Since the 1990s UK governments have sought to harness third sector organisations in the delivery of services due to their perceived capacity to address social problems, and provide more responsive and individually-tailored services which can foster the capacity of individuals to lead more independent and fulfilled lives. However, these enhanced expectations exist alongside state retrenchment and mounting pressure to deliver services in more cost-effective ways. As grant-funding has been replaced by contracts, voluntary organisations have faced pressures to change their services in line with what commissioners want, compromising the distinctive values and practices that have traditionally been associated with the sector. Despite these empirical trends, there has been little in-depth sociological exploration of the effect of contracting on the values and practices of individual organisations, and how this is experienced by those who work, volunteer and use their services. This is surprising given that the ‘values-driven’ nature of these organisations is generally understood to be what makes them distinctive from the organisations of the state and the market. Instead, ‘values-driven’ is routinely conflated with ‘value-added’, in an instrumental view which treats values as transactional resources. Consequently, there has been a failure to grasp the intrinsic importance of values to people’s wellbeing, the rootedness of those values in practices, and the implications of changing people’s practices to achieve with greater efficiency an external product or outcome. This study adopted an Aristotelian lens to explore the relationship between values and practices on a third sector mental health garden project. The research used ethnographic participant observation and in-depth interviews to investigate how the practices of gardening and care embodied the values and aims of the organisation, and how those who worked, volunteered and used its services attached meaning to what they did. The research found that for project members’, being able to participate in practices in a way which was congruous with their values, was understood as an important facilitator of wellbeing. In keeping with the Aristotelian contention, participants perceived wellbeing as something which was realised through achieving those ‘internal goods’ which constituted excellence in their practices. Adapting practices to make them more effective at realising external outcomes not only threatened the very means through which these values were realised, but also undermined how project workers felt they could utilise their practices to facilitate wellbeing. The centrality of doing well to being well documented in this research suggests that if policy is to take wellbeing, and the role of the third sector in fostering this seriously, then values should be viewed as ends in themselves, and not merely as means to realise particular external outcomes.

The aim of this research was to explore how complexity thinking might inform social work with families in need of support around early neglect. Complexity theory has begun to be applied to social work practice, but its practical application has been inhibited by the combined pressures of an emphasis on evidence-based practice, a risk dominated discourse which has driven practice down a managerialist route, and a neoliberal political agenda which has driven a case management model. Using ethnographic methods, participant observation and unstructured interviews, the research followed a team of family support practitioners within a voluntary sector project in South Wales working in early-intervention social work whose practice was explicitly informed by complexity thinking. This thesis responds to three questions: how complexity thinking informed team members’ understanding of practice and how they worked with families to foster change; what characteristics impacted their ability to effect change in families and manage turbulence within the team and in what ways complexity thinking impacted their understanding and management of risk. Findings suggest that the strong theoretical base of the team, underpinned by complexity thinking, was instrumental in the creation of an environment conducive to effective practice, and a model of practice that encouraged collaboration, consistency, containment, challenge and contingency, for practitioners as well as for families. In addition it enabled the team to be anti-fragile to the significant churn they experienced, a challenge that will be familiar to many in social work. Using Beck’s theory of a risk society the thesis explores the idea that risk is an inescapable component of a fast-changing, reflexive modernity and argues that the assessment and control of risk is something that can never be definitively accomplished. Where risk is unpredictable, especially in such a contested area as child welfare, the most useful methods are those that encourage creativity and adaptability, and this is facilitated by complexity thinking.

Almost a decade ago, Berridge, Dance, Beecham and Field (2008, p.49) noted a worrying absence of research into the UK picture of education support teams in terms of their organisational structure and priorities. This thesis represents an original contribution to knowledge in regard to the educational support provided for Looked-After Children in Wales. The overall sample (n=28) comprised four Looked After Children Education (LACE) coordinators, seven LACE team practitioners and seventeen young people with looked-after status, aged 14-16 years old, from across four local authorities in south Wales. This qualitative research is informed by constructionist ontology and is positioned within an interpretivist framework. Data were subjected to a coding framework and thematic analysis. The research yields useful insights with some clear implications for policy and practice. It has sought to address that void and add to a slowly growing knowledge base as little is known about the ways in which LACE Coordinators and their team practitioners interpret and enact relevant policy in their day to day work. Research findings include: The LACE team relationships with young people being described by workers were typically in administrative and procedural terms; LACE practitioners’ support typically lasts for an hour, once a week, and which was described by some young people as of welcome but limited value. Thus, the perennial discourse of ‘low attainment’ that surrounds looked-after children might be more aptly be re-cast as ‘low investment’ by the state, national and local; LACE practitioners’ described their work practice as a specialist knowledge area, but also disclosed how their knowledge and expertise was often undervalued or rejected by other external practitioners; young people’s identities appeared to be fashioned, by LACE practitioners, through occupational assumptions derived from a broader public welfare child discourse. In contrast the young people’s own identities did not coalesce with the perceptions of LACE practitioners. Instead, their comments indicated a more ‘normalised’, non-stigmatised, and pragmatic but also care (as affect) related sense of self. The thesis has argued that there needs to be a new framework that unites the way workers understand looked-after children and the relationships that will optimise meaningful achievement.

