Local Authority Officers Research Articles

The Local Education Authority Training Grant Scheme 1987‐88: Policy and Practice in Five Local Education Authorities

Abstract The first part of this paper presents evidence collected from local education authority (LEA) officers and college principals about the impact and effects of the Training Grant Scheme. It considers funding procedures, assessment and prioritization of needs, and the roles of the LEAs, the colleges and the providers of training. The second part of the paper offers the personal reflections of the author in relation to a number of issues: in particular, initial training, award‐bearing courses and long‐term development strategies.

The law on doctors speaking out.

Gillian Cardy, a senior clinical medical officer with Bath District Health Authority who was suspended from her duties on 16 December for speaking to the press about planned cuts in family planning services, was reinstated on 8 January after a health authority hearing. At the subsequent meeting of the health authority on 13 January a motion was passed expressing regret at the recent distressing events concerning Dr Cardy and appre? ciation for her work. She had spoken out about plans to cut back the work of family planning clinics and close well women clinics, which, she said, would lead to more unwanted pregnancies. In January last year David Josephs, director of community medicine for South Bedfordshire Health Authority, was suspended for 10 weeks pending a disciplinary hearing after he spoke to the press, and on radio and television, despite instructions from his district general manager to stay silent. Dr Josephs said that stories in the press misquoted him on proposals for schoolchildren to be given condoms to protect them from AIDS and that his subsequent talking with the press was simply an attempt to put the record straight. Dr Josephs was reinstated with a formal written warning for managerial misconduct after a disciplinary hearing that also included a charge that he had leaked a confidential paper about measures to prevent AIDS to the director of social services of the local authority and chief environmental health officers, which he said was sent to professional colleagues for comment under a covering letter marked confidential. He sought leave to appeal against the written warning to the regional health authority on the grounds that there had been a gross miscarriage of justice, but this was refused.

Being a Programme Authority: Is it Worthwhile?

ABSTRACTNottingham is one of 23 local authorities designated as ‘programme authorities’ under the Inner Urban Areas Act 1978. Between 1983 and 1985 the authors carried out research into the formulation of inner city policy, its application to the Radford area in particular and the opinions of residents there about its impact. Interviews with a wide range of those involved with policy including local authority officers and members and representatives of the police, the health authority and regional Department of the Environment (DoE) revealed considerable institutional and political barriers to a joint inner city strategy in a shire district, even where the same party holds political control. Structures set up to liaise are cordial but clumsy, slow and very much removed from daily service delivery. As elsewhere, the local authorities are critical of lack of central government commitment to this part of the Urban Programme, but nevertheless work well with regional DoE. Paradoxically, however, despite their criticisms of a lack of central funds and of inappropriate spatial and other parameters, the local authority and health authority respondents are anxious for the Programme to continue as it provides both the resources and the justification for innovatory and redistributive projects which would otherwise have been financially and politically impossible.

PLANS AND PRACTICE: THE PARTICIPANTS' VIEWS

This article is the result of some extensive and lengthy interviews with officers in local and health authorities in two London boroughs. It focuses on their attitudes to resource planning and inter‐authority collaboration in the provision of services for two priority groups — the elderly and the mentally handicapped. The interviews were undertaken in 1980, in the aftermath of the tighter financial climate that followed the 1979 election, and fieldwork continued until 1981. Officers’ views were tested against models of inter‐authority activity drawn from varied literatures. Most officers turned out to have drawn extremely pessimistic conclusions from their experiences. The bureaucratic politics paradigm predominated. Very few participants had come to terms with what planning could mean in a period of declining resources. Most still thought of planning as what to do with the increment and saw little point in planning if there were no increments. However, there were interesting differences between the perceptions of NHS staff and local authority officers, and between those in different kinds of post.

Area-Based Positive Discrimination and the Distribution of Well-Being

This paper examines the distribution of well-being among a number of ecological type areas in Dundee. Comparisons are made between the results produced by using 'object-related' and 'subjective' social indicators. In calculating summary level of living scores for individuals, an attempt is made to take into account variations in personal priorities. The extent to which the ecological structure of the city provides a useful framework for area-based interventions to relieve deprivation is assessed. By the early years of the 1960s it was becoming increasingly apparent that full employment together with the universalistic provisions of the welfare state had failed to eradicate poverty in Britain (see Harvey, 1960; Wedderburn, 1962; Townsend, 1962). From that decade, areabased approaches became an essential tool of social policy. Programmes were devised which would allocate special resources to people living in designated localities to help fulfil their 'distinctive' needs (see Holtermann, 1975a; Mason et al., 1977; Edwards and Batley, 1978). The late 1960s therefore witnessed the establishment of General Improvement Areas, Educational Priority Areas, Community Development Projects and the Urban Programme, followed in the next decade by Housing Action Areas and the Inner Area Studies. Their historic origins can be traced to the 'active slumming and evangelical work of the Charity Organization Society' and Octavia Hill's housing visitors (Townsend, 1976, p. 169), and more recently to the same concern with the imbalances in the operation of the space-economy which led to the development of regional policies. However, the immediate forerunners of the British area-based policies were the American Headstart, Model Cities and the Community Action Programs (see Edwards and Batley, 1978). The adoption of area-based approaches in Britain was, perhaps, inevitable. There existed clearly recognizable areas of physical decay within cities. 'Common sense' suggested that other problems such as educational disadvantage were also geographically concentrated (Gray, 1975). Moreover, local authority officers tended to view deprivation in terms of area rather than class (Stewart, Spencer and Webster, 1976). The policies rested upon the assumptions that: i) there existed small identifiable areas where a high proportion of the population was deprived, ii) that the deprived were concentrated into such areas, iii) that deprivation could be alleviated by action taken within the areas themselves and iv) that because of a neighbourhood or multiplier effect, the same resources could alleviate more deprivation when the target population was geographically concentrated than when it was scattered (Holtermann, 1975a). Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. N.S. 6, 53-67 (1981) Printed in Great Britain This content downloaded from 40.77.167.81 on Mon, 12 Sep 2016 04:11:07 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Wolverhampton Council for Community Relations: The Pattern of Participation

