• Rethinking Bicycle Histories

  Cox, Peter; University of Chester (Brill, 2018-09-11)

  Bicycle history and historiography is currently undergoing significant reassessment. Historical studies on bicycles and bicycle mobility have been dominated by the legacy of chronologically organised accounts of the bicycle as artefact. While valuable, this approach has had a tendency to elide significant differences between specific histories of the place of the bicycle as a component of broader mobility systems in varying geographical locations. New areas of social and cultural history are combining with colonial and post-colonial analyses to understand both the Eurocentric nature of dominant accounts and the hidden possibilities of multiple and plural narratives. Moving away from an artefactual bicycle history, this study embraces recent developments in the study of technology and draws on use-pattern approaches to the study of bicycle technology. Shifting focus to a use-centred account and comparing experiences across geographical and other boundaries reveals substantial differences in patterns and timescales of user experiences of cycles and cycling beyond its function as mass mobility. The chapter therefore explores bicycle historiography and historiology, examining in particular the implications of oversimplified periodization and schematic linear histories of bicycle development. Subjecting these narratives to critical scrutiny, the chapter considers how they serve both to continue to render the bicycle invisible, even within dramatically changing mobility scenarios, and to limit understanding of the potential of bicycles and other human-powered and hybrid human-motor vehicles to sustainable mobility futures.
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  The Missing Link: Relational Exploration in Working with Suicide

  Reeves, Andrew; University of Chester (Regent's University, London, 2018-09-01)

  Empirical research has driven the agenda around suicide risk assessment for many years leading to mental health services and allied professionals, including counsellors and psychotherapists, relying more heavily on risk factor-based questionnaires as the primary mechanism for identifying suicide potential. Research also suggests however, that the efficacy of such risk questionnaires is, at best, questionable and does not really provide a reliable insight into the likelihood of harm. This article argues the position that while factor-based information can be contextually helpful, the only way in which a deeper understanding of the meaning of, and potential for, suicide can be achieved is through the therapeutic discourse. Suicide exploration, it is asserted, provides not only greater insight into the process of suicide for the client, but also contributes to a context where the client may be enabled to support themselves effectively at times of suicidal crisis.
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  Social Policy and Narrative: The Global and State Contradictions of Care

  Powell, Jason; University of Chester (Sryahwa, 2018-10-01)

  This article provides a critical assessment of the assumptions and narratives underpinning the development of social policy initiatives targeting caring relationships based upon family ties. At the time of writing in late 2018, the impact of globalization has had a profound impact but we cannot underemphasise state power in examining care policy, theory and practice. Hence, deploying a narrative approach attention is drawn to the ways in which family identities are open to a far greater range of negotiation than is assumed by policy. Drawing on the United Kingdom as a case example, questions are posed about intergenerational relations and the nature of late life citizenship. The comparatively recent invention of narratives supporting ‘informal care’ and the link with neo-liberal and ‘third way’ notions of active citizenship are explored. As is the failure of policy developments to take into account the diversity of care giving styles and the complexity of caring relationships. It is argued that the uneven and locally specific ways in which policy develops enables the co-existence of a complex range of narratives about family, caring and ageing which address diverse aspects of the family life of older people in often contradictory ways.
• From a utilitarian universal health coverage to an inclusive health coverage

  Fernandez, Rosa; University of Chester (Springer, 2019)

  Healthcare systems vary across countries but the access to health is considered fundamental both individually and collectively. Individually, good health is one of the main contributors to well-being, and collectively it has an important effect on countries’ productivity. From a utilitarian perspective, governmental intervention in health coverage has the purpose to maximise the total ‘utility’, in this case the total welfare, of all the members of society. Health services must therefore be produced and allocated efficiently, and distributed in accordance to equity. This approach gave origin to the so-called ‘universal’ healthcare systems, in trying to provide healthcare for as many members of a community as possible. Such systems can be considered inclusive insofar to try not to leave anyone out of coverage, but their implementation is not free of criticism. One of the limitations is that they tend to provide the same level of coverage for everyone, regardless of their differing characteristics, circumstances, and needs. This also means that some health issues will not be covered by the public health system, and if patients need specialised attention they will need to use private health provision, with the subsequent exclusion of those without enough resources. It is for this reason that healthcare systems are evolving to become ‘inclusive’ in a different manner, away from the ‘one size fits all’ approach covering only basic minimum health services, and aiming to provide different services to people with different needs, including giving access to health to the poorest of society.
• SDG3 Good Health and Well-Being: Integration and connection with other SDGs

