Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Social services'

The initial development of a social services program in a college health setting is presented, with discussion regarding causes, methods, and outcomes. Both empirical and anecdotal data which were influential in the initial formation of the program are reviewed, in the context of an examination of the research literature relating to this area. The actual development and implementation of the program is followed through its first year of existence. Outcomes are presented in the form of qualitative data analysis and case studies. Discussion of the results and recommendations for both future research and improvements to the program are presented.

In 1962 Congress enacted legislation which made social services an important instrument of public welfare reform. The law represented the culmination of a half-century effort on the part of public welfare officials to secure recognition for public social services as a distinctive yet integral feature of progressive social welfare policy in the United States. This dissertation traces the evolution of this effort from its origins in the Progressive period to the passage of the Public Welfare Amendments of 1962.The Progressive ideal of social welfare focused on building an institution of public welfare which would satisfy the economic, social, and psychological needs of all citizens. Public welfare officials viewed social services as playing a key role in the realization of this goal. The paper examines how social services became a means of protecting and expanding the functions of public welfare.The history of public social services has been marked by controversy. Throughout most of the twentieth century, the institution of public welfare has been subjected to periodic assaults by the taxpaying public. The stigma associated with welfare has caused many professional social workers to oppose the idea of incorporating social services into public welfare. The response of public welfare officials to these sources of conflict is a major topic which the paper explores.The context for and the ramifications of the dispute between professional social workers and public welfare officials over the propriety of public social services are discussed in the first three chapters of the paper. The last three chapters recount the political strategies used by public welfare officials to gain acceptance of their plan for integrating social services with public welfare policy.
Department of Sociology

Master of Science
Department of Computing and Information Sciences
Daniel Andresen
Web services have expanded to become popular in application development. Web services technology represents an important way of communication between different applications across different platforms. Unlike traditional client/server models, such as a Web application or Web page system, Web services do not provide the user with a GUI. Instead, Web services share business logic, functionality and data through a programmatic interface across a network. Web services are services or functionalities that are exposed to the internet and serves as online or web APIs. These services which are online APIs can be called from your code and use the results in your applications to offer specific functionality to users. This project consists of two applications the client and the server application. The server application is an online REST API (Web Services developed using REpresentational State Transfer (REST) protocol) which provides all the functionalities as a service across the network that are required to develop a social networking web application. The client application is similar to any other social networking web application where you can create a profile, delete profile, send messages to your friends, post things, like and comment a post. This applications sends request to the server application using HTTP requests and get the responses. These responses are then consumed in the application to provide the required functionalities to the end user.

E-government services are rapidly becoming a permanent part of the governing process the world over. These services involve the use of the latest information and communication technologies to facilitate and enhance access to government information and services. E-government represents an entirely new mode of service delivery that promises some of the most important advances in the area of government accessibility since the advent of the modern welfare state. These resources have a number of unexplored social service applications that are examined in this study. E-government principles and practices are reviewed at the local and international levels, with particular attention paid to the Government of Canada's e-government initiative, known as Government On-Line (GOL). Seven specific e-government applications that can benefit social workers and clients are identified and discussed. The results of eight interviews with directors of local agencies regarding the future of e-government in social services are reported and examined. Specific recommendations and directions for future research are provided.

Abstract. The advances in hardware and software have been rapidly integrated by organizations, especially in the healthcare sector, demanding new approaches for software to provide more reliable products, under well-known quality standards. This thesis investigates, designs and implements a set of operationally crucial RESTful web services for Invian Oy ERP system, DomaCare. Today, DomaCare is one of the fastest growing and developing software solutions in Finland in the healthcare sector. Thousands of satisfied healthcare professionals across Finland use DomaCare daily. DomaCare is a versatile ERP system designed specifically for the social sectors. This thesis describes the theoretical part of software architecture and software architectural style, which support understanding REST. Second, the thesis introduces the environment and tools required for the development stage. Third, the thesis presents the action and sequence diagrams for each use case to support the overall understanding of the system in a higher level of abstraction. Moreover, unit tests were implemented in this thesis for each use case, and, finally, the approach which was employed to validate the system is presented. In conclusion, the thesis concludes that based on the literature review, implementation, the results obtained from the unit tests, and the system validation fulfilled the goals set for this thesis.Tiivistelmä. Laitteistojen ja ohjelmistojen tekniikkaa on nopeasti integroitu organisaatioihin erityisesti terveydenhoitoalalla. Tämä vaatii ohjelmistojen osalta uudenlaisia lähestymistapoja, jotta jatkossa voidaan tarjota luotettavampia ja tunnettujen laatustandardien mukaisia tuotteita. Tässä diplomityössä esittelen tutkimusvaihetta, suunnitteluprosessia sekä toteutustapoja toiminnallisesti tärkeän, REST-arkkitehtuurimallia noudattavan webrajapinnan toteuttamiseksi Invian Oy:n DomaCare-toiminnanohjausjärjestelmässä. Tänä päivänä DomaCare on yksi Suomen terveydenhuoltoalan nopeimmin kasvavista ja kehittyvistä ohjelmistoratkaisuista. Sitä käyttävätkin tuhannet tyytyväiset terveydenhuollon ammattilaiset päivittäin ympäri Suomen. DomaCare on monipuolinen asiakas- ja toiminnanohjausjärjestelmä, joka on suunniteltu erityisesti sosiaalialoille. Diplomityössäni kuvaan verkkopohjaisten järjestelmien arkkitehtuurisuunnittelun sekä REST-arkkitehtuurimallin teoreettista puolta. Lisäksi tuon opinnäytetyössäni esille kehitystyöhön tarvittavan ympäristön ja työkalut sekä toiminta- ja sekvenssikaaviot kullekin käyttötapaukselle, jotta se tukisi yleistä järjestelmän ymmärtämistä korkeammalla abstraktiotasolla. Lisäksi esittelen tutkimuksessani kaikki toteutetut yksikkötestit kussakin käyttötapauksessa sekä lopuksi myös ne lähestymistavat, joita käytettiin systeemin vahvistamiseksi. Päädyn johtopäätökseen, että diplomityössäni esitellyt kirjallisuuskatsaus, toteutus ja yksiköiden testeistä saadut tulokset täyttivät tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteet.

Cette recherche a pour objet l'importance et l'appréhension du lien social dans les échanges marchands de service. Dans un premier temps, il s'agit de revenir sur l'émergence de cette problématique et de proposer une lecture sociale de la relation de service en développant le concept de services de lien. Dans un second temps, à partir de la théorie du don et des économies de la grandeur, il convient de concevoir cette socialisation comme un habillage social qui vient entourer l'échange marchand. Une étude de cet habillage social est proposée dans quatre entreprises de la distribution. Avec ses règles propres, le lien social peut être considéré comme un facteur de différenciation.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Cincinnati, 2008.
Advisor: Martha W. Rees. Title from electronic thesis title page (viewed Sep. 8, 2008). Includes abstract. Keywords: Cincinnati; social network; C. Wright Mills; H. Russell Bernard. Includes bibliographical references.

