'My job involves giving children a sense of control over their environment'

Rob Beadel is employed by Buckinghamshire county council to develop policies and train school staff in dealing with vulnerable children. Photograph: Alamy

Name: Dr Rob Beadel

Age: 53

Job: Senior educational psychologist

Council: Buckinghamshire county council

What is an educational psychologist? Educational psychologists advise local authorities in developing policies around education, carry out psychological assessments on children and train school staff in dealing with vulnerable children. We also have a role supporting families throughout Buckinghamshire..

Describe a typical day in your job: What I do is very interesting because it is so varied. It can involve seeing children, or working with local authority policy and practice at quite a senior level.

What kind of children do you work with? Children with no school place, or those with complex behavioural difficulties or significant mental health conditions. We also work with schools to produce materials for children who move home a lot, such as those whose parents are in the military. Military children who have lost a parent because of war or injury would be a priority group for us.

How do you help them? People have to adapt to new environments and psychology can help us understand what that means and how best to do that. That's why we developed "my passport" – a booklet that children take with them when they move schools. They can fill out information in it about themselves and their family, giving staff a better understanding of their background and history. The idea is to increase the child's sense of control over their environment so they settle in quicker.

What other interesting projects have you worked on? I've been talking to health professionals about the possible impact of returning veterans who have experienced trauma or post traumatic stress disorder and the possible impact that will have on their children.

What are the biggest challenges you face in your job? I work with some extremely vulnerable children and families, which makes demands on you personally. I think the variety of the job is an advantage – it makes it interesting – but it requires a very wide skill set. It's also keeping up to date with psychological literature; we are expected to do that. I have just finished a four year doctorate that I was doing concurrently with my job.

How do cuts and the changes to education the government is bringing in affect you? One of the ways we have reacted is to develop our services to make money. Schools that have been turned into academies have more control over their budgets and they can buy additional services from us now, such as training. So we've actually recruited additional psychologists who work in a different way.

How do you lead your team? We have 35 psychologists, some part-time some full-time, and it's very much a collaborative approach. The psychology of interaction is a crucial part of what I do, and giving advice to people isn't always the right thing to do. It is about working as part of a team as opposed to telling people what you think they ought to do.

What made you decide to be a psychologist? I was a teacher originally. I spent over 10 years working in a school with children with challenging behaviour and I became curious as to why they behaved the way they did and the best ways to help them. I decided to do a degree in psychology, and that led me to where I am now.

What made you decide to work in local government? The core of it for me is around public service ethos. Where I'm more comfortable is working with children and families who have the highest needs and who are the most vulnerable. And working for a local authority allows me to work in policy development as well at various levels.

What advice would you give to aspiring educational psychologists? Do a properly recognised psychology degree and get some experience working with children and young people and their families in whatever context. I think that's quite a good career route.

Who inspires you? Aneurin Bevan with the National Health Service – that ethos of helping other people but having organisations and structures that can do that.

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Southerners are less trusting, but people who trust are more likely to cooperate to save the environment, baylor study shows

Main Category: Water - Air Quality / Agriculture
Also Included In: Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 03 Aug 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Southerners are less trusting, but people who trust are more likely to cooperate to save the environment, baylor study shows

Southerners are generally not as trusting as people who live in other parts of the country, but trusting people are more likely to cooperate in recycling, buying green products and conserving water, a new Baylor University study on environmental protection shows.

"A lot of researchers have reported trust as kind of a cure-all for protecting the environment through cooperation. Southerners are just as willing, but less trusting," said lead author Kyle Irwin, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences.

"The question our study raised was that if trust isn't a catalyst for environmental cooperation for Southerners, what is?"

The study, published in The Sociological Quarterly, was based on analysis of a data sample of 650 respondents - 238 of them Southerners - from the 2010 General Social Survey, Irwin said. "The South" as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau includes 16 states (listed below) and Washington D.C.

Previous studies by other researchers have shown that trust is important in working together to protect the environment, but the study by Irwin and co-researcher Nick Berigan, Ph.D., a visiting assistant professor at East Tennessee State University, is the first to look at cultural factors, Irwin said.

"Southerners are relatively close-knit and interact within small and dense networks," he said. "Social spheres often overlap: People that work together may go to church together, attend sports events for their kids. This type of network often produces a lot of solidarity and trust within the 'in group,' but distrust toward outsiders."

Compared to Southerners, non-Southerners have a large number of weak and transient friendships. Social networks in the non-South are considered individualistic, and that promotes trust of people who might be considered outsiders, he said.

