The Local Government Association has told the Government that it is wrong to believe that councils lack commitment or will to tackle the delays in discharges from hospitals. 

By Arthur C. BrooksAre the fields of nonprofit management and public management naturally complementary, or are they substitutes? Briefly surveying the nonprofit literature on board governance, volunteer management, and performance measurement, the author shows that study of the third sector can help inform public management’s “big questions”. 

Some 1,000 police stations have closed across the UK in the last ten years, but police in North Wales are using cutting edge technology to reintroduce many of the benefits of traditional policing. A new 3.5 million pounds mobile wireless system will put officers back into the front line and into the community.The system will provide officers with mobile data links and allow them to file reports remotely, rather than returning to the station. 

Skill shortage vacancies in professional occupations have continued to grow since 1999 and are most severe in health and social care. Over one in five employers in the public and private sectors reported an internal skills gap affecting some 1.1 million employees. 

Susanne Kumpers, Arno van Raak, Brian Hardy AND Ingrid MurThe concept of integrated care has assumed growing importance on the policy agendas both in England and The Netherlands and elsewhere. It is characterized as health and health care-related social care needed by patients with multi-faceted needs. This article compares policy approaches to integrated care in England and The Netherlands. 

Patients will soon have access to the same online medical knowledge as health professionals. Logging on to the National electronic Library for Health will give access to the Cochrane Library and Clinical Evidence. Both these sources offer in depth information that people who want to view the same information as their own doctor would find useful. They provide invaluable evidence on what treatments work best to help those considering their options. 

Police officers spend 43% of their time in police stations and only 17% on patrol, mostly in vehicles. The Policing Bureaucracy Taskforce has now come up with a plan to free up time so that officers can spend most of the day on the street. 

By Jeremy Cox Call centers in the public and private sectors are designed and managed from a traditional mass-production perspective. This leads to problems such as customer dissatisfaction and high staff turnover. The author looks at the weaknesses of the traditional approach and argues for a re-think of design and management based on a systems perspective.

Hopes of making extensive use of digital TV to deliver public services have been dealt a blow by the latest MORI survey of take-up. MORI found that although the incidence of digital television viewers, at over 19 million British adults, is more than 30% up on twelve months ago, almost all of this growth occurred up to March this year. 

It is impossible to find a link between educational attainment in schools and the quality of local education authorities. They have a limited effect on school performance such as management effectiveness. These are a key findings in a report by OFSTED and the Audit Commission.