scholarly journals Key Working for Families with Young Disabled Children

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernie Carter ◽  
Megan Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Service Providers ◽  
Evaluation Study ◽  
Nominal Group ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Disabled Children ◽  
Coordinated Care ◽  
Pilot Programme ◽  
New Ways Of Working ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Key Worker

For families with a disabled child, the usual challenges of family life can be further complicated by the need to access a wide range of services provided by a plethora of professionals and agencies. Key working aims to support children and their families in navigating these complexities ensuring easy access to relevant, high quality, and coordinated care. The aim of this paper is to explore the key worker role in relation to “being a key worker” and “having a key worker”. The data within this paper draw on a larger evaluation study of the Blackpool Early Support Pilot Programme. The qualitative study used an appreciative and narrative approach and utilised mixed methods (interviews, surveys and a nominal group workshop). Data were collected from 43 participants (parents, key workers, and other stakeholders). All stakeholders who had been involved with the service were invited to participate. In the paper we present and discuss the ways in which key working made a difference to the lives of children and their families. We also consider how key working transformed the perspectives of the key workers creating a deeper and richer understanding of family lives and the ways in which other disciplines and agencies worked. Key working contributed to the shift to a much more family-centred approach, and enhanced communication and information sharing between professionals and agencies improved. This resulted in families feeling more informed. Key workers acted in an entrepreneurial fashion, forging new relationships with families and between families and other stakeholders. Parents of young disabled children and their service providers benefited from key working. Much of the benefit accrued came from strong, relational, and social-professional networking which facilitated the embedding of new ways of working into everyday practice. Using an appreciative inquiry approach provided an effective and relevant way of engaging with parents, professionals, and other stakeholders to explore what was working well with key working within an Early Support Pilot Programme.

Improving the Delivery of Prenatal Care and Outcomes of Pregnancy: A Randomized Trial of Nurse Home Visitation

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. Olds ◽  
Charles R. Henderson ◽  
Robert Tatelbaum ◽  
Robert Chamberlin
Keyword(s):  
Low Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Home Visitation ◽  
Community Services ◽  
Young Adolescents ◽  
Support Person ◽  
Developmental Problems ◽  
Nurse Home ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Wide Range

We evaluated a comprehensive program of prenatal and postpartum nurse home visitation. The program was designed to prevent a wide range of health and developmental problems in children born to primiparous women who were either teenagers, unmarried, or of low socioeconomic status. During pregnancy, women who were visited by nurses, compared with women randomly assigned to comparison groups, became aware of more community services; attended childbirth classes more frequently; made more extensive use of the nutritional supplementation program for women, infants, and children; made greater dietary improvements; reported that their babies' fathers became more interested in their pregnancies; were accompanied to the hospital by a support person during labor more frequently; reported talking more frequently to family members, friends, and service providers about their pregnancies and personal problems; and had fewer kidney infections. Positive effects of the program on birth weight and length of gestation were present for the offspring of young adolescents (<17 years of age) and smokers. In contrast to their comparison-group counterparts, young adolescents who were visited by nurses gave birth to newborns who were an average of 395 g heavier, and women who smoked and were visited by nurses exhibited a 75% reduction in the incidence of preterm delivery. (P ≤ .05 for all findings.

Evaluating the Evolution of the Personal Financial Planning Industry: Mutualism, Commensalism, or Parasitism?

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-42
Author(s):  
Bryan Teoh Phern Chern
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Financial Literacy ◽  
Financial Planning ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Personal Finance ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Finance Management ◽  
Financial Planners ◽  
Personal Financial Planning

The financial planning and advice industry has been experiencing healthy growth for the past five years and is expected to accelerate this growth following the Covid-19 pandemic (IBISWorld, 2021). The pandemic has led to higher equity yields and appreciating asset value, directly increasing the total value of assets under management (AUM) held by financial planners and advisors. The industry in the US alone has surpassed $52.9 billion in 2021. As the economy is expected to improve, this figure is expected to follow suit. Not included in these figures are the explosion of online personal finance bloggers and influencers. Some YouTube and TikTok videos have raked in billions of views regarding personal finance (Smith, 2021). Many of these online contents have benefitted viewers and prompted them to start making good decisions regarding their personal wealth, spreading financial literacy to the masses. However, poor financial advice may be spread out as easily to viewers. The Wall Street Journal has reported on this issue back in 2005 where blogs and magazines have been found to give both good and bad advice on budgeting, saving, and overall personal finance management (Cullen, 2005). Whatever the net effect of this phenomenon, the easy access through social media has amplified it. This article briefly journeys through the evolution of personal finance management and personal financial planning, including the new trends this industry is moving towards. Subsequently, this article will look into the risk and rewards of the current personal financial planning and advice industry, including certified financial planners and uncertified personnel (social media influencers, financial gurus), as to whether consumers are benefitting as a whole, or otherwise. A disclaimer to this research is that the findings and opinions towards the industry do not encompass all the service providers in the business as there are many other influencing factors such as business models, individual agenda, and unique circumstances of each provider and consumer. Keywords: Conflict of interest; financial planning; financial experts; Influencers; Personal finance

GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS OF THE USING CLOUD SERVICES

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olexander Melnikov ◽  
◽  
Konstantin Petrov ◽  
Igor Kobzev ◽  
Viktor Kosenko ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cloud Computing ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Cloud Service ◽  
Cloud Services ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Remote Work ◽  
Cloud Infrastructure ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Technological Base

The article considers the development and implementation of cloud services in the work of government agencies. The classification of the choice of cloud service providers is offered, which can serve as a basis for decision making. The basics of cloud computing technology are analyzed. The COVID-19 pandemic has identified the benefits of cloud services in remote work Government agencies at all levels need to move to cloud infrastructure. Analyze the prospects of cloud computing in Ukraine as the basis of e-governance in development. This is necessary for the rapid provision of quality services, flexible, large-scale and economical technological base. The transfer of electronic information interaction in the cloud makes it possible to attract a wide range of users with relatively low material costs. Automation of processes and their transfer to the cloud environment make it possible to speed up the process of providing services, as well as provide citizens with minimal time to obtain certain information. The article also lists the risks that exist in the transition to cloud services and the shortcomings that may arise in the process of using them.

scholarly journals Experiment of Telecom Customer’s Needs and Satisfaction Based on Kano Model

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 5074-5077
Keyword(s):  
Customer Satisfaction ◽  
Behavioral Intentions ◽  
Network Performance ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Kano Model ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Telecom Service ◽  
Four Quadrant

with the changing technology customers are more aware of services available to them. They access wide range of information of available products and services which has lead to change in their perception about services and service providers. This has made telecom a hard sector to survive for telecom service providers. These changes in behavioral intentions has made it necessary to us understand what all services customers feel a mandatory part of telecom service and what attract them to reuse the service. To study these customers needs Kano model was applied to category services of SERVQUAL model on four quadrant - attractive, one dimensional, must-be and indifferent. The result stated that network performance attract telecom customers the most and tangibility factors are the ones which service providers can minimize as customers are indifferent about them. Safety and security in transaction is one dimensional factor that can increase customer satisfaction. Must be attributes need to be continued to maintained customers stay with the telecom brands. Thus study tried to understand behavior of customers and identify factors that could increase customer satisfaction.

scholarly journals Organisational Strategies for Competitive Advantage in the Construction Industry: Chinese Dominance in Southern Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Daniel Soares Fernandes ◽  
George Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
African Region ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Chinese Enterprises ◽  
Construction Market ◽  
Local Resources ◽  
Southern African Region ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Construction Services

Chinese enterprises are presently dominating various sectors of businesses abroad, offering a wide range of low to high-end quality products and services. The construction sector in Africa is now being dominated by Chinese multinational contractor companies, who find in Africa their next preferable market to grow. The available literature on the field has serious gaps in explaining which organisational strategies increase the competitive advantage and the market dominance of Chinese multinational contractors, especially in the Southern African region. This research aims to uncover the organisational strategies, implemented by Chinese multinational contractors operating in the Southern African region, who have paved the way and consolidated their success in the region. Through a mixed methods process, qualitative and quantitative data are obtained. The construction markets of the Southern African region are analysed (environmental analysis) and the main multinational Chinese contractors are identified, through a literature review and organisational analysis. Several organisational strategies are shortlisted and, finally, through an online questionnaire, the opinions of the participants to rank the organisational strategies previously identified in terms of contribution to the actual success, copying capability, etc., are carried out. The findings revealed that the capability to offer a lower price for construction services, the easy access to loans and funds from the organisation's home government and the capability to trade debt for local resources, such as wood, land and minerals are the organisational strategies that mostly contributed to the recent Chinese contractor dominance in the Southern African construction market.

scholarly journals Demonstrating the full-value chain of climate services in Southern Africa: the FOCUS-Africa project

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Boscolo ◽  
Hamid Bastani ◽  
Asmerom Beraki ◽  
Nicolas Fournier ◽  
Raül Marcos-Matamoros ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
End Users ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Climate Services ◽  
Wide Range

