In this update:

·         Royal Commissions ·         social inclusion ·         Australian Public Service ·         accountability ·         biotechnology ·         personal health data ·         health IT and older people ·         hospital emergency response ·         disaster support ·         health labour force ·         rural workforce

·         long term care workforce ·         primary care workforce ·         personal budgets ·         nurse walk in centre ·         patient involvement ·         failure to rescue ·         cancer networks ·         co-morbidity ·         mental capacity ·         care homes ·         health surveillance

·         health visitors ·         child measurement ·         heat and exercise ·         autism ·         child disadvantage ·         abusive head trauma ·         domestic violence ·         violence by women ·         housing crowding ·         boarding house reform ·         boarding house rights

Featured blog: Croakey  a forum for debate and discussion about Australian health issues and policy from the publishers of Crikey public health, media coverage of health, Indigenous health, marketing by the health, medical and food industries, tobacco and alcohol-related issues, rural health, mental health, consumer participation in decision-making, evidence-based care, quality and safety of health care, equity in health, and social determinants of health.

	Royal Commissions in Victoria: 1854-2009 a reference source for royal commissions in Victoria from 1854 to 2009. In addition to the indices of royal commissions, the paper provides some background on royal commissions and analysis of the historical trends in Victoria. Vic parliamentary Library (Aug 2011) Perspectives on Education and Training: Social Inclusion, 2009  Education acts as a protective factor against social exclusion...The groups examined here included people who live in disadvantaged areas, people whose parents have low levels of education, people with disabilities or long-term health conditions, as well as people with culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD). ABS (Aug 2011) The state of the Australian public service: an alternative report analyses 20 years of opinion research on  the public service. The report finds evidence of a disconnect between frequent public service ‘bashing’ by politicians and commentators and generally positive views of the public sector in the general community. CPD (Aug 2011) Don't Count Us Out How An Overreliance On Accountability Could Undermine The Public's Confidence In Schools, Business, Government, And More...outlines the five key dimensions of accountability as the public defines it and contrasts the public’s perspective with prevailing leadership views. ..Responsiveness is valued over benchmarks. US Public agenda (Aug 2011) Biotechnology in Victoria: the Public Sector's Investment after more than ten years of active investment and ‘market intervention’ in the biotechnology sector, DBI is not yet able to objectively demonstrate the development of a cause and effect relationship between its investments in the biotechnology sector and the results achieved in that sector. Vic Audit (Aug 2011) Access to person-level data in health care: Understanding information governance The current framework does allow the gatekeepers of NHS data to weigh up the rights of the patient to privacy and consent, against the rights of the public to benefits from research, and grant the use of data without the consent of each individual. One advantage of this ‘public benefit’ approach is that it is able to deal with studies that do not fit into the typical ‘consent or anonymise’ model – such as those involving pseudonymous data and data linkage. UK Nuffield (Aug 2011) An Information Revolution: Summary of responses to the consultation Many older people prefer face-to-face communication with their health and care professionals – concerns have been mentioned in the consultation responses that face-to-face options may be removed which could disproportionately affect older people. see also  Internet barriers put older Australians at risk UK Health (Aug 2011) Hospital emergency response checklist An all-hazards tool to assist hospital administrators and emergency managers in responding effectively to the most likely disaster scenarios. WHO Europe (Aug 2011) Psychological first aid guide for fieldworkers covers both social and psychological support and involves the provision of humane, supportive and practical help to people suffering from serious crisis events. WHO (Aug 2011) Medical labour force 2009 and  Nursing and Midwifery labour force 2009 between 2005 and 2009 the number of medical practitioners increased by 20.7% (av. weekly hours worked decreased by 3.4%); the number of nurses increased by 13% (av. weekly hours increased by 0.3%) AIHW (Aug 2011) Securing a stable Medical Workforce for Rural NSW Communities A structured and supported training experience is fundamental to trainees choosing rural and procedural general practice and going on to provide health services in rural communities NSW Health (Aug 2011)
	The Long-Term Care Workforce: Description and Perspectives. While in all countries care employment is predominantly female and the share of older workers is increasing, considerable variation exists in the educational profile of the care workforce, the share of foreign nationality care workers, and parttime employment rates. Using a stock-flow cohort projection model, the report illustrates the potential impact of demographic trends on the future number and age structure of care workers. European Network of Economic Policy (Aug 2011) An evidence-based health workforce model for primary and community care A key feature of the model is the classification of subpopulations, which gives attention to the particular care needs of disadvantaged groups by incorporating threats to self-care capacity. The model can be used for clinical, health services, and health workforce planning. Implementation Science (Aug 2011) Personal health budgets: the views of service users and carers  examines the views of mental health service users and carers. It outlines the frustration that people feel with the level of