Es tracta d'una investigació historiogràfica de caràcter exploratori del fenomen dels serveis socials a Catalunya. La principal novetat de l'estudi resideix en l'enfocament històric, realitzat a partir de l'anàlisi institucional, normatiu i de les polítiques de serveis socials, centrat bàsicament en el territori català.
El treball s'ha estructurat en tres partes. La primera, dedicada al projecte d'investigació, tracta del marc de referència, on es presenten unes reflexions inicials, s'efectuen unes precisions sobre la utilització dels termes i el mètode i es tracta de l'objecte d'estudi. A continuació es determina el tipus d'investigació i es delimita l'àmbit territorial i cronològic. En tercer lloc, s'estableix el marc teòric de referència i es formulen les principals qüestions i consideracions plantejades a l'entorn de la problemàtica d'estudi i el darrer apartat es refereix als mètodes i tècniques emprades, fent una especial referència a les dificultats sorgides en l'aplicació del mètode comparatiu i l'observació i, finalment, es concreten les dimensions operatives i les fonts documentals.
Atesa la complexitat i la importància que tenia per a la investigació, es dedica íntegrament el capítol segon a l'establiment d'un marc de referència relatiu als conceptes tècnic i jurídic dels serveis socials, així com a altres termes propers, como la caritat, la beneficència, l'assistència social, l'acció social, la seguretat social o el treball social, entre altres. Al final es presenta una definició operativa per a utilitzar en el transcurs del treball.
La segona part, que es titula "Una visió històrica de los serveis socials a Catalunya", es refereix pròpiament a la investigació. El primer capítol tracta dels antecedents, que s'inicien amb la pobresa i la caritat medievals, es revisen, després, les aportacions del Renaixement i els canvis produïts al final del absolutisme, així com els derivats de la industrialització, incloent les realitzacions de la Mancomunitat de Catalunya i de la Generalitat republicana, i, finalment, es revisa l'etapa franquista, tant les actuacions públiques com les innovadores experiències cíviques.
El segon capítol es centra en l'etapa de la transició, quan es produeix la gestació dels serveis socials de la democràcia, on es tracta del paper desenvolupat per la iniciativa social i la Generalitat provisional, i s'analitza el tractament dels serveis socials en la Constitució espanyola i l'Estatut d'autonomia de Catalunya. El següent capítol es dedica a la dècada dels vuitanta i s'exposen les actuacions dels primers ajuntaments democràtics i la constitució i estructuració de la Generalitat autonòmica, així com les transferències rebudes de l'Estat i de la Seguretat Social en aquesta matèria. S'analitza la definició, l'estructuració i l'organització dels serveis a través de les principals lleis i reglaments que els regulen.
En el capítol quart es tracta la dècada següent, on es produeixen transformacions remarcables. S'analitzen els significats dels canvis que es situen des de la fase excepcional de consens fins a una altra de certa normalitat democràtica. Es revisen els aspectes i les novetats principals, com la creació del Departament de Benestar Social, la Llei 4/1994 i els debats i plans d'actuació del mundo local, especialment les repercussions de les reformes organitzatives i les de les lleis territorials catalanes: creació de les comarques, la reducció del paper de les diputacions i la redistribució competencial local. Finalment, es constata el fort creixement dels serveis socials i la seva consolidació en el territori.
A la tercera part es presenten les conclusions i consideracions referents a les qüestions plantejades inicialment en el projecte d'investigació. El darrer apartat es dedica a la bibliografia i els annexos.
This is a historiographic piece of research of an exploratory nature into the phenomenon of social services in Catalonia. In the first part, the research project is presented and the conceptual aspects are clarified. The second part is the research itself, which starts with a chapter dedicated to the background of social services from late mediaeval times to the end of Franco's dictatorship, including the study of the two Catalan experiences of self-government: the Mancomunitat de Catalunya and the Republican Generalitat. In the following chapters, it studies the management of the social services during the transition period until the approval of the Spanish Constitution and the Catalan Statute of Autonomy; it then deals with the social services in the new social, democratic and autonomic state and their shaping through the transfer of State and Social Security resources, the organisation and definition of the model and finally it looks at the changes and consolidation of the social services during the final decade of the last century. In the third part, the conclusions and considerations about the matters initially proposed for the research project are presented. The final part is the bibliography and annexes.

The importance of ethnic origin as a factor in delivery of social services has been recognised internationally as relevant at different levels of organization. This study examined 500 dossiers, a random sample of clients referred in 1985 to one hospital social service department in Montreal. Age, gender, status of children, referring hospital service, problems experienced and involvement with community social service agencies were found to be related to ethnic origin, using the Kruskal-Wallis and Pearson chi-squared test. After accounting for differences between ethnic groups in age, type of problem and referring hospital service by the use of logit analysis, ethnic origin significantly affected the changes of involvement with Social Service Centres and Departments of Youth Protection. Among the implications of the results for social services in Montreal were the need for the following: recognition that some ethnic minorities have very different social service needs than the larger ethnic groups; development of skills in cross-cultural social service provision because of the clientele's varied ethnic background; consideration of the impact, desirability and viability of ethnic/socioculturally specific agencies and services. The urgent need for further research is emphasised.

Der große Erfolg vieler Internet-Plattformen zum Social Networking, wie facebook.com oder myspace.com zieht zunehmend auch die Aufmerksamkeit großer Unternehmen auf sich, die mit ähnlichen Werkzeugen ihr internes Wissens- und Innovationsmanagement verbessern möchten. Im Gegensatz zu anderer Social Software wie Wikis oder Weblogs, die sich in der Regel leicht für den Einsatz innerhalb des Firmen-Intranets adaptieren lassen, ist dies für Social Networking Services (SNS) jedoch schwieriger. Zum einen existieren kaum Open-Source-Anwendungen, die ohne großen Aufwand implementierbar sind. Zum anderen unterscheiden sich die Lösungen von SNS-Anbietern enorm, was es den Unternehmen schwer macht, eine geeignete Lösung auszuwählen. Eine Hilfestellung soll der im vorliegenden Beitrag vorgestellte Ordnungsrahmen für SNS bieten. Entlang von acht Dimensionen ermöglicht er den Vergleich und die Einordnung verschiedener Dienste.

Der große Erfolg vieler Internet-Plattformen zum Social Networking, wie facebook.com oder myspace.com zieht zunehmend auch die Aufmerksamkeit großer Unternehmen auf sich, die mit ähnlichen Werkzeugen ihr internes Wissens- und Innovationsmanagement verbessern möchten. Im Gegensatz zu anderer Social Software wie Wikis oder Weblogs, die sich in der Regel leicht für den Einsatz innerhalb des Firmen-Intranets adaptieren lassen, ist dies für Social Networking Services (SNS) jedoch schwieriger. Zum einen existieren kaum Open-Source-Anwendungen, die ohne großen Aufwand implementierbar sind. Zum anderen unterscheiden sich die Lösungen von SNS-Anbietern enorm, was es den Unternehmen schwer macht, eine geeignete Lösung auszuwählen. Eine Hilfestellung soll der im vorliegenden Beitrag vorgestellte Ordnungsrahmen für SNS bieten. Entlang von acht Dimensionen ermöglicht er den Vergleich und die Einordnung verschiedener Dienste.

This project focused on immigrants' perceptions of social services and social workers. The study employed the post positivist paradigm. The project was conducted with legal and illegal immigrants who received services at Bilingual Family Counseling Service in the city of Ontario, CA. The study found that the immigrants' perceptions about social service agencies and social workers were multi-determined by at least three elements: knowledge, experiences, and attitudes. The dynamic interaction between experiences and attitudes shaped the immigrants' perceptions. Most of the respondents had a positive attitude toward social workers and social services agencies.

Population ageing has motivated policy makers around the world to focus on how best to organise health and social care services to meet an aniticipated growing demand on services. Two popular initiatives are reablement and telecare. Reablement is an approach within homecare that enables older individuals with social care needs to improve their functional performance and live independently. Telecare, on the other hand, involves use of devices to monitor individuals' health and safety, and provide response when needed. This thesis investigates the effectiveness of reablement and telecare by conducting a comprehensive review of the literature and undertaking three empirical studies. It is composed of six chapters. The first chapter presents a theoretical model that links the demand for reablement and telecare to various outcomes. The model is estimated using a strategy that controls for the effects of confounding variables and unobservable factors, and is general in the sense that it nests several other estimation strategies and study designs as special cases. The next chapter contains the literature review. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 present the three empirical studies. The first study investigates the effect of telecare on independent living at home; the second study determines the relationship between the use of telecare and admission to hospital, while the third study determines the relationship between telecare use and the length of stay in hospital. Chapter 6 concludes the thesis and provides some suggestions for further research. Unlike the results of the previous studies, the findings from this thesis suggest that the treatment effects are not homogenous across the poulation and also vary depending on the type of telecare device under consideration.