<p><strong><em>FOCUS-Africa</em></strong> is an EU Horizon 2020 project funded to co-develop tailored climate services in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. The project, led by the WMO and started in September 2020, gathers 16 partners across Africa and Europe jointly committed to addressing the value of climate services for key economic sectors in Africa: agriculture and food security, water, energy, and infrastructure.</p><p>The project is piloting eight case studies (CSs) in five different countries involving a wide range of end-users. New services derived from seasonal and decadal forecasts are applied for food security and crop production in South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania. High-resolution climate projections, as well as historical climate reanalyses, are used to support planning and investment decisions for: a railway infrastructure and a mix of renewable energies in Tanzania, hydropower generation assessment under climate change scenarios in Malawi, and water resources management in Mauritius.</p><p>For all the FOCUS-Africa’s case studies, socio-economic impact assessment of the delivered climate services will be carried out in collaboration with the CS leaders, service providers, and end-users, by providing ex-ante and ex-post evaluations grounded in the Global Indicator Framework for the Sustainable Development Goals. The project will align the capacity development efforts with those promoted by WMO for enhancing the capabilities of the NMHSs to deliver climate services to users and will make sure that the project's innovative processes and tools will be part of the WMO training curricula.</p><p>FOCUS-Africa's expected impacts are:</p><ul><li>Build a strong link between the climate scientific community and stakeholders in the SADC region by leveraging the advanced scientific knowledge and strong networks of the implementing team, and by establishing dedicated channels of communications, so as to target the full value chain of our users, from the start of the project</li> <li>Advance the way in which climate information is developed by characterising end-use requirements through regular engagement</li> <li>Contribute to the advancement of the scientific knowledge in the region and strengthened support for international scientific assessments through publications and reports such as those relevant for the IPCC, through the innovative science developed by FOCUS-Africa</li> <li>Demonstrate the effectiveness of the climate information by strengthening the adaptive capacity of end-users by delivering tailored, actionable, and exploitable climate services and by estimating their socio-economic benefits across the full value chain.</li> <li>Enhance policy-making for climate adaptation in the project and other countries</li> <li>Increase women’s access to climate services</li> </ul>

scholarly journals Efficient and Cost-effective Service Broker Policy Based on User Priority in VIKOR for Cloud Computing

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Mohammed Radi ◽  
Ali Alwan ◽  
Abedallah Abualkishik ◽  
Adam Marks ◽  
Yonis Gulzar
Keyword(s):  
Cloud Computing ◽  
Response Time ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Cloud Service ◽  
User Preferences ◽  
Cloud Environment ◽  
Data Centre ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Service Broker

Cloud computing has become a practical solution for processing big data. Cloud service providers have heterogeneous resources and offer a wide range of services with various processing capabilities. Typically, cloud users set preferences when working on a cloud platform. Some users tend to prefer the cheapest services for the given tasks, whereas other users prefer solutions that ensure the shortest response time or seek solutions that produce services ensuring an acceptable response time at a reasonable cost. The main responsibility of the cloud service broker is identifying the best data centre to be used for processing user requests. Therefore, to maintain a high level of quality of service, it is necessity to develop a service broker policy that is capable of selecting the best data centre, taking into consideration user preferences (e.g. cost, response time). This paper proposes an efficient and cost-effective plan for a service broker policy in a cloud environment based on the concept of VIKOR. The proposed solution relies on a multi-criteria decision-making technique aimed at generating an optimized solution that incorporates user preferences. The simulation results show that the proposed policy outperforms most recent policies designed for the cloud environment in many aspects, including processing time, response time, and processing cost. KEYWORDS Cloud computing, data centre selection, service broker, VIKOR, user priorities

NUKLEUS - User-relevant and applicable kilometer-scale climate information for Germany

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Sieck ◽  
Bente Tiedje ◽  
Hendrik Feldmann ◽  
Joaquim Pinto
Keyword(s):  
Climate Models ◽  
Local Scale ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Post Processing ◽  
Last Mile ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Impact Modelling ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Impact Models

<p>Given the current developments in climate science it becomes more a more feasible to provide climate information at the kilometer-scale from convection-permitting climate simulations. This progress will enable many users to directly feed high-resolution climate information into their impact-models for climate impact studies at the local scale. Examples include urban heat stress at street level or the design of drainage systems for future precipitation extremes. Within the RegIKlim (Regional information for action on climate change) consortium, the NUKLEUS (Actionable local climate information for Germany) project will not only provide climate information at the local scale, but also to co-develop interfaces between climate and impact models, in order to fulfil the needs of the impact modelling community as good as possible. Within the RegIKlim consortium, the impact modelling community is organised in six “model regions” across Germany, which cover a wide range of geographical and socio-economic conditions.</p><p>For the NUKLEUS project, the baseline will be the latest generation of EURO-CORDEX downscaled CMIP6 simulations, which will be further refined to roughly 3 km horizontal resolution and 30-year time-slices for Germany with convection-permitting climate models (ICON CLM, COSMO-CLM, REMO-NH) and statistical-dynamical downscaling approaches. A detailed analysis on the performance of the multi-model mini-ensemble is planned to assess the quality of the provided data. At the interface to the users, we will follow three different approaches to provide usable climate information at the kilometer-scale. One is to provide easy-access to data and post-processing opportunities using the FREVA system. FREVA offers various access-levels from shell to web-based, which serves different levels of user-expertise. In addition, it provides a transparent way of post-processing data by workflow sharing mechanisms. The second one is to develop appropriate additional downscaling methods for the “last mile” where needed. For this “last mile”, we will apply dynamical and statistical methods such as urban climate models and/or weather generators. With the third approach we explicitly aim at integrating a collected user-feedback into the regional modelling systems used within NUKLEUS. Specifically, we intend to identify and incorporate data processing that is best done during the simulation permanently into the models. Examples are wind speeds at rotor heights of windmills or high frequency precipitation sums. NUKLEUS is a contribution to the German research program RegIKlim funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).</p>