involvement that mental health services currently offer, but shows that their opinions of personal health budgets are mixed. There is scepticism over how this national policy can effectively change the current culture of provision on the ground UK NHS (Aug 2011) Independent Evaluation of the Nurse-led ACT Health Walk-in Centre the first nurse led Walk-in Centre in Australia....shows that the WIC has provided a safe and effective service that is already highly valued and widely embraced by the ACT community but concludes that it is likely that the overall impact of the WIC is a net increase in emergency department activity. ACT Health (Aug 2011) Working with patients to improve health services: Experience-based co-design in practice Can we really expect to improve services in a way that makes a difference to patients if we don’t listen to their experiences? The Integrated Cancer Centre for South East London took a radical approach to this question: by asking patients to tell their stories from the moment they were diagnosed until after their treatment had finished.  UK Kings Fund (Aug 2011) Can we measure “failure to rescue”? ‘Failure to rescue’ refers to a death after a treatable complication. The rate of failure to rescue in surgical patients derived from routine administrative data is recognized as an important indicator of patient safety...Higher levels of clinically qualified staff (doctors plus nurses) were associated with lower levels of failure to rescue, but a higher nurse to doctor ratio was associated with higher rates of failure to rescue, suggesting that medical staffing levels might be more significant. Although our extended UK Kings College (Jul 2011) The future of cancer networks the suitability of a single clinical network needs to be weighed against local circumstances, as transaction costs of setting up a single network can be considerable..more UK Macmillan cancer support (Aug 2011) Co-morbidity of mental and physical illness: Meeting unmet care needs research update PHCRIS (Aug 2011) Mental Capacity and Healthcare Adults with learning disabilities or suffering from dementia, brain injuries or mental illness may be unable to make health decision for themselves. At such times, others will need to decide in their place. The UK Mental Capacity Act (MCA) (2005)  provides a substitute decision-making framework. UK Parliament (Jun 2011) Older people in care homes: sex, sexuality and intimate relationships  issues concerning sex, sexuality and intimate relationships in care homes are complex, and dealing with these can pose difficulties for older people, partners, families and staff. UK RCN (Aug 2011) Population Health Surveillance Strategy NSW 2011 to 2020 a comprehensive framework, key objectives and strategies for the development of surveillance information and knowledge. human capacity and technical infrastructure for surveillance NSW Health (Aug 2011)
	New health visitor taskforce  The new service vision for health visiting sets out a ‘service offer to families’, which provides four levels of help and support – from a universal service for all, through to specific help for those who need it UK Health (Aug 2011) Taking Stock: a rapid review of the National Child Measurement Programme The NCMP, which was launched in 2005, is viewed overall as having played an important role in raising the profile of childhood obesity locally and providing a robust and valued dataset, which has informed the planning of services in many areas and supported partnership working. UK Health (Aug 2011) Policy Statement—Climatic Heat Stress and Exercising Children and Adolescents With appropriate preparation, modifications, and monitoring, most healthy children and adolescents can safely participate in outdoor sports and other physical activities through a wide range of challenging warm to hot climatic conditions see also School sport (UK House of Commons) US Council on School Health (Aug 2011) Recurrence Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorders The sibling recurrence rate of ASD is higher than suggested by previous estimates. US [pediatrics (Aug 2011) The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children Annual statistical report 2010 provides insight into the experience of prolonged disadvantage and the critical points of transition in children's lives. Sections of the report examine how experiences and developmental outcomes vary for different demographic groups of children, including children from different socioeconomic backgrounds and different family structures. AIFS (Aug 2011) Estimating the Probability of Abusive Head Trauma: A Pooled Analysis To determine which combinations of clinical features assist in distinguishing abusive head trauma (AHT) from nonabusive head trauma. US Pediatrics (Aug 2011) Trends and patterns in domestic violence assaults: 2001 to 2010 while  the incidence of domestic assault has been stable across the last 10 years, it continues to be problematic at certain times, in certain places and particularly in some Indigenous communities. Efforts to increase reporting of assault may be best targeted at the subgroups identified in this report who are currently less inclined to report assaults to police. NSW BPCSAR (Aug 2011) Violence by women and girls Girls who are highly aggressive in the early school years are at risk for experiencing problems in adolescence and into adulthood including sexual victimization, troubled partner relationships, and difficulties parenting their children. Can Family Violence Prevention (Jul 2011) Modelling crowding in Aboriginal Australia a review of the density models of crowding followed by a detailed review of the international literature on the stress model of crowding. This review includes discussion and definition of the characteristics and concepts of AHURI (Aug 2011) More than board and lodging: the need for boarding house reform has identified serious concerns about the safety, health, welfare and rights of the residents of licensed boarding houses, and the adequacy of the system that is meant to protect them. NSW Ombudsman (Aug 2011) Boarder’s & Lodger’s Legal Kit a general outline of the various laws that cover boarders & lodgers in NSW NSW  Redfern Legal Centre