This research discusses a number of computer-based mathematical models which are designed to assist planners to make strategic decisions concerning the allocations of social services resources. A new model is postulated which uses current patterns of care to derive a set of alternative modes or packages of care, chooses a suitable set of allocations of clients to packages of care within given resource constraints and can be used to explore the effect on resource requirements of demographic changes, and to explore alternative ways of caring for clients if populations expand and/or resources are reduced. Comparisons are made with the DHSS Balance of Care model and with other models. An exploration is included of the weighting values used in the postulated model’s objective function.

In the recent years, social network services, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, have experienced an exponential growth. People enjoy their functionalities, such as sharing photos, finding friends, looking for jobs, and in general, they appreciate the social benefits that social networks provide. However, as using social network has become routine for many people, privacy breaches that may occur in social network services have increased users' concerns. For example, it is easy to find news about people being fired because of something they shared on a social network. To enable people define their privacy settings, service providers employ simple access controls which usually rely exclusively on lists or circles of friends. Although these access controls are easy to configure by average users, research literature points out that they are lacking elements, such as tie strength, that play a key role when users decide what to share and with whom. Additionally, despite the simplicity of current access controls, research on privacy on social media reports that people still struggle to effectively control how their information flows on these services. To provide users with a more robust privacy framework, related literature proposes a new paradigm for access controls based on relationships. In contrast to traditional access controls where permissions are granted based on users and their roles, this paradigm employs social elements such as the relationship between the information owner and potential viewers (e.g., only my siblings can see this photo). Access controls that follow this paradigm provide users with mechanisms for disclosure control that represent more naturally how humans reason about privacy. Furthermore, these access controls can deal with specific issues that social network services present. Specifically, users often share information that concerns many people, especially other members of the social network. In such situations, two or more people can have conflicting privacy preferences; thus, an appropriate sharing policy may not be apparent. These situations are usually identified as multiuser privacy scenarios. Since relationship based access controls are complex for the average social network user, service providers have not adopted them. Therefore, to enable the implementation of such access controls in current social networks, tools and mechanisms that facilitate their use must be provided. To that aim, this thesis makes five contributions: (1) a review of related research on privacy management on social networks that identifies pressing challenges in the field, (2) BFF, a tool for eliciting automatically tie strength and user communities, (3) a new access control that employs communities, individual identifiers, tie strength, and content tags, (4) a novel model for representing and reasoning about multiuser privacy scenarios, employing three types of features: contextual factors, user preferences, and user arguments; and, (5) Muppet, a tool that recommends sharing policies in multiuser privacy scenarios.
En los últimos años, los servicios de redes sociales, como Facebook o LinkedIn, han experimentado un crecimiento exponencial. Los usuarios valoran positivamente sus muchas funcionalidades tales como compartir fotos, o búsqueda de amigos y trabajo. En general, los usuarios aprecian los beneficios que las redes sociales les aportan. Sin embargo, mientras el uso de redes sociales se ha convertido en rutina para mucha gente, brechas de privacidad que pueden ocurrir en redes sociales han aumentado los recelos de los usuarios. Por ejemplo, es sencillo encontrar en las noticias casos sobre personas que han perdido su empleo debido a algo que compartieron en una red social. Para facilitar la definición de los ajustes de privacidad, los proveedores de servicios emplean controles de acceso sencillos que normalmente se basan, de forma exclusiva, en listas o círculos de amigos. Aunque estos controles de acceso son fáciles de configurar por un usuario medio, investigaciones recientes indican que éstos carecen de elementos tales como la intensidad de los vínculos personales, que juegan un papel clave en cómo los usuarios deciden qué compartir y con quién. Además, a pesar de la simplicidad de los controles de acceso, investigaciones sobre privacidad en redes sociales señalan que los usuarios han de esforzarse para controlar de forma efectiva como su información fluye en estos servicios. Para ofrecer a los usuarios un marco de privacidad más robusto, trabajos recientes proponen un nuevo paradigma para controles de acceso basado en relaciones. A diferencia de los controles de acceso tradicionales donde los permisos se otorgan en base a usuarios y sus roles, este paradigma emplea elementos sociales como la relación entre el propietario de la información y su audiencia potencial (por ejemplo, sólo mis hermanos pueden ver la foto). Los controles de acceso que siguen este paradigma ofrecen a los usuarios mecanismos para el control de la privacidad que representan de una forma más natural como los humanos razonan sobre cuestiones de privacidad. Además, estos controles de acceso pueden lidiar con problemáticas específicas que presentan las redes sociales. Específicamente, los usuarios comparten de forma habitual información que atañe a muchas personas, especialmente a otros miembros de la red social. En tales situaciones, dos o más personas pueden tener preferencias de privacidad que entran en conflicto. Cuando esto ocurre, no hay una configuración correcta de privacidad que sea evidente. Estas situaciones son normalmente identificadas como escenarios de privacidad multiusuario. Dado que los controles de acceso basados en relaciones son complejos para el usuario promedio de redes sociales, los proveedores de servicios no los han adoptado. Por lo tanto, para permitir la implementación de tales controles de acceso en redes sociales actuales, es necesario que se ofrezcan herramientas y mecanismos que faciliten su uso. En este sentido, esta tesis presenta cinco contribuciones: (1) una revisión del estado del arte en manejo de privacidad en redes sociales que permite identificar los retos más importantes en el campo, (2) BFF, una herramienta para obtener automáticamente la intensidad de los vínculos personales y las comunidades de usuarios, (3) un nuevo control de acceso que emplea comunidades, identificadores individuales, la intensidad de los vínculos personales, y etiquetas de contenido, (4) un modelo novedoso para representar y razonar sobre escenarios de privacidad multiusario que emplea tres tipos de características: factores contextuales, preferencias de usuario, y argumentos de usuario; y, (5) Muppet, una herramienta que recomienda configuraciones de privacidad en escenarios de privacidad multiusuario.
En els darrers anys, els servicis de xarxes socials, com Facebook o LinkedIn, han experimentat un creixement exponencial. Els usuaris valoren positivament les seues variades funcionalitats com la compartició de fotos o la cerca d'amics i treball. En general, els usuaris aprecien els beneficis que les xarxes socials els aporten. No obstant això, mentre l'ús de les xarxes socials s'ha convertit en rutina per a molta gent, bretxes de privacitat que poden ocórrer en xarxes socials han augmentat els recels dels usuaris. Per exemple, és senzill trobar notícies sobre persones que han perdut el seu treball per alguna cosa que compartiren a una xarxa social. Per facilitar la definició dels ajustos de privacitat, els proveïdors de servicis empren controls d'accés senzills que normalment es basen, de forma exclusiva, en llistes o cercles d'amics. Encara que aquests controls d'accés són fàcils d'emprar per a un usuari mitjà, investigacions recents indiquen que aquests manquen elements com la força dels vincles personals, que juguen un paper clau en com els usuaris decideixen què compartir i amb qui. A més a més, malgrat la simplicitat dels controls d'accés, investigacions sobre privacitat en xarxes socials revelen que els usuaris han d'esforçar-se per a controlar de forma efectiva com fluix la seua informació en aquests servicis. Per a oferir als usuaris un marc de privacitat més robust, treballs recents proposen un nou paradigma per a controls d'accés basat en relacions. A diferència dels controls d'accés tradicionals on els permisos s'atorguen segons usuaris i els seus rols, aquest paradigma empra elements socials com la relació entre el propietari de la informació i la seua audiència potencial (per exemple, sols els meus germans poden veure aquesta foto). Els controls d'accés que segueixen aquest paradigma ofereixen als usuaris mecanismes per al control de la privacitat que representen d'una forma més natural com els humans raonen sobre la privacitat. A més a més, aquests controls d'accés poden resoldre problemàtiques específiques que presenten les xarxes socials. Específicament, els usuaris comparteixen de forma habitual informació que concerneix moltes persones, especialment a altres membres de la xarxa social. En aquestes situacions, dues o més persones poden tindre preferències de privacitat que entren en conflicte. Quan açò ocorre, no hi ha una configuració de privacitat correcta que siga evident. Aquestes situacions són normalment identificades com escenaris de privacitat multiusari. Donat que els controls d'accés basats en relacions són complexos per a l'usuari mitjà de xarxes socials, els proveïdors de servicis no els han adoptat. Per tant, per a permetre la implementació d'aquests controls d'accés en xarxes socials actuals, és necessari oferir ferramentes i mecanismes que faciliten el seu ús. En aquest sentit, aquesta tesi presenta cinc contribucions: (1) una revisió de l'estat de l'art en maneig de privacitat en xarxes socials que permet identificar els reptes més importants en el camp, (2) BFF, una ferramenta per a obtenir automàticament la força dels vincles personals i les comunitats d'usuaris, (3) un nou control d'accés que empra comunitats, identificadors individuals, força dels vincles personals, i etiquetes de contingut, (4) un model nou per a representar i raonar sobre escenaris de privacitat multiusari que empra tres tipus de característiques: factors contextuals, preferències d'usuari, i arguments d'usuaris; i, (5) Muppet, una ferramenta que recomana configuracions de privacitat en escenaris de privacitat multiusuari.
López Fogués, R. (2017). Enhancing Privacy Management on Social Network Services [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/85978
TESIS