  Fernandez, Rosa; University of Chester (Springer, 2019)

  Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3) pledges to ‘Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages’ (UN, 2015a). Health is affected by multitude of factors, inherent to each individual but also dependent on environmental and economic circumstances. This piece of work will look at the connection between SDG3 and other SDGs without being exhaustive, but trying to focus on those more directly related. As such, special attention will be given to SDG2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture, also connected to SDG12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns; SDG4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all; SDG5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls; SDG6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all; and finally, SDG10: Reduce inequality within and among countries.
• Ageing, veterans and offending: New challenges for critical social work

  Taylor, Paul; Powell, Jason; University of Chester (Routledge, 2019-01-30)

  The relationship between ageing and the study of veterans of military service who have offended is uncharted territory. What is available to us are accounts operating in disparate areas of ageing and offending and veterans and offending. This has rich implications for ‘critical social work’ to add weight of research and theory to the significance of ageing identities of veterans for professional social work. This has challenges for the knowledge base for a critical social work given the significance of veterans’ identities and experiences.
• Working with Risk of Suicide

  Reeves, Andrew; University of Chester (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, 2018-11)

  This article considers the challenges faced by counsellors and psychotherapists in their daily work with suicidal clients. Specifically, it considers a number of key practice areas, including: policies and procedures; personal perspectives; managing confidentiality; positive risk-taking; supervision and self-care; and responding to suicidal potential. A number of practice guidelines are suggested.
• An exploration of how working in the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme, might affect the personal and professional development of counsellors: an analytical autoenthnographic study

  Mason, Richard; Reeves, Andrew; University of Chester (Taylor & Francis, 2018-08-29)

  Since implementing the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme in 2008, provision of counselling and other idiographic approaches to psychological therapy in the English National Health Service (NHS) has been reduced to several manualised therapies supported by NICE guidelines for depression and anxiety. Many counsellors who previously provided psychological therapies in the NHS subsequently left or retrained in IAPT compliant models of treatment. This study explores the effect that working in IAPT services over an eight-year period had on the professional and personal development of the primary author, resulting in a strong exhortation for counsellors to take advantage of, and influence the professional development opportunities it presents. This study takes an analytical autoenthnographic approach, undertaking the thematic analysis of naturally occurring data, taken from previously published opinion columns in a professional journal, and an unpublished doctoral assignment to illuminate previously unrecognised narrative. Themes of ideological resistance, and being out-group resulting in a sense of professional loss, uncertainty and cessation of professional development preceded acceptance of the IAPT nomothetic ideology. After which, a sense of being in-group facilitated a sense of gain, certainty, and the reimplementation of professional growth. Counsellors in IAPT may be prejudiced by their idiographic ideology. Professional uncertainty and a sense of loss could inhibit professional development. Development of a pluralistic ideological stance, and integrative approach to treatment is encouraged. Counsellors who accept a Cinderella like status in IAPT, are exhorted to adapt, influence from within, and thrive in IAPT.
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  Trust, Risk, Health and Aging in Asia: A New Philosophy

  Powell, Jason; University of Chester (Lupine Publishers, 2018-09-10)

  This paper reviews the important of trust and risk in relation to healthcare in Asia.
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  China, Aging and Health

  Powell, Jason; University of Chester (Lupine Publishers, 2018-09-11)

  Academics from across the world are increasingly concerned about the rising numbers of older people in their society. There are worries about the inadequacy of pension funds, of growing pressures on health systems, and on the inability of shrinking numbers of younger people to carry the burden of their elders. This article focuses on such health issues in China, where the older people have become a rapidly expanding proportion of the population. While resources do need to be targeted on the vulnerable older people, the presumption that older people as a whole are an economic and health burden must be questioned. This is an agist view that needs to be combated by locating how bio-medical views on aging seep into health policy spaces in China that position negative perceptions of aging as both individual and populational problems. The article then moves to observe the implications of bio-medicine for older people in China in terms of "vulnerable" aging but deconstruct such "fixed" explanations by juxtaposing active aging as key narrative that epitomizes "declining to decline" as espoused by health sciences.
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  Unconventional relationships, positive marginalities and citizenship

  Pratesi, Alessandro; University of Chester (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, 2018-07)