This paper examines the major factors affecting the pattern of black ethnic minority interest group affiliation to the Wolverhampton Council for Community Relations (WCCR). The study views group affiliation within the general context of the financial and administrative interrelationships between WCCR, the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) and Wolverhampton Corporation. The political setting is one in which councillors, local authority officials and community leaders prefer to involve themselves in a policy process where decisions are taken which ensure stability in the political environment. The desirability of maintaining stability, particularly from the point of view of those associated with the more formal aspects of policy-making, is evident to the extent that policy formulation and implementation relies, for its effectiveness upon the consent of the community. This consent in the field of race relations has invariably been difficult to achieve because of the cleavages between the black and white communities and within the black community itself. The resolution of the resulting conflicts provides the rationale for the existence of local community relations councils (CRCs) which actively seek to maintain, and where necessary, restore stable community relations.

British Food Journal Volume 80 Issue 4 1978

One of the major developments of the post‐War years has been the rise of consumer protection ‘watchdog’ committees galore, a flood of legislation and completely changed enforcement methods by existing local authority officers who to all and intents have become a completely new service. Voluntary agencies, national and local, based on the local High Street, have appointed themselves the watchdogs of the retail trade; legislation and central departments, the larger scene. The new service has proved of inestimable value in the changed conditions; it continues to develop. When shopping was a personal transaction, with the housewife making her purchases from the shopkeeper or his staff on the opposite side of the counter; when each was well known to the other and the relationship had usually lasted for many years, often from one generation to the next, things were very different, complaints few, unsatisfactory items instantly replaced, usually without question. This continuing state of equanimity was destroyed by the retail revolution and new methods of advertising and marketing. Now, the numbers of complaints dealt with by consumer protection and environmental health departments of local authorities are truly enormous. We have become a nation of “complainers,” although in all conscience, we have much to complain about. Complaints cover the widest possible range of products and services, of which food and drink form an integral component. The complaints to enforcement authorities include many said to be unjustified, but from the reports of legal proceedings under relevant enactments, it is obvious that the bulk of them now originate from consumer complaints. Not all complainants, however, relish the thought of the case going before the courts. Less is heard publicly of complaints to the numerous voluntary bodies. Enforcement authorities see complaints in terms of infringements of the law, although their role as honest broker, securing recompense to the aggreived customer, has become important; a few departments being able to claim that they secured reimbursements and replacements of value totalling upwards of amounts which annually run into six figures. The broker role is also that adopted by voluntary bodies but with much less success since they lack the supporting authority of legal sanction.

Area Councillors Committees: An Experiment in Consultation

Public AdministrationVolume 55, Issue 3 p. 335-348 Area Councillors Committees: An Experiment in Consultation LEWIS CORINA, LEWIS CORINA Dr. Corina is a member of the research team which monitors the work of the Oldham Community Development Project and assesses specific interventions into area problems. 1Search for more papers by this author LEWIS CORINA, LEWIS CORINA Dr. Corina is a member of the research team which monitors the work of the Oldham Community Development Project and assesses specific interventions into area problems. 1Search for more papers by this author First published: September 1977 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1977.tb00293.x The author is a former member of Halifax CB Council, he was, during the period of the research, a Calderdale member of the West Yorkshire County Council. The assessment of the area committees is based on the author's own involvement in the Project's activities, observations of meetings, informal discussions and interviews with residents, councillors and local authority officers and research in Calderdale MBC—a non-CDP authority. The research covered the period from the conception of the committees in early 1973 to the end of the first three years of operation in January 1977. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume55, Issue3September 1977Pages 335-348 RelatedInformation

In Parliament

In the course of the Commons debate on the Albemarle Report on the Youth Employment Service, the Minister of Labour, Mr Ray Gunter, said that the Youth Employment Service Training Board, in its comparatively short existence, had already done much to expand training facilities for full‐time training of local authority officers, to review the contents of those courses and to insist on appropriate standards of entry to training.