The central aim of the thesis is to explore how social workers' decision-making is informed by content knowledge and process knowledge and by the time pressures and uncertainties of practice. Using a framework for professional action proposed by Eraut (1994) the thesis seeks to shed some light on the analytical steps involved in social workers' thinking and how these are utilized in reaching early decisions about access to services. The findings provide useful insight into practice by demonstrating how social workers draw on information and how simplifying 'rules' Inform their decision-making.

The use of technology has been a feature of public sector managerialism since its introduction by the Conservative government in the 1990s. Subsequently, New Labour's modernisation agenda embraced and promoted the use of information and communication technology (ICT) through its drive towards 'electronic government' ('e-government'). The target set for all services to be 'e-accessible' by 2005 put pressure on local authorities for their services to be 'open all hours' and encouraged them to utilise call centre technology to achieve this. As a result, 'contact centres' (as they were re-designated) are now in use by local authorities to deliver a diverse range of services including social services. Call centres emerged as one of the most widely adopted organisational forms in the private sector in the last two decades of the twentieth century, and have been utilised in a number of ways, primarily in the communications and service industries. The working conditions in call centres gained a reputation for being harsh and exploitative of employees in the pursuit of efficiency and economy and the labour process in them has attracted a considerable amount of academic interest and research. The principal approach underpinning this research has been Braverman's (1974) labour process perspective. The use of call centre environments and technology for social services was pioneered by Liverpool City Council in 2001 in partnership with British Telecom. The introduction of contact centres in this context epitomised 'new public management'. The use of contact centres to deliver social services is now widespread and the thesis presents an in-depth case study of one such contact centre, 'Northshire Care Direct' (NCD) in the North East of England. It identifies how social work practice has been affected by an organisational form, which, until recently, had not been utilised in this context. In addition to its being used to underpin call centre research, Braverman's (1974) labour process perspective has also been used to analyse the social work labour process and, in this sense, was apposite as a means of shedding light on a setting that conjoined social work and call centre technology. The thesis therefore uses Braverman's labour process perspective as an overarching conceptual framework to shed light on the labour process at NCD and how it impacted on social workers from professional and personal perspectives. The findings challenge the dominant view of call centre environments, which represents them as highly controlled and inherently stressful settings that inevitably damage employees' well-being. The thesis argues that contact centre social work represents a new (and, thus far, neglected) development that further extends the incursion of ICT into the organisation and management of social work practice. The emergence of the twin phenomena of 'e-social work' and 'e-management' is identified. The thesis argues that the contact centre context takes the role of ICT in social work further than before. In acknowledging that it is a snapshot of only one such centre, and that different practices may exist elsewhere, it argues that the findings can only be indicative of the direction of travel. It concludes that the social work profession needs to engage with further developments in order to mitigate potentially negative effects for service users.

The aim of this study was to investigate how transgender people may experience the services that are offered by the Social Services. To fulfill the aim, the researchers decided to focus on the transgender peoples’ perspectives, and therefore chose to interview them and put them in an expert position. In this study a qualitative approach was used, and the data was gathered through two semi-structured face-to-face interviews. The main result was that the participants experienced that the Social Services sometimes might not have the right knowledge to give them proper information, sufficient support and the help they needed. Therefore, the participants often searched for information on their own, and the trust for the Social Services was unsatisfactory. One conclusion that could be drawn from this study was that the Social Services need to increase and improve their level of knowledge within this subject.

The present study was undertaken to provide an understanding of the processes underlying health visiting practice. The research strategy selected was grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967, Strauss 1987, Strauss and Corbin 1990). A total of 21 female health visitors from a District Health Authority in the North West of England participated in the study. Data was collected by means of 20 formal interviews and 41 days of participant observation in four different health centres. To recognize the basic social process in any interaction is one of the major aspects of grounded theory. This requires the identification of the "Phenomenon" which motivates the development of a process and the conditions under which it operates. The basic problem or phenomenon in health visiting uncovered in the data was "Securing Life Trajectories". This forms the core of the health visitor's work. The general set of conditions that influence health visiting work was identified as "Working Between Two Worlds". This is used to describe the health visitor's position between the policy agenda and the client's agenda. The process revealed in the data that health visitors use to respond to this overall problem was "Marketing Health Visiting". This refers to the different tactics that they use to introduce the policy agenda into the client's domain. During this process the policy agenda is adjusted to fit the client's circumstances. Three major strategies are identified in this process: 1) Promoting the service, 2) Adjusting delivery and 3) Tailoring the content. This study found that "Marketing Health Visiting" is a gradual process in which the health visitor wins grounds as time passes. As marketing strategies are implemented the conditions influencing the interaction change. Hence it moves from taking place in what is labelled in this study as "Dissociated Context", to a "Convergent Context" and finally to a "Shared Context". The final consequence of implementing marketing strategies is that of constructing "A Common Agenda" with clients. This agenda is basically the personalisation and contextualization of health visiting services. To build this common agenda it is of crucial importance that the client should see and feel the need for the health visiting service as well as the development of trust between the professional and the client. Hence the relationship that is developed between them acts as an enabling factor for reaching mutual collaboration. The discussion of the study focuses on its significance within the actual debate on health visiting about introducing new ways of practice. The health visitor's overall role is examined and the importance of developing relationships with clients is also highlighted.

The combination of location-awareness and social networks has introduced systems containing an increased amount of protection-worthy personal information, creating the need for improved privacy control from a user point of view.End-user privacy requirements were derived from identified end-user privacy preferences. These requirements were used to evaluate current Location-Aware Social Network Services' (LASNSs') end-user privacy control as well as help develop relevant enhancements.These requirements allows users to be able to control (if they wish) which of the objects related to them are accessed by whom, in what way and under which conditions. Two enhancement ideas which together helps fulfill this requirement have been presented. The few LASNSs offering the user access control rule specification only provides a small list of pre-defined subjects (e.g. "Friends", "Everyone"). This list is too limited for specification of many fine-grained privacy preferences. With a more extensive implementation of Role Based Access Control (RBAC) in LASNSs, with the user as the system administrator of roles, users will be able to create roles (e.g "colleague", "close friend", "family"), assign them to their connections, and specify these roles as subjects in access control rules. The user will also be allowed to specify conditions, under which subject(s)/role(s) can access an object. These conditions can be based on system attributes of the object owner (e.g location), the subject requesting access (e.g age) or external attributes (e.g time). A suitable user-friendly access control user interface has been proposed, showing how this can be presented in an effective and understandable way to the user. A few example user privacy preferences, each one representing one of the identified end-user privacy control requirements have been translated from data sent to the system through the proposed interface, into formal languages like Datalog and XACML.Current end-user privacy control can be improved, by making more fine-grained access control rule specification possible, through the proposed enhancements, suitable both from an end-user perspective and from a developer's point of view.