  Long distance relationships and caring at a distance may be connected with emotional and psychological exhaustion but also gratification, reward and empowerment; above all, they possess important implications in terms of social justice, equality and citizenship. The expression ‘world families’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2014) includes a heterogeneous and tension-filled set of social actors who have in common the potential to bridge traditional distinctions between public and private, centre and periphery, national and international, able-bodied and physically/cognitively impaired, heterosexual and homosexual, bypassing dichotomous ideas of inclusion/exclusion which typically characterise the concept of citizenship. These families represent a group of very different social actors, including couples of mixed cultures and ethnicities, low-paid migrant workers, skilled migrant workers, asylum seekers, refugees, distant families, etc. who challenge our culturally homogenous understanding of family and society and are defined therefore as ‘pioneers of cosmopolitanism’ and cultural diversity. Drawing on recent work on families, relationships, intimacies and caring for distant others and contextualising it within the specific and still unexplored context of Living Apart Together (LAT) same-sex couples, this article examines the moral, sociological and institutional geographies of these less visible chains of care and affection and their unequally entitled rights and visibility. The literature review is combined with auto-ethnographic work analysing and discussing the case of a married, same-sex, transnational, Living Apart Together (LAT) couple. This article suggests that by looking at what happens at the level of emotion-based, micro-situated interactions we can get some crucial insights into the changing nature of families, intimacies and relationships and their multiple implications in terms of social inclusion, entitlement to rights/citizenship and social change. It is a form of relational, emotion-based and micro-situated social inclusion and entitlement to rights/citizenship which is occurring, on a daily basis, in the interstices of people’s interactions even when such change still meets several obstacles at the structural, political and institutional level.
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  Health and Trust Relations

  Powell, Jason; University of Chester (Sryahwa, 2018-09-13)

  The paper is a critical review of the problems and implications of trust and in managing health in the British health system. It is a system in need of strong management in the light of the global downturn in recently. Despite of policies on leadership in health in the UK, the macro issues for why the needs of diverse groups are not met are difficult to understand at particular levels of analysis. The central problem has been lack of ‘trust’ relations. The paper detangles the implications of different forms of trust in order to understand health relations in health contexts which has implications for practitioner, policy makers and medical personnel.
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  Aging, Healthy Families and Narrative Approaches

  Powell, Jason; University of Chester (Lupine Publishers, 2018-09-21)

  Due to the mounting importance of recent research in the areas of healthy families and aging, the paper assesses the particular relationship between old age, health and family life by means of studying the role of grand-parenting and the way it is perceived by older people, the family, and the society at large. The study applies a narrative approach; hence, telling the meaning of the family and grand parenting through personal stories and public discourse, based on the theory of Michel Foucault. The findings put forth suggest that identities of health and family and grand-parenting are built on multiple grounds, and that therefore theory should be sensitized accordingly, as identities are managed at different levels, for different audiences and at different levels of awareness.
• The effects of the international economic crisis on Spain’s environmental policy

  Fernandez, Rosa M.; University of Chester (Oxford University Press, 2018)

  The economic crisis has had a profound effect upon Spanish environmental policy. The government abandoned its once praised support schemes and instead adopted measures that penalise the development of renewable energy. This chapter provides an in-depth investigation of environmental policy implementation since the crisis, focusing on renewables, biodiversity, energy efficiency, and climate change. These four policy areas are compared in order to outline differences in policy approaches and the possibility of differentiated influential factors for policy change. The chapter identifies structural barriers as the main cause of recent policy reversals. Political preferences and decentralisation of the Spanish government system emerge as central explanatory variables for environmental policy implementation and change. The chapter also looks ahead into the possible future development of environmental policy in Spain. Governmental instability may mitigate against future investment, exacerbating existing problems of poor environmental policy integration, and a lack of civil society engagement with the environment.
• Where do we go from zero?

  Reeves, Andrew; University of Chester (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, 2018-09)

  When writing about working with suicide risk, the temptation is to focus only on the practical details – contracting, managing confidentiality and so on – as these are often at the forefront of practitioners’ minds. However, in this article I want to explore working with suicide potential from a more relational perspective – once we move beyond the risk assessment tools and questionnaires, where do we go next?
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  Out of the frying pan into the fire. Education, counselling and target-driven culture.

