Yearly Archives / 2016

CALL FOR PAPERS: SUSTAINABLE EARTH 2016

CALL FOR PAPERS: SUSTAINABLE EARTH 2016

earth
A global forum for connecting research with action

23 and 24 June 2016, Plymouth University

Key note speakers include:

Craig Bennett – CEO, Friends of the Earth

Wendy Darke – Head of the BBC’s Natural History Unit

Sir Mark Walport – Government Chief Adviser in the United Kingdom

You are invited to participate in Sustainable Earth 2016 – a global forum for connecting research with action taking place on 23 and 24 June 2016 at Plymouth University.

Plymouth University are inviting papers from the academic community on sustainability research and also organisations interested in highlighting their sustainability related activity and where Universities can help in the future. Submit your abstract.

If you are interested in profiling your sustainability research or initiative and connecting with like-minded people then this forum is for you!

Submission Deadline: 28th February 2016

forum

FMC Cross-Departmental Seminar Series 2015-16 17 February 2016

Communicating Research
FMC Cross-Departmental Seminar Series 2015-16
The Faculty of Media and Communication at BU

Venue: CG17, Christchurch House, Talbot Campus, Bournemouth University, Fern Barrow, Poole, Dorset, BH12 5BB
Wednesday 17 February 3pm CG17

A Journalism Research Group Guest Lecture
Glenda Cooper, City University

Hurricanes and Hashtags: The Power Dynamics of Humanitarian Reporting in a Digital Age
Who tells the story of today’s humanitarian disasters? Twitter, Instagram, SMS messages have entered into the defining images and texts of humanitarian disasters, theoretically allowing survivors to play a role in the framing of such crises.

Yet research suggests both mainstream media and NGOs – whose symbiotic relationships traditionally framed such stories – have cloned and absorbed such content, potentially restricting the voices that are heard. Issues around privacy and copyright are yet to be resolved in the mainstream media, while NGOs have turned to Western bloggers rather than beneficiaries to mediate their message.

This seminar will draw on the recent collection Humanitarianism Communications and Change, co-edited by the author, and also 50 semi-¬‐structured interviews she has conducted with a) those whose content was used by UK mainstream media; b) journalists from the main broadcast and print outlets in the UK; and c) members of each of the 13 UK Disaster Emergency Committee aid agencies who responded to recent crises including the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake. It aims to look how voices of citizens in crises are being mediated and mediatized, as well as what issues the use of this content raises around the contextual integrity of privacy. It concludes by examining whether NGOs’ engagement online allows the voices of the marginalised to emerge?

Wednesday 17 February 4pm CG17

A CMC – Politics and Media Guest Lecture
Laura Sudulich, University of Kent

Not all that glitters is gold: Assessing the (absence of) impact of social media on preference voting in the 2014 Belgian elections
A growing number of studies address the relationship between candidate use of social media (particularly Twitter) and candidate voting, suggesting that those candidates who embedded social media in their campaign strategy attract more votes than those who have not. This holds across a variety of countries and political systems. We use data from the May 2014 Belgian to estimate the effects of social media campaign on preferential voting. This election is of particular interest because on the same day Belgian voters chose their representatives to the regional, federal and European parliaments (allowing us to examine ‘who’ would benefit most from Twitter). We captured candidates twitter feeds during the campaign and we merge this with information about the ballot position of the candidate, incumbency status and demographics. We control for traditional media coverage of each and every candidate to isolate social media effects. We find little evidence of social media directly leading to vote gains. Twitter adoption is correlated to better electoral performances but when taking a closer look at the dynamics of usage we find that usage is more symbolic than strategic.

Laura Sudulich is a Senior Lecturer in Politicas at the School of Politics and International Relations of the University of Kent. She is also affiliated to the Centre d’étude de la vie politique (Cevipol) Université Libre de Bruxelles. During the academic year 2012-2013 Laura was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. Laura holds a PhD in Political Science from Trinity College Dublin.

To date, her research activity has looked at the effects of new media use on electoral behavior and public opinion, electoral campaigns and their effects on vote gains, Voting Advice Applications, election forecasting and processes of politicization. Laura is also interested in survey design, quantitative methodologies and in making innovative use of existing data about elections and campaigns

About the series

This new seminar series showcases current research across different disciplines and approaches within the Faculty of Media and Communication at BU. The research seminars include invited speakers in the fields of journalism, politics, narrative studies, media, communication and marketing studies. The aim is to celebrate the diversity of research across departments in the faculty and also generate dialogue and discussion between those areas of research.