This thesis explores family and labour economics issues in the context of different countries, the unified motive is to gain policy implication by applying diversified micro-econometric tools into different datasets. The UK has experienced the 1999 Working Family Tax Credit and the 2003 Working and Child Tax Credit reforms. The first chapter provides the first piece of evidence on the effect of single mothers being eligible to income transfer programmes on early childhood outcomes in the Britain. Using the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), various children’s production functions are used to deal with endogeneity of inputs and unobserved heterogeneity problems. Findings suggest that mothers entitled to in-work benefit has positive effects on both children’s cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes, comparing to the mothers live on welfare. The second chapter presents new evidence on the child quantity- quality (Q-Q) trade-off based on the 1% sample of 1990 Chinese census. The main contribution of this chapter comes from applying a novel Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) approach that accounts for the non-linear distribution of both outcome and endogenous variables. The identification strategy exploits variation in family size that is induced by twin births and first child gender, which allows the test of Q-Q trade-off in a wide range of fertility distribution. I find significantly negative effects of fertility on educational outcome of children, and this trade-off nonlinearly decreases with family size and shows heterogeneous effects by birth order. This chapter provides technique foundation for policies that attempt to reduce contraceptive costs, control population growth and subsidize families with fewer children. The third chapter examines the retirement consumption puzzle using the Chinese Household Income Project data. A failure to smooth the consumption upon retirement would arise considerable concerns for the well-being of elderly people and adjustments of public policies. This chapter employs a regression discontinuity approach and shows that elderly households are able to maintain stable consumption onset of retirement by adjusting expenditure across sub-aggregated categories and household behaviour. This study confirms the prediction of Life Cycle Model and have important implications for using disaggregated consumption data to test the existence of retirement consumption puzzle and for testing consumption theories.

Let g be a simple complex Lie algebra and let e be a nilpotent element of g. It was conjectured by Premet in [P07i] that the nite W-algebra U(g; e) admits a 1-dimensional representation, and further work [L10, P08] has reduced this conjecture to the case where g is of exceptional type and e lies in a rigid nilpotent orbit in g. Using the PBW-theorem for U(g; e) we give an algorithm for determining a presentation for U(g; e) which allows us to determine the 1-dimensional representations for U(g; e). Implementing this algorithm in GAP4 we verify the conjecture in the case that g is of type G2, F4 or E6. Using a result of Premet in [P08], we can use these results to deduce that reduced enveloping algebras of those types admit representations of minimal dimension, and using the explicit presentations we can determine for which characteristics this will hold. Further, we show that we can determine the 1-dimensional representations of U(g; e) from a smaller set of relations than is required for a presentation. From calculating these sets of relations, we show that in the case that g is of type E7 and e lies in any rigid nilpotent orbit, or in the case that g is of type E8 and e lies in one of 14 (out of 17) rigid nilpotent orbits, that U(g; e) admits a 1-dimensional representation.

This project is focused on stochastic models and methods and their application in portfolio optimization and risk management. In particular it involves development and analysis of novel numerical methods for solving these types of problem. First, we study new numerical methods for a general second order stochastic dominance model where the underlying functions are not necessarily linear. Specifically, we penalize the second order stochastic dominance constraints to the objective under Slater’s constraint qualification and then apply the well known stochastic approximation method and the level function methods to solve the penalized problem and present the corresponding convergence analysis. All methods are applied to some portfolio optimization problems, where the underlying functions are not necessarily linear all results suggests that the portfolio strategy generated by the second order stochastic dominance model outperform the strategy generated by the Markowitz model in a sense of having higher return and lower risk. Furthermore a nonlinear supply chain problem is considered, where the performance of the level function method is compared to the cutting plane method. The results suggests that the level function method is more efficient in a sense of having lower CPU time as well as being less sensitive to the problem size. This is followed by study of multivariate stochastic dominance constraints. We propose a penalization scheme for the multivariate stochastic dominance constraint and present the analysis regarding the Slater constraint qualification. The penalized problem is solved by the level function methods and a modified cutting plane method and compared to the cutting surface method proposed in [70] and the linearized method proposed in [4]. The convergence analysis regarding the proposed algorithms are presented. The proposed numerical schemes are applied to a generic budget allocation problem where it is shown that the proposed methods outperform the linearized method when the problem size is big. Moreover, a portfolio optimization problem is considered where it is shown that the a portfolio strategy generated by the multivariate second order stochastic dominance model outperform the portfolio strategy generated by the Markowitz model in sense of having higher return and lower risk. Also the performance of the algorithms is investigated with respect to the computation time and the problem size. It is shown that the level function method and the cutting plane method outperform the cutting surface method in a sense of both having lower CPU time as well as being less sensitive to the problem size. Finally, reward-risk analysis is studied as an alternative to stochastic dominance. Specifically, we study robust reward-risk ratio optimization. We propose two robust formulations, one based on mixture distribution, and the other based on the first order moment approach. We propose a sample average approximation formulation as well as a penalty scheme for the two robust formulations respectively and solve the latter with the level function method. The convergence analysis are presented and the proposed models are applied to Sortino ratio and some numerical test results are presented. The numerical results suggests that the robust formulation based on the first order moment results in the most conservative portfolio strategy compared to the mixture distribution model and the nominal model.