"There's been a slew of research on the relationship between trust and environmental protection," Irwin said. "The more trust people have, the more willing they are to make sacrifices to hold up their end to solve problems."

But Southerners' cooperation in pro-environment efforts does not hinge on trust as much as non-Southerners' cooperation does.

The new study measured trust with the question of "Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?" Among Southern respondents, 24.9 percent of respondents trusted others; 38.7 of non-Southern respondents did so.

The study shows that political views and education are associated with cooperation in the South, with Democrats more willing to make cuts in living standards and more educated people more willing to pay higher taxes to help protect the environment. Also in the South, confidence in the government was associated with greater willingness to pay higher taxes.

Irwin said that further study is needed to draw firm conclusions, but the research suggests that pro-environmental efforts in the South might target Republicans by assuring them that long-term benefits of conservation outweigh short-term costs and are consistent with their values, rather than mandated by those with liberal political views.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
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*States listed as Southern by the U.S. Census Bureau include Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Washington, D.C. also is included.

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Mixing ISO-14001, Environment, and OHSAS-18001 Safety and health, Right into a Unified System

Mixing the ISO-14001 Environment Management and OHSAS-18001 Safety and health Management standards right into a single, unified system, can provide substantial advantages over applying scalping strategies individually. Costs could be reduced having a single, combined group of documentation, reduced training costs, along with a lower registration audit cost. This is actually the most practical and least time intensive road to registration.

ISO-14001 and OHSAS-18001 are two of the most common and many asked for ISO management systems outdoors from the ISO-9001 (or even the more industry specific AS-9100, ISO/TS-16949, and ISO-13485) Quality Management System. Increasingly more forward thinking information mill asking for their providers come with an effective Environment Management system in-place. This is particularly important when confronted with companies whose public image is essential for them. Many European information mill flowing lower their environment management needs for their sub-tier providers too. When you are registered towards the ISO type quality system, adding registration towards the Environment and Safety and health standards isn't difficult whatsoever. You have the knowledge of how scalping strategies work and just how they're given, enhanced and maintained. Which means that applying both can't only help you save considerable money over applying individually, but it will likewise enhance your company's bottom lime once the savings of controlling these critical facets of business begins to start working. Applying both of these management systems greatly reduces your company's contact with legal cases too. Let us examine all these systems and discuss how effective implementation can help you save money and control risks.

ISO-14001 may be the Worldwide Environment Management standard. This is actually the second most implemented ISO system. By 2012, nearly one fourth of the million companies have grown to be ISO licensed. The ISO 14001 standard doesn't dictate environment performance needs. Rather, it works as a framework to help organizations in developing their very own environment management systems. ISO 14001 could be integrated along with other management functions and assists companies in meeting their environment and economic goals. ISO 14001, like ISO-9001 is extremely scalable, therefore it might be put on any size or kind of organization, service or product, in almost any sector of activity, so whether you've three or 5,000 employees, manufacture hazardous chemicals, or only produce intellectual property, you are able to approve your company to ISO-14001.

OHSAS-18001 is really a virtual mirror of ISO-14001 other than it focuses its management efforts around the company's safety and health issues instead of its environment issues. Because of this applying both isn't a lot more difficult than applying just one. A lot of the effort in applying these is training the employees how you can effectively rely on them. ISO accreditation agencies and registrars recognize this to allow them to provide a reduced registration audit when you are performing both systems concurrently - over a 30% reduction.

Additionally to enhanced procedures efficiencies, applying these standards can lead to a large discount in insurance charges. Both insurance, as you have substantially less contact with legal cases, and workers comp insurance, since you address, monitor and manage your company's safety and health issues, could be reduced - sometimes having to pay back the price of implementation is really a single year, based on your company's size, exposure along with other relevant issues.

Learning and applying the ISO-14001 Environment Management and OHSAS-18001 Safety and health Management standards, whilst not hard for a previously qualified ISO-9001 Quality System manager, simply requires trading time to get learning both of these standards as well as in how you can mix them. Many methods and techniques could be combined. For example, you simply need one corrective action procedure, one management review meeting, and a bouquet of documents which will cover the needs of both standards. One method to ease this time around consuming process is to apply qualified and trained consultants. Should you want to follow this path, make sure your consultants are not only seen trained on the ISO-14001 and OHSAS-18001 standards, but additionally regarding how to mix them right into a single combined system. ANAB accredited registrars are actually offering Lead Auditor practicing combined management systems.

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