  Egeli, Cemil; University of Chester (PCCS Books, 2018-06)

  I write my review as a conversation between three aspects of my working self - a teacher, lecturer (in counselling skills) and a counsellor, I shall abbreviate these to T L C – I think the world needs more of it.
• Conflicting energy policy priorities in EU energy governance

  Fernandez, Rosa M.; University of Chester (Springer, 2018-06-06)

  In the last decade, energy policies across EU member States have shifted, with fears emerging over the feasibility of the decarbonisation targets set up at European level. In many cases, the changes have been triggered by weakened economic conditions linked to the last international economic crisis (2008), but in some others they respond to national political preferences that have been given priority over long term goals related to sustainability. The second half of 2016 was particularly full of events that on one hand, introduced uncertainty over markets, and on the other hand, may condition the progress (both weakening it and leaning it towards the wrong path) towards the Energy Union, the latest attempt to achieve energy markets integration by the EU institutions. This paper will focus on three events to analyse their influence over EU’s energy governance patterns: The first is the Brexit vote and the implications over budget availability for emissions reduction projects. The second is the election of Donald Trump as president of the USA, with his declared disbelief in climate change. Finally yet importantly, is the latest decision by OPEC to cut production in order to increase oil prices. With the exception of Brexit, these events are external to the EU, but all of them will have an impact over EU energy policy decisions. Bearing in mind that goals set up for 2030 are already ‘softer’ than expected compared to the 2020 ones, the question is whether those events could push policymakers more towards European targets concerned with security of supply, conflicting with emissions reduction goals.
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  Impeachment as an accountability measure in a presidential system. Views from Nigeria's Fourth Republic

  Francis, Suzanne; Fagbadebo, Omololu; University of Chester; University of KwaZulu-Natal (University of KwaZulu-Natal and University of St Thomas, 2014)

  Extant provisions of Nigeria’s presidential constitution seek to promote a culture of accountability through a system of checks and balances. Since Nigeria’s return to civil rule in May 1999, promotion of good governance through accountability government continues to be a challenge. All indications point to a worsening governance crisis in the midst of abundant resources. Besides, Nigeria’s socio-economic performance and visible poor service delivery depict a deepening governance crisis occasioned by mismanagement of public resources. The data collected by means of documents and literature indicates that the presidential system has checks and balances as measures to prevent the abuse of power. Impeachment is the major institutionally recognised legislative mechanism to hold the executive accountable. The puzzle since the inception of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic is the failure of the legislature to appropriate this statutory authority to police the execution of public policies in a manner that will conform to the constitutional requirements. While there are requisite constitutional provisions that mandate the legislature to ascertain its power over the executive, indicating Nigeria’s commitment to the promotion of good governance, the legislature has failed to appropriate these instruments to stimulate a responsible government that is open to promoting good governance. Using the theories of structural functionalism and elites, this paper argues that this legislative failure to appropriate the instrument of impeachment to instil the culture of responsible executive in policy process engenders the prevailing governance crisis in Nigeria. The paper concludes that a political system where systemic corruption prevails will reduce impeachment to a mere instrument of political vendetta.
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  Power relations among institutions in Nigeria's Presidential System: Issues and Contentions

  Francis, Suzanne; Fagbadebo, Omololu; University of Chester; University of KwaZulu-Natal (International Journal of Politics and Good Governance, 2016)

  The principle of separation of powers and the doctrine of checks and balances are the two major mechanisms that define power relations among branches of government in presidential system. These institutional control measures are meant to avert disproportionate exercise of power. The assumption of the culture of presidential system is the near absence of personalization of power. In Nigeria, power relations among the three branches of government are clearly defined to ensure the promotion of good governance. Nevertheless, residual and inherent powers of the executive tower above the other two branches of government. This paper discovered that the uneven distribution of powers among the arms of government hampers the operation of a system of checks and balances. Thus, the institutional safety valves become ineffective in the face a rising culture of corruption and impunity. The outcome is the preponderance of governance crisis and abuse of state power. Competition for power among political elites endangers good governance. The paper submits that an informed public capable of enforcing accountability is a sine qua non for a redirection of the culture of accountability in Nigeria’s presidential system.
• Processing perceived parental rejection through personal development

  Clare, Tracey; University of Chester (Karnac Books, 2016-08-28)

  An exploration of processing the effects of perceived parental rejection in childhood through participation in the personal development aspect of a person-centred counsellor training course.

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