Contributions include speakers on behalf of

The Centre for Politics and Media Research
The Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community
Promotional Cultures & Communication Centre
Public Relations Research Centre
Narrative Research Group
Journalism Research Group
Advances in Media Management Research Group

Kind Regards,
Brian

Brian McNulty
Research Development Co-ordinator
Faculty of Media & Communication
The Loft (P181), Poole House, Talbot Campus
Fernbarrow, Poole
BH12 5BB

NERC scopes new areas for strategic research

Funding opportunities

nerc-logo-50thNERC will scope three new areas for potential large-scale strategic research investments over spring 2016:

  • fundamental ecological research for sustainable resource exploitation in the deep ocean
  • Southern Ocean’s role in the Earth system
  • subsurface-surface coupled processes associated with UK unconventional hydrocarbon extraction.

These potential ‘strategic programme areas’ (SPAs) have emerged from the ideas process for strategic research, where NERC captures and builds on ideas for excellent strategic science coming directly from the environmental science community.  2015 saw the second cut-offs for ideas for strategic research, with 21 ideas received for SPAs.

NERC’s Strategic Programme Advisory Group (SPAG) reviewed the ideas and used a number of them to generate the proposals for SPAs that were considered by NERC’s Science Board.  NERC will shortly publish open calls for community members to join the SPA scoping groups, which will develop full cases for assessment and funding decisions in summer 2016.

They do not expect to be able to fund all three potential SPAs, and any potential SPA must meet NERC’s criteria for a strategic programme, so it is possible that none of these three potential SPAs will result in funded programmes.  Open announcements of opportunity for research proposals will follow, for any strategic programme that is approved.

RKEO faculty-facing staff – when and where?

RKEO has a number of posts that directly support colleagues in the Faculties with bid preparation and submission and the post-award management of grants and contracts. These staff members spend approximately 50% of their time based in the Faculty offices. Information on when and where you can expect to find them when they are working in your Faculty is available here on the Research Blog here: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/contact/faculty-facing-staff/.

New NHS article by BU Visiting Faculty Minesh Khashu

open access, Publishing

FileLaptopImageDataManagement-1024x1024Minesh Khashu (BU Visiting Faculty and clinician in Poole Hospital) and Jeremy Scrivens published their third instalment of a series of online papers on the NHS.  This contribution is called ‘Can We Heal an Ailing Healthcare System? Part 3’.  They deep dive into this idea of transformation through a strengths-based approach.   They consider how we can build an NHS Social Movement by bringing the whole system together to inquire into and extend NHS’s Positive Core.  The blog (online paper) can be accessed here!

For more information you can also follow the two authors on Twitter: Minesh Khashu(@mkrettiwt) & Jeremy Scrivens (@jeremyscrivens)

 

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

A series of co-incidents

international, Publishing

Over 25 years ago during my PhD research comparing the organisation of midwifery and maternity care in the Netherlands and the Northeast of Scotland I wrote a chapter comparing the history of maternity care in the two countries.  I needed to write this not, as I thought at the time, to improve my thesis, but for myself to help me as a sociologist to help understand these historical developments.

In the process of researching the history of midwifery in the Netherlands I found a commemorative book by Drenth (1998) celebrating the centenary of the Dutch midwifery organisation. In this book is a footnote stating that the first chair of the KNOV (Royal Dutch Organisation of Midwives), Ms Francijntje de Kadt, lived and worked in the town of Vlaardingen in the late 19th to early 20th century (Drenth 1998). This note caught my eyes as I am born and bred in Vlaardingen.

Francijntje de Kadtlaan in Vlaardingen, the Netherlands

Francijntje de Kadtlaan in Vlaardingen, the Netherlands

After a bit more searching and a visit to the archives of the town of Vlaardingen I managed to dig up a little more about Francijntje de Kadt, but not an awful lot. During a family visit to the Netherlands I visited the archives of Vlaardingen to see what information they had about her. The archivist immediately recognised the name of Francijntje de Kadt, since genealogists keep finding her name as the midwife listed on their ancestors’ birth certificates. However, the archivist did not know that Francijntje de Kadt had been the first chair of the Dutch Mmidwifery organisation from its establishment in 1898 till 1926. At that point I decided to apply for a small travel grant in the History of Medicine from the Wellcome Trust. That application was successful, awarding a travel grant of £ 1,050 in 2001. My research in various archives in the Netherlands resulted in two papers (in Dutch) about Francijntje de Kadt, one in a local history journal (van Teijlingen 2003a) and one in the Dutch midwifery journal (2003b) and one about the collapse in 1921 of the midwives’ first pension fund (van Teijlingen