Global BROOK90: validation, uncertainties, current progress and future outline.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Vorobevskii ◽  
Rico Kronenberg
Keyword(s):  
Water Balance ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Low Flow ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Climate Projections ◽  
Seasonal Forecasts ◽  
Water Balance Components ◽  
Discharge Data ◽  
Small Catchment ◽  
Wide Range

<p>‘Just drop a catchment and receive reasonable model output’ – still stays as motto and main idea of the ‘Global BROOK90’ project. The open-source R-package is build-up on global land cover, soil, topographical, meteorological datasets and the lumped hydrological model as a core to simulate water balance components on HRU scale all over the world in an automatic mode. First introduced in EGU2020 and followed by GitHub code release including an publication of methodology with few examples we want to continue with the insights on the current state and highlight the future steps of the project.</p><p>A global validation of discharge and evapotranspiration components of the model showed promising results. We used 190 small (median size of 64 km<sup>2</sup>) catchments and FLUXNET data which represent a wide range of relief, vegetation and soil types within various climate zones. The model performance was evaluated with NSE, KGE, KGESS and MAE. In more than 75 % of the cases the framework performed better than the mean of the observed discharge. On a temporal scale the performance is significantly better on a monthly vs daily scale. Cluster analysis revealed that some of the site characteristics have a significant influence on the performance. Additionally, it was found that Global BROOK90 outperforms GloFAS ERA5 discharge reanalysis (for the category with smallest catchments).</p><p>A cross-combination of three different BROOK90 setups and three forcing datasets was set up to reveal uncertainties of the Global BROOK90 package using a small catchment in Germany as a case study. Going from local to regional and finally global scale we compared mixtures of model parameterization schemes (original calibrated BROOK90, EXTRUSO and Global BROOK90) and meteorological datasets (local gauges, RaKlida and ERA5). Besides high model performances for a local dataset plus a calibrated model and weaker results for ERA5 and the Global BROOK90, it was found that the ERA5 dataset is still able to provide good results when combined with a regional and local parameterization. On the other side, the combination of a global parameterization with local and regional forcings gives still adequate, but much worse results. Furthermore, a hydrograph separation revealed that the Global BROOK90 parameterization as well as ERA5 discharge data perform weaker especially within low flow periods.</p><p>Currently, some new features are added to the original package. First, with the recent release of the ERA5 extension, historical simulations with the package now are expanded to 1950-2021 period. Additionally, an alternative climate reanalysis dataset is included in the framework (Merra-2, 0.5x0.625-degree spatial resolution, starting from 1980). A preliminary validation shows insignificant differences between both meteorological datasets with respect to the discharge based model performance.</p><p>Further upgrades of the framework will include the following core milestones: recognition of forecast and climate projections and parameter optimization features. In the nearest future we plan to utilize full power of the Climate Data Store for easy access to seasonal forecasts (i.e. ECMWF, DWD, NCEP) as well as climate projections (CMIP5) to extend the package’s scope to predict near and far future water balance components.</p>

User-Centric Privacy Management in Future Network Infrastructure

2012 ◽  
pp. 32-64
Author(s):  
Antonio Gomez-Skarmeta ◽  
Alejandro Perez Mendez ◽  
Elena Torroglosa Garcia ◽  
Gabriel Lopez Millán
Keyword(s):  
Service Providers ◽  
Privacy Management ◽  
Business Organizations ◽  
Network Infrastructure ◽  
Trust Relationships ◽  
Identity Federation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Resource Requirements ◽  
User Centric

Finally, it is analyzed how the inclusion of IdM in business organizations can provide economical benefits. These benefits range from a reduction in resource requirements to the increment of potential clients thanks to the incorporation of the organization in an identity federation. Special attention is placed on the case where the telecommunications operator is established as the main point of identity providing, as a straightforward result of its already established trust relationships with a wide range of parties (clients and service providers).

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