Abstract This thesis focuses on integrating multipurpose public displays with online social networking services. Modern public displays are capable of much more than the early digital billboards used for promoting brand awareness in urban areas. Currently, smaller, interactive displays are proliferating and starting to offer a variety of services for their users. A network of such displays is located in the northern City of Oulu, Finland, for example, where it is used by the general public. As such, it forms a realistic test bed for studying novel public display services in an authentic urban setting. This thesis examines how to leverage online social networking services in creating services for interactive public displays. A key difference to most related research is that the displays simultaneously offer multiple services to their users. The thesis first provides general purpose software components, which together allow creating services that take advantage of online social networking services. These include a distributed user interface framework, a login mechanism for displays that relies on the developed framework, and a social networking service API for public displays, relying on the login mechanism. Then, the thesis presents a number of prototype services that use the developed components. The services are discussed in the contexts of user generated content, public displays for enabling communication between users, and the role of smart phones in enabling these services. The key findings of this thesis illustrate how consuming and producing user generated content directly on public displays provide compelling use cases. Also, while leveraging online social networking services can be useful in supporting casual communication between users, the anonymity of public display users is likely to cause problems in official communications. Mobile phones are found as suitable for enabling the integration of social networking services and public displays by de-anonymizing the users. However, we are still far from a situation in which mobile phones are a natural part of the interface between humans and public displays, and more research and development towards this vision are needed
Tiivistelmä Tämä väitöskirja keskittyy monikäyttöisten julkisten näyttöjen ja yhteisöpalvelujen yhdistämiseen. Uudenaikaiset julkiset näytöt kykenevät paljon muuhunkin kuin ensimmäiset suuret mainostaulut joilla mainostettiin suuria tavaramerkkejä. Pienemmät, interaktiiviset näytöt yleistyvät ja alkavat tarjoamaan uudenlaisia palveluita. Yksi verkko tällaisia näyttöjä sijaitsee Oulussa, Suomessa, missä se on yhteisön käytössä. Se muodostaa aidon ja totuudenmukaisen testialustan julkisten näyttöjen palveluille aidossa kaupunkiympäristössä. Tämä väitöskirja tutkii Internetin yhteisöpalveluiden käyttämistä interaktiivisten julkisten näyttöjen palveluiden luomisessa. Yksi työn tärkeimmistä eroista olemassaolevaan kirjallisuuten on se, että käytetyt näytöt tarjoavat yhtäaikaa useita palveluita. Väitöskirja esittelee ensin yleiskäyttöisiä ohjelmistokomponentteja, joiden avulla voidaan luoda näytöille palveluita, jotka käyttävät hyväkseen Internetin yhteisöpalveluita. Nämä ovat hajautettu käyttöliittymäratkaisu, sisäänkirjautumismekanismi, mikä rakentuu kehitetyn käyttöliittymäratkaisun varaan sekä yhteisöpalvelurajapinta, mikä taas rakentuu sisäänkirjautumismekanismin varaan. Seuraavaksi väitöskirja esittelee prototyyppipalveluita, mitkä rakentuvat mainittujen komponenttien varaan. Nämä palvelut analysoidaan eri viitekehyksissä: käyttäjien luoma sisältö, julkisten näyttöjen mahdollistama kommunikaatio eri käyttäjien välillä sekä älypuhelinten rooli näiden palveluiden luomisessa. Väitöskirjan löydökset havainnollistavat, kuinka käyttäjien luoma sisältö sekä sen tuottaminen suoraan julkisella näytöllä ovat mieleisiä käyttötapoja. Lisäksi, vaikka yhteisöpalvelujen hyödyntäminen julkisilla näytöillä voikin tukea arkipäiväistä kommunikaatiota käyttäjien välillä, käytön anonymiteetti voi kuitenkin aiheuttaa ongelmia virallisemmassa kommunikaatiossa. Matkapuhelimet todetaan sopiviksi yhteisöpalvelujen ja julkisten näyttöjen yhdistämisessä etenkin käyttäjien tunnistamistuen vuoksi. Olemme kuitenkin vielä kaukana tilanteesta, missä matkapuhelimet ovat osa luonnollista käyttöliittymää ihmisten ja julkisten näyttöjen välillä, ja lisää tutkimusta on tehtävä tämän vision suuntaan

The relationship between provincial social service spending and subsequent rates of volunteerism in Quebec was evaluated using information contained in a Montreal volunteer database (N = 2784) and revenue and expenditure data from the Department of Finance. A secondary analysis was performed to identify possible structural correlates to volunteerism, thus providing an alternative to existing theoretical approaches, which predominantly focus on the study of individual differences between volunteers.
The results of the correlation analysis revealed a positive relationship between public spending and volunteer rates. In addition, a positive correlation was found to exist between levels of coordination activity and rates of volunteerism, lending strength to the contention that organizational infrastructure is related to volunteer rates. In general, the results highlight the integral role of public monies to the sustainability of Quebec's voluntary sector.

Young people are recognised as citizens with rights and competence to participate in decision making. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Children Act 1989 identifies their right to participate in social services decision making. Much of the published information on their participation has focused on involvement as individuals in case planning rather than as stakeholders in strategic policy making. This research examines how a particular organisation – social services – has responded to the participation rights of young people who are looked after. The thesis provides a critical review of current practice. It uncovers the extent of young people's participation in social services policy making and explores the perceptions of key stakeholder groups involved in the process. A national survey was used to elicit quantitative and qualitative information from a representative sample of social services departments. Semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in the policy process provided data from three diverse case study sites. Overall, data confirmed that stakeholders did not recognise young people's right to participate. Social services were unclear about the basis of their relationship with young people in the policy process; this confusion undermined young people's ability to influence policy decisions. Findings also showed that the power of managers in departments constrained the ability of young people to shape policy. Consumerism, rather than rights, was the underlying principle which defined participation as service-led rather than user-led. In light of these findings, which emphasise the dissonance between the theory of participation and its practice, a number of recommendations are made at national and organisational level to improve the quality of young people's participation.

Every single day, lots of users actively participate in social media sites (e.g., Facebook, YouTube, Last.fm, Flicker, etc.) upload photos, videos, share bookmarks, write blogs and annotate/comment on content provided by others. With the recent proliferation of social media sites, users are overwhelmed by the huge amount of available content. Therefore, organizing and retrieving appropriate multimedia content is becoming an increasingly important and challenging task. This challenging task led a number of research communities to concentrate on social tagging systems (also known as folksonomy) that allow users to freely annotate their media items (e.g., music, images, or video) with any sort of arbitrary words, referred to as tags. Tags assist users to organize their own content, as well as to find relevant content shared by other users. In this thesis, we first analyze how useful a folksonomy is for improving personalized services such as tag recommendation, tag-based search and item annotation. We then propose two new algorithms for social media retrieval and tag recommendation respectively. The first algorithm computes the latent preferences of tags for users from other similar tags, as well as latent annotations of tags for items from other similar items. We then seamlessly map the tags onto items, depending on an individual user’s query, to find the most desirable content relevant to the user’s needs. The second algorithm improves tag-recommendation and item annotation by adapting the Katz measure, a path-ensemble based proximity measure, for the use in social tagging systems. In this algorithm we model folksonomy as a weighted, undirected tripartite graph. We then apply the Katz measure to this graph, and exploit it to provide personalized tag recommendation for individual users. We evaluate our algorithms on two real-world folksonomies collected from Last.fm and CiteULike. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms improve the search and the recommendation performance, and obtain significant gains in cold start situations where relatively little information is known about a user or an item