No description available.

Hierarchy is a defining feature of groups (Berger et al., 1972; Fiske, 2010; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). In this thesis I examined what it takes to climb up this hierarchy in face-to-face groups. I did so from three angles: what people need to do in order to attain status, what kind of person people need to be in order to attain status, and what people may need to sacrifice in order to attain status. Moreover, I assessed the moderating effect on these relations of two fundamental processes underlying group hierarchies: dominance (i.e., assertively claiming status) and prestige (i.e., willingly being granted status). Before addressing the main questions of this thesis, I examined the impact of dominance and prestige processes on perceptions of group hierarchy types (Chapter 2). A vignette study found that assertively claiming status for oneself and willingly being granted status both emerged as viable ways of enhancing perceived status, above and beyond formal status. It also found that, at the group level, each type of process worked against the other: perceptions of each were undermined by mixing it with the other. This finding implies that groups can be classed along a hierarchy type continuum, ranging from highly dominance-based to highly prestige-based. Having empirically established how dominance and prestige processes jointly shape the types of hierarchies that exist in groups, I addressed the main questions of this thesis in a series of experimental and naturalistic studies. In Chapter 3, I examined the interpersonal behaviours that promote status in different types of group hierarchies. I found that agentic behaviour promoted status both in dominance-based and in prestige-based hierarchies. In contrast, communal behaviour augmented status in prestige-based hierarchies, but diminished status in dominance-based hierarchies. Thus, I found that status attainment is associated with diametrically different interpersonal behaviours in different hierarchy types. In Chapter 4, I assessed how the self-appraisals of people who engage in different status-promoting behaviours differ. I found that self-esteem was associated with behaviour that was high in agency and high in communion, whereas narcissism was associated with behaviour that was high in agency and low in communion. Thus, self-esteem related to behaviours that promote status in prestige-based groups, whereas narcissism related to behaviours that promote status in dominance-based groups. In Chapter 5, an experimental study found that the interpersonal warmth towards individuals increased with status in relatively prestige-based hierarchies and decreased with status in relatively dominance-based hierarchies. In other words, in prestige-based groups, being liked and being included were liable to go hand-in-hand, whereas in dominance-based groups, there was a trade-off between them: to attain status one might need to sacrifice inclusion. However, this finding needs to be interpreted with caution as I failed to replicate it in a subsequent naturalistic study. Together, these findings presented in this thesis convincingly demonstrate that hierarchy type is a diversifying feature of groups. As such, they powerfully illustrate the importance of distinguishing between dominance-based and prestige-based groups.

Concerns have been raised about behaviour management and bullying in schools; this has led to an increase in relational approaches to conflict management. One relational approach to conflict management is restorative justice (RJ). The present study reviews the theoretical underpinnings of the RJ approach and evidence of its efficacy in the criminal justice system and educational contexts. Research has supported the efficacy of the approach in the criminal justice system, and has highlighted the effectiveness of RJ in developing empathy. Despite a lack of high quality research in school contexts, this approach is already being utilised in schools. Therefore, the literature review was followed by a study which aimed to investigate the efficacy of RJ in developing empathy and reducing behavioural difficulties in schoolchildren. 65 children attending a school using RJ approaches to behaviour management and 44 children attending a school using traditional punitive approaches completed selfreport measures of empathy and behaviour at baseline, and again four months later to examine the effects of RJ on empathy development and behavioural difficulties. In addition, the researcher identified children with low empathy and high behavioural difficulty scores in both schools and compared their empathy and behavioural difficulty scores at baseline and after four months. After controlling for baseline scores, there were no significant differences between the schools in terms of changes in empathy or behavioural difficulties. This was also the case when focusing on the subset of children who had low empathy and behavioural difficulties at baseline who may have been expected to have greater exposure to RJ approaches/interventions over the 4 month follow up period. Implications of the present study and limitations are discussed.

This thesis commences with a review of the literature on eating disorders and disturbed eating attitudes and behaviours (DEABs) in individuals with cystic fibrosis (CF). Certain physiological and psychological factors related to CF may contribute to the development of issues with food and eating. The major conclusions of the review support the notion of the presence of some DEABs in people with CF. However, it seems that the presence of diagnostic eating disorders is no higher than that found in the general population. Limitations of the research are discussed and areas for future research are identified. Following from this, the empirical paper investigated the relationships between eating behaviours and attitudes, coping styles and body image in individuals with CF. The findings suggest that females with CF present with higher rates of DEABs and males present with poorer body image. DEABs were found to be associated with poorer body image and unhelpful coping strategies. Clinicians should screen for DEABs at clinic appointments to ensure that any difficulties do not impact on the health of the individuals. The results are considered in relation to prior research, and methodological limitations as well as clinical implications are discussed.