law enforcement and security actors--the National Police (Polri), regional government and its own law enforcement agents, the Polisi Pamong Praja or civil service police (Pol.PP) and the territorial units of the Indonesian military (TNI)--in three district case studies in Yogyakarta. These districts are Sleman, the city municipality of Yogyakarta and Bantul. This article begins with an examination of the historical development of these institutions, highlighting in particular the integration and separation of the police from the Indonesian military. This history provides a basis for understanding how the police have become the lead agency in managing security today. We then review some of the reasons for the widespread perception that security institutions in Indonesia have problematic relations. Finally we examine the data from the case studies that outlines the existence of inter-institutional, cooperation. It is acknowledged, however, that this article is not the last word on the behaviour of security and law enforcement agencies in Indonesia. Other sources have investigated many negative practices perpetrated by such actors, ranging from corruption to abuses of human rights. This article does not, for example, touch on one of the other probing questions on the topic--competition in the black economy--as this is something rarely seen in the case studies. The purpose of this article therefore is not to deny the existence of serious misdeeds by security actors. Rather this article seeks to focus on one specific part of the picture: how state security actors inter-relate in managing security. …

The New Zealand (NZ) government has postponed legislation needed to establish a joint agency with Australia to regulate therapeutic products,

The New Zealand (NZ) government has postponed legislation needed to establish a joint agency with Australia to regulate therapeutic products,

The New Zealand (NZ) government has postponed legislation needed to establish a joint agency with Australia to regulate therapeutic products,

The New Zealand (NZ) government has postponed legislation needed to establish a joint agency with Australia to regulate therapeutic products,

Beyond ‘Polibation’ and towards ‘Prisi-Polibation’? Joint Agency Offender Management in the Context of the Street Crime Initiative

This paper reflects on the trajectory in England and Wales towards greater criminal justice multi- and inter-agency cooperation with the objective of reducing crime. In particular we focus on the potential for the emergence of new forms of offender supervision that combine the close monitoring of specified groups of offenders with supportive resettlement programmes. We examine whether a new criminal justice practitioner is developing within this context, offering an ‘end-to-end’ service that blends and merges the operating practices of the participating agencies. We draw on Nash's concept of ‘polibation’, extend this to ‘prisi-polibation’, and consider these in relation to data derived from our evaluation of an inter-agency project that involved the joint agency (police/ probation/ prisons) management of street crime offenders in the English West Midlands. We suggest that although the cases for polibation and prisi-polibation are not proven, these conceptual models should not yet be dismissed and we conclude by speculating on their place in the future development of joint agency offender management.

The Blank and the Die: Some Dilemmas of Post‐Empiricism

This article examines various dilemmas (or, as I suggest, pseudo‐dilemmas) that have dogged epistemology and philosophy of language since the 1940s heyday of logical empiricism. These have to do chiefly with the problem those thinkers faced in overcoming the various dichotomies imposed by their Humean insistence on maintaining a sharp distinction between logical ‘truths of reason’ and empirical ‘matters of fact’. I trace this problem back to Kant’s failure to offer any plausible, explanatorily adequate account of the process whereby ‘sensuous intuitions’ were brought under ‘concepts of understanding’ through the joint (somewhat mysterious) agency of ‘judgement’ and ‘imagination’. The argument then proceeds, via Quine’s (on the face of it) radically anti‐dualist critique of logical empiricism, to more recent attempts – by Davidson and McDowell – to locate the residual dualism in Quine (that of scheme and content), and thus to bring philosophy out on the far side of all these vexing dilemmas. I maintain that the problem goes much deeper and re‐emerges with full force both in Davidson’s coupling of a formalized (Tarskian) truth‐theoretic approach with a strain of radical empiricism and likewise in McDowell’s revisionist, supposedly ‘naturalized’, but none the less dualist reading of Kant on the twin powers of ‘spontaneity’ and ‘receptivity’. Its ultimate source – I suggest – is the normative deficit, i.e., the lack of rational and justificatory values that has typified empiricist thinking from Hume to Quine, along with its attendant sceptical outlook as regards the existence of causal powers or the status and validity of causal explanations. My paper concludes by indicating briefly some alternative resources that might point a way beyond this longstanding impasse.

Group Deliberation, Social Cohesion, and Scientific Teamwork: Is There Room for Dissent?

ABSTRACTRecent discussions of rational deliberation in science present us with two extremes: unbounded optimism and sober pessimism. Helen Longino (1990) sees rational deliberation as the foundation of scientific objectivity. Miriam Solomon (1991) thinks it is overrated. Indeed, she has recently argued (2006) that group deliberation is detrimental to empirical success because it often involves groupthink and the suppression of dissent. But we need not embrace either extreme. To determine the value of rational deliberation we need to look more closely at the practice and practitioners of science. I offer a closer look here by exploring the joint agency of small research teams. Although there are factors that contribute to the suppression of dissent in group contexts, a closer look at the literature on group dynamics suggests that there are ways to mitigate the effects of groupthink. Thus, there is reason to be cautiously optimistic about the value of rational deliberation within certain scientific contexts.