This work is an examination of contemporary public policy implementation. It seeks to isolate those features which need to be incorporated into implementation theory to assist in the analysis of the implementation of public policy The "new right" ideology requires that a particular organisational form be adopted by public implementing agencies. This form must reflect the need to introduce competition, the precepts of the "new managerialism" and to view the user of the public services as a "customer". These three elements will have a bearing on the process of the implementation. In particular, the need to regard the user of the services as a consumer implies that these users have an active part to play in the implementation process. The primary aim of the dissertation is to examine the nature and extent of the users involvement. A secondary aim seeks to develop and test a model of policy implementation which can incorporate the so called "top down" and "bottom up" perspectives of policy implementation. The model incorporates features which facilitate the analysis of contemporary policy implementation. These features include: the need to recognise the large amount of conflict and bargaining which is characteristic of multi - agency implementations, the dynamic and interactive nature of the process and the inclusion of the consumer as part of the process. The research uses the implementation of N.H.S. and Community Care Act (1990) in a shire county in order to examine these issues.

Social media services have a growing impact in our society. Individuals often rely on social media to get their news, decide which products to buy or to communicate with their friends. As consequence of the widespread adoption of social media, a large volume of data on how users behave is created every day and stored into large databases. Learning how to analyze and extract useful knowledge from this data has a number of potential applications. For instance, a deeper understanding on how legitimate users interact with social media services could be explored to design more accurate spam and fraud detection methods. This PhD research is based on the following hypothesis: data generated by social media users present patterns that can be exploited to improve the effectiveness of tasks such as prediction, forecasting and modeling in the domain of social media. To validate our hypothesis, we focus on designing data mining methods tailored to social media data. The main contributions of this PhD can be divided into three parts. First, we propose Act-M, a mathematical model that describes the timing of users actions. We also show that Act-M can be used to automatically detect bots among social media users based only on the timing (i.e. time-stamp) data. Our second contribution is VnC (Vote-and-Comment), a model that explains how the volume of different types of user interactions evolve over time when a piece of content is submitted to a social media service. In addition to accurately matching real data, VnC is useful, as it can be employed to forecast the number of interactions received by social media content. Finally, our third contribution is the MFS-Map method. MFS-Map automatically provides textual annotations to social media images by efficiently combining visual and metadata features. Our contributions were validated using real data from several social media services. Our experiments show that the Act-M and VnC models provided a more accurate fit to the data than existing models for communication dynamics and information diffusion, respectively. MFS-Map obtained both superior precision and faster speed when compared to other widely employed image annotation methods.
O impacto dos serviços de mídia social em nossa sociedade é crescente. Indivíduos frequentemente utilizam mídias sociais para obter notícias, decidir quais os produtos comprar ou para se comunicar com amigos. Como consequência da adoção generalizada de mídias sociais, um grande volume de dados sobre como os usuários se comportam é gerado diariamente e armazenado em grandes bancos de dados. Aprender a analisar e extrair conhecimentos úteis a partir destes dados tem uma série de potenciais aplicações. Por exemplo, um entendimento mais detalhado sobre como usuários legítimos interagem com serviços de mídia social poderia ser explorado para projetar métodos mais precisos de detecção de spam e fraude. Esta pesquisa de doutorado baseia-se na seguinte hipótese: dados gerados por usuários de mídia social apresentam padrões que podem ser explorados para melhorar a eficácia de tarefas como previsão e modelagem no domínio das mídias sociais. Para validar esta hipótese, foram projetados métodos de mineração de dados adaptados aos dados de mídia social. As principais contribuições desta pesquisa de doutorado podem ser divididas em três partes. Primeiro, foi desenvolvido o Act-M, um modelo matemático que descreve o tempo das ações dos usuários. O autor demonstrou que o Act-M pode ser usado para detectar automaticamente bots entre usuários de mídia social com base apenas nos dados de tempo. A segunda contribuição desta tese é o VnC (Vote-and- Comment), um modelo que explica como o volume de diferentes tipos de interações de usuário evolui ao longo do tempo quando um conteúdo é submetido a um serviço de mídia social. Além de descrever precisamente os dados reais, o VnC é útil, pois pode ser empregado para prever o número de interações recebidas por determinado conteúdo de mídia social. Por fim, nossa terceira contribuição é o método MFS-Map. O MFS-Map fornece automaticamente anotações textuais para imagens de mídias sociais, combinando eficientemente características visuais e de metadados das imagens. As contribuições deste doutorado foram validadas utilizando dados reais de diversos serviços de mídia social. Os experimentos mostraram que os modelos Act-M e VnC forneceram um ajuste mais preciso aos dados quando comparados, respectivamente, a modelos existentes para dinâmica de comunicação e difusão de informação. O MFS-Map obteve precisão superior e tempo de execução reduzido quando comparado com outros métodos amplamente utilizados para anotação de imagens.

Although there is an increasing interest in social sciences amongst policy makers in financial services and investment organisations, not enough is known about the way financial organisations and activities interact with their social environments. In particular, there is a need for more research into the way financial activities are integrated into broader social structures. This thesis will report on a comparative study analysing the practices of financial organisations and their employees in two very different social environments: the UK and Chile. From 38 in-depth interviews with financial practitioners in London, Edinburgh and Santiago de Chile about their job trajectories and experiences, it was possible to analyse the practices of financial organisations in the UK and Chile, with an emphasis on the way they interact with global financial trends and local distributions of power and resources. A sociological account of organisational processes such as recruitment, socialisation, staff allocation, promotion and organisation of work within firms in these countries allowed for description and analysis of the way firms’ practices are related to their social (structural, symbolic and institutional) contexts. The research shows that Chile’s position in the global financial market and local distribution of resources encourage more traditional organisational practices, especially in terms of recruitment, socialisation, staff allocation and promotion, as well as activities performed and the way services are provided. In the UK, on the other hand, all of the above-mentioned processes are more technical, formally designed and competitive.

The aim of the thesis is to analyze the influence of the promotion in the social media for educational services. Current work covers all the definitions and overviews of the literature that is relevant for the understanding of the chosen topic. Theoretical data was followed by the examples of implementation of tools that could help the enterprises to promote the goods and services on the local market. The practical part of the thesis is standing on the research of the business that provides educational services in Ukraine and how investments in the development of social media tools are showing the rise of the sales for the company. I consider my work to be helpful in understanding all crucial areas in social media marketing. The aim of this study is to offer valuable insights into the development campaign process that would help Meat Studies to attract more students to educational services of the company.

