No visible difference: a women's empowerment process in a Cambodian NGO

The lives of female Cambodian NGO staff are characterised by the contradictions of apparent freedom and multiple invisible constraints on their behaviour and choices. An empowerment process facilitated by an expatriate did not produce the expected responses of sisterhood and group action. Through a series of workshops, learning emerged about the context-dependent nature of concepts of empowerment, and the irrelevance of many Western models for other cultures. Fear and mistrust, rooted in both traditional culture and the post-conflict context, are powerful and profound blocks to change in women's lives. No visible difference in workplace behaviours appeared after the empowerment process. However, the women responded to new insights about their lives, beliefs, and culture in ways that had meaning for them; and they reported significant benefits for family and social relationships.     

The development of the comprehensive health assessment tool for young offenders within the secure estate

Health inequalities are high among offending groups. The comprehensive health assessment tool (CHAT) is a semi-structured assessment developed to provide a standardised approach to health screening for all young offenders admitted to the secure estate. The four sections of the CHAT (physical health, mental health, substance misuse and neurodisability) were evaluated within a two-phased study of male adolescents (aged 15–18?years) within a young offenders institution in the north-west of England. Within Phase 1, a consecutive sample of 127 new receptions was assessed using the physical health, mental health and substance misuse sections of the CHAT against a range of reference standard assessments. Phase 2 of the study evaluated the neurodisability section on 93 male adolescents against reference standard tools. The four sections of the CHAT demonstrated fair to good convergent validity when compared against reference standard tools in male offenders. The diagnostic accuracy rate was 76% for mental health, 63% for physical health, 83% for substance misuse and 53% for neurodisability when compared against reference standard assessment tools. The introduction of the CHAT offers the opportunity to enhance existing reception screening practices and create an integrated approach to the assessment of health needs across the secure estate.     

Actions taken in response to mental health screening at reception into prison

Screening for mental health problems on reception into custody has been criticised. However, there have been few studies on care pathways through custody as a result of screening identification. We aimed to identify what actions were taken as a result of screening positive for suicidal ideation and mental health problems. Case records for 2166 prisoners newly received into five prisons in England and documented contact with health care professionals in the following month were examined by hand over a four-month period. Altogether, 3% of prisoners were screened as having current suicidal ideas, of whom 30% had no contact with mental health services or risk assessment documentation. Another 21% of new receptions received psychotropic medication, for whom over 60% received no primary mental health assessment, and only 36% received psychotropic medication in prison. Care pathways need to be defined, and screening needs to be delivered as originally intended by initial screen for life-threatening matters, followed by a later, comprehensive assessment of health needs.     

Governance Disclosure on the Internet: The Case of Australian State Government Departments

This paper examines corporate governance disclosures on the websites of Australian state government departments. The study focuses on the nature and extent of governance information and the ease of finding this information directly on department websites and also in annual reports which are downloadable from websites. Our sample comprises six departments from each of the six states in Australia, giving a sample size of 36 departments. Our findings indicate considerable variability in both the level of disclosure and the accessibility of the information disclosed. The study also highlights a lack of consensus regarding the meaning of governance and what governance comprises, together with the need for a more structured approach to communicating governance information to stakeholders.     

Public Management 1995: The Year That Was

Until it was discontinued in 1988, the Australian Journal of Public Administration published an administrative chronicle intended to document the events of the past year in state and commonwealth administrations.
This administrative essay, the first of a projected annual series, has a different, although related purpose. It is organised on a thematic, rather than a state-by-state basis, and attempts to describe and to illuminate the main issues in public administration in Australia as they emerged through the events of 1995.
In a short essay, detail must necessarily be sacrificed in order to capture the main trends. Nevertheless, the major features of the administrative landscape, as they appeared during 1995, have been faithfully recorded.     

The Transformation of Bureaucracy? Structural Change in the Commonwealth Public Service 1983-93

Commentators have predicted bureaucratic organisations would undergo substantial change as a result of social and economic pressures. We ask whether reforms to the Australian public service over the 1983–93 period exemplify this process.
We use the methods of organisational analysis to characterise the direction of change, basing our assessment on the standard structural variables of complexity, formalisation and centralisation, together with a cultural variable. We find evidence that, overall, departments of state in the APS were becoming less bureaucratic in their structure, culture and internal function in the 1983–93 period. However, the effect was not uniform across departments, or unambiguous — formalisation, for example, increased in some respects and decreased in others. Centralisation increased overall, despite devolution of some decision-making.