Customer perceived value is concerned with the experiences of consumers when using a service and is often referred to in the context of service provision or on the basis of service quality (Auh, et al., 2007; Chang, 2008; Jackson, 2007; Laukkanen, 2007; Padgett & Mulvey, 2007; Shamdasani, Mukherjee & Malhotra, 2008). Understanding customer perceived value has benefits for social marketing and allows scholars and practitioners alike to identify why consumers engage in positive social behaviours through the use of services. Understanding consumers’ use of wellness services in particular is important, because the use of wellness services demonstrates the fulfilment of social marketing aims; performing pro-active, positive social behaviours that are of benefit to the individual and to society (Andreasen, 1994). As consumers typically act out of self-interest (Rothschild, 1999), this research posits that a value proposition must be made to consumers in order to encourage behavioural change. Thus, this research seeks to identify how value is created for consumers of wellness services in social marketing. This results in the overall research question of this research: How is value created in social marketing wellness services? A traditional method towards understanding value has been the adoption of an economic approach, which considers the utility gained and where value is a direct outcome of a cost-benefit analysis (Payne & Holt, 1999). However, there has since been a shift towards the adoption of an experiential approach in understanding value. This experiential approach considers the consumption experience of the consumer which extends beyond the service exchange and includes pre- and post-consumption stages (Russell-Bennett, Previte & Zainuddin, 2009). As such, this research uses an experiential approach to identify the value that exists in social marketing wellness services. Four dimensions of value have been commonly conceptualised and identified in the commercial marketing literature; functional, emotional, social, and altruistic value (Holbrook, 1994; Sheth, Newman & Gross, 1991; Sweeney & Soutar, 2001). It is not known if these value dimensions also exist in social marketing. In addition, sources of value said to influence value dimensions have been conceptualised in the literature. Sources of value such as information, interaction, environment, service, customer co-creation, and social mandate have been conceptually identified both in the commercial and social marketing literature (Russell-Bennet, Previte & Zainuddin, 2009; Smith & Colgate, 2007). However, it is not clear which sources of value contribute to the creation of value for users of wellness services. Thus, this research seeks to explore these relationships. This research was conducted using a wellness service context, specifically breast cancer screening services. The primary target consumer of these services is women aged 50 to 69 years old (inclusive) who have never been diagnosed with breast cancer. It is recommended that women in this target group have a breast screen every 2 years in order to achieve the most effective medical outcomes from screening. A two-study mixed method approach was utilised. Study 1 was a qualitative exploratory study that analysed individual-depth interviews with 25 information-rich respondents. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using NVivo 8 software. The qualitative results provided evidence of the existence of the four value dimensions in social marketing. The results also allowed for the development of a typology of experiential value by synthesising current understanding of the value dimensions, with the activity aspects of experiential value identified by Holbrook (1994) and Mathwick, Malhotra and Rigdon (2001). The qualitative results also provided evidence for the existence of sources of value in social marketing, namely information, interaction, environment and consumer participation. In particular, a categorisation of sources of value was developed as a result of the findings from Study 1, which identify organisational, consumer, and third party sources of value. A proposed model of value co-creation and a set of hypotheses were developed based on the results of Study 1 for further testing in Study 2. Study 2 was a large-scale quantitative confirmatory study that sought to test the proposed model of value co-creation and the hypotheses developed. An online-survey was administered Australia-wide to women in the target audience. A response rate of 20.1% was achieved, resulting in a final sample of 797 useable responses after removing ineligible respondents. Reliability and validity analyses were conducted on the data, followed by Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) in PASW18, followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) in AMOS18. Following the preliminary analyses, the data was subject to Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) in AMOS18 to test the path relationships hypothesised in the proposed model of value creation. The SEM output revealed that all hypotheses were supported, with the exception of one relationship which was non-significant. In addition, post hoc tests revealed seven further significant non-hypothesised relationships in the model. The quantitative results show that organisational sources of value as well as consumer participation sources of value influence both functional and emotional dimensions of value. The experience of both functional and emotional value in wellness services leads to satisfaction with the experience, followed by behavioural intentions to perform the behaviour and use the service again. One of the significant non-hypothesised relationships revealed that emotional value leads to functional value in wellness services, providing further empirical evidence that emotional value features more prominently than functional value for users of wellness services. This research offers several contributions to theory and practice. Theoretically, this research addresses a gap in the literature by using social marketing theory to provide an alternative method of understanding individual behaviour in a domain that has been predominantly investigated in public health. This research also clarifies the concept of value and offers empirical evidence to show that value is a multi-dimensional construct with separate and distinct dimensions. Empirical evidence for a typology of experiential value, as well as a categorisation of sources of value is also provided. In its practical contributions, this research identifies a framework that is the value creation process and offers health services organisations a diagnostic tool to identify aspects of the service process that facilitate the value creation process.

Récemment, l'intégration entre les environnements informatiques et de réseautage a été largement promu pour fournir des services intelligents à des utilisateurs finaux ainsi que l'utilisation efficace des ressources. Cette convergence a ouvert la voie à l'émergence de l'internet des objets (IdO). Le paradigme de l'IdO repose principalement sur la fabrication d'objets, appelés les choses, disparaître et se tissent dans le tissu de notre vie de tous les jours pour nous soutenir dans l'accomplissement des activités quotidiennes. L'évolutivité et l'hétérogénéité sont parmi les principaux défis qui entravent la réalisation à grande échelle de services de l'IdO dans la vie quotidienne des utilisateurs. Afin de relever les défis de l'IdO, un nouveau volet de recherche est venu en avant dans la littérature comme une classe paradigmatique des Cyber-physiques systèmes sociaux (CSPR), qui est connu comme l'Internet social des choses (Siot). Le SIOT se fonde sur la notion soulignée par phénomène petite-monde où la structure sociale permettant relation sociale fondée sur la confiance entre les personnes et les objets, d'une manière qui ressemble à des services de réseaux sociaux traditionnels (SNS) est suggérée de relever les défis de l'IdO. Cependant, depuis SIOT hérite des caractéristiques de différents informatiques et de réseautage environnements (par exemple, l'IdO et SNS) cela, en fait, augmente la quantité et la variété des données contextuelles qui doit être manipulé pour Adaptive fourniture de services dans Siot, qui agit comme le principal défi adressé dans cette thèse. Autrement dit, dans cette thèse, nous proposons la notion de contexte cognitif lorsque, dans certaine situation spatio-temporelle, le raisonnement sur les aspects objectifs du cadre, ce qui représente l'environnement physique, avec le contexte subjective, qui représente les aspects comportementaux et sociaux, est considéré comme l'amélioration des services SIOT intelligence et la capacité d'adaptation aux besoins conjoncturels des utilisateurs. Nous envisageons technologies du Web sémantique pour déployer notre contexte cognitif proposé dans deux domaines d'application; sensible au contexte recommandation des tâches quotidiennes dans les maisons intelligentes et structure sociale dépendant de la situation des choses. Un prototype de preuve de concept a été développé pour chaque domaine d'application, dans le but de démontrer l'intégration harmonieuse des objets sur le Web pour la réalisation de certaines applications. Nos résultats empiriques montrent un niveau de service amélioré l'adaptabilité et la complexité en temps de fonctionner lors de l'application de notre contexte cognitif suggéré
The paradigm of the Social Internet of Things (SIoT) is being promoted in the literature to boost a new trend wherein the benefits of social network services are exhibited within the network of connected objects i.e., the Internet of Things (IoT). The novel user-friendly interaction framework of the SIoT opens the doors for enhancing the intelligence required to stimulate a shift in the IoT from a heterogeneous network of independently connected objects towards a manageable network of everything. In practice, achieving scalability within the large-scale and the heterogeneous paradigm of the IoT while maintaining on top of its user-friendly and intuitive services to bridge human-to-machine perceptions and encourage the technology’s adaptation is a major challenge which is hindering the realization and deployment of the IoT technologies and applications into people’s daily live. For the goal of handling IoT challenges, as well as improve the level of smart services adaptability to users’ situational needs, in this thesis, novel SIoT-based application architecture is provided. That is, Semantic Web Technologies are envisaged as a means to develop automated, value-added services for SIoT. While, interoperability and automation are essential requirement to seamlessly integrate such services into user life, Ontologies are used to semantically describe Web services with the aim of enabling the automatic invocation and composition of these services as well as support interactions across the cyber, physical and social worlds. On the other hand, handling the variety of contextual data in SIoT for intelligent decision making is another big challenge which is still in very early stages of research. In this thesis we propose a cognitive reasoning approach taking into consideration achieving situational-awareness (SA) in SIoT. This reasoning approach is deployed within two application domains where results show an improved level of services adaptability compared to location-aware services which are previously proposed in the literature

Récemment, l'intégration entre les environnements informatiques et de réseautage a été largement promu pour fournir des services intelligents à des utilisateurs finaux ainsi que l'utilisation efficace des ressources. Cette convergence a ouvert la voie à l'émergence de l'internet des objets (IdO). Le paradigme de l'IdO repose principalement sur la fabrication d'objets, appelés les choses, disparaître et se tissent dans le tissu de notre vie de tous les jours pour nous soutenir dans l'accomplissement des activités quotidiennes. L'évolutivité et l'hétérogénéité sont parmi les principaux défis qui entravent la réalisation à grande échelle de services de l'IdO dans la vie quotidienne des utilisateurs. Afin de relever les défis de l'IdO, un nouveau volet de recherche est venu en avant dans la littérature comme une classe paradigmatique des Cyber-physiques systèmes sociaux (CSPR), qui est connu comme l'Internet social des choses (Siot). Le SIOT se fonde sur la notion soulignée par phénomène petite-monde où la structure sociale permettant relation sociale fondée sur la confiance entre les personnes et les objets, d'une manière qui ressemble à des services de réseaux sociaux traditionnels (SNS) est suggérée de relever les défis de l'IdO. Cependant, depuis SIOT hérite des caractéristiques de différents informatiques et de réseautage environnements (par exemple, l'IdO et SNS) cela, en fait, augmente la quantité et la variété des données contextuelles qui doit être manipulé pour Adaptive fourniture de services dans Siot, qui agit comme le principal défi adressé dans cette thèse. Autrement dit, dans cette thèse, nous proposons la notion de contexte cognitif lorsque, dans certaine situation spatio-temporelle, le raisonnement sur les aspects objectifs du cadre, ce qui représente l'environnement physique, avec le contexte subjective, qui représente les aspects comportementaux et sociaux, est considéré comme l'amélioration des services SIOT intelligence et la capacité d'adaptation aux besoins conjoncturels des utilisateurs. Nous envisageons technologies du Web sémantique pour déployer notre contexte cognitif proposé dans deux domaines d'application; sensible au contexte recommandation des tâches quotidiennes dans les maisons intelligentes et structure sociale dépendant de la situation des choses. Un prototype de preuve de concept a été développé pour chaque domaine d'application, dans le but de démontrer l'intégration harmonieuse des objets sur le Web pour la réalisation de certaines applications. Nos résultats empiriques montrent un niveau de service amélioré l'adaptabilité et la complexité en temps de fonctionner lors de l'application de notre contexte cognitif suggéré
The paradigm of the Social Internet of Things (SIoT) is being promoted in the literature to boost a new trend wherein the benefits of social network services are exhibited within the network of connected objects i.e., the Internet of Things (IoT). The novel user-friendly interaction framework of the SIoT opens the doors for enhancing the intelligence required to stimulate a shift in the IoT from a heterogeneous network of independently connected objects towards a manageable network of everything. In practice, achieving scalability within the large-scale and the heterogeneous paradigm of the IoT while maintaining on top of its user-friendly and intuitive services to bridge human-to-machine perceptions and encourage the technology’s adaptation is a major challenge which is hindering the realization and deployment of the IoT technologies and applications into people’s daily live. For the goal of handling IoT challenges, as well as improve the level of smart services adaptability to users’ situational needs, in this thesis, novel SIoT-based application architecture is provided. That is, Semantic Web Technologies are envisaged as a means to develop automated, value-added services for SIoT. While, interoperability and automation are essential requirement to seamlessly integrate such services into user life, Ontologies are used to semantically describe Web services with the aim of enabling the automatic invocation and composition of these services as well as support interactions across the cyber, physical and social worlds. On the other hand, handling the variety of contextual data in SIoT for intelligent decision making is another big challenge which is still in very early stages of research. In this thesis we propose a cognitive reasoning approach taking into consideration achieving situational-awareness (SA) in SIoT. This reasoning approach is deployed within two application domains where results show an improved level of services adaptability compared to location-aware services which are previously proposed in the literature

Restraint by government in the area of social service spending in the 1980's has become an issue of grave concern for social service practitioners, planners, and administrators . The emergence in North America of neo-conservative economic policies has engendered a body of critical and provocative literature which examines the effects of "restraint economics." The neo-conservative construction of a "post welfare State," propelled by economic crises, has involved a redefinition by the State of its mandate for the redistribution of the "public wage." The "privatisation" of services through reduction or cancellation of programs, the increasing use of contracted services, and through deinstitutionalisation and deregulation may obviate the redistributive aims of the welfare State and create instead a basis for more pervasive social and geographical inequity. The voluntary sector (non-government) human services have been challenged to "fill the gaps" left by government cutbacks, often in the face of declining levels of government support for that sector. It is the intent of this thesis to address the political economy of social services policy in British Columbia through an examination of the relationship between the Provincial government and the voluntary sector. This policy critique uses the voluntary sector as a window onto the political, economic and ideological agenda of the British Columbia government with special emphasis on social and economic legislation during the period 1983-1985. It will be argued that both the ideological bases and the social impacts of B.C.'s restraint legislation are reflections of neo-conservative challenges to the collecti-vistic principles of the welfare State observed in the United States and Great Britain. The thesis will proceed through two principal avenues: 1) a discussion of the teleology of neo-conservativism and its relationship to social and economic policy in B.C.. This section will provide the context against which the remainder of the thesis will be cast; and, 2) a detailed discussion of the nature of the voluntary sector and a comparison of the effects of public sector restraint upon voluntaristic social services in the United States and British Columbia. The latter will be accomplished through the juxtaposition of a sizeable literature on the effects of restraint in the U.S. with the findings of a province-wide questionnaire survey of voluntary agencies conducted by the author in January 1985. It is posited that social and economic policy in B.C. is a Canadian manifestation of the anti-welfare-statism implicit in Reaganomics of the U.S. and Thatchernomics of the U.K. On the basis of theoretical and empirical reflections on the effects of ideologically-informed restraint measures, the author will conclude by assessing the future prospects for Canadian social policy.
Arts, Faculty of
Geography, Department of
Graduate

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The present thesis studies the state regulation for social assistance services designed to people who need the protection of Social Assistance Services to be considered as rights reserved to citizens to Social Security under the Social Welfare and Health policies as established by the Brazilian Constitution. As a duty of the State, the Social Assistance Policy takes charge of offering the answers to certain social needs, to guarantee benefits and public service, in direct administration of the Public Power or through the participation of non-profitable private organizations. The study deals with the configuration and regulation of social assistance services and the way they were established up to present days in the Brazilian society. The study also investigates how services are introduced and how relationship between public and private sectors is developed when offering these services to two metropolis of the city of Sao Paulo. The study is searching to rescue the debate related to the theme and situates its critical points and also promote the discussion aiming the composition of networking services integrated to the Public Social Policy to guarantee social security and extension of citizenship in Brazil
A presente tese estuda a regulação estatal dos serviços socioassistenciais dirigidos aos cidadãos que necessitam de proteção social de Assistência Social, a serem prestados como direito do cidadão à Seguridade Social, junto às políticas de Saúde e Previdência Social, conforme estabelece a Constituição Brasileira. Como dever de Estado, a Política de Assistência Social se encarrega de ofertar respostas a determinadas necessidades sociais, assegurando prestações nas modalidades de benefícios e serviços públicos, em gestão direta do Poder Público, ou pela ação compartilhada com organizações privadas, sem fins lucrativos. O estudo aborda as formas como os serviços de assistência social foram constituídos na sociedade brasileira e a sua configuração e regulamentações até os dias atuais. Investiga como se apresentam e que formas de relação se desenvolvem entre o setor público e privado na prestação desses serviços em duas metrópoles paulistas. Busca resgatar o debate relativo ao tema, situar seus pontos críticos e inserir a discussão na perspectiva da composição dos serviços em rede integrante da Política Social Pública, para a garantia de seguranças sociais e a extensão da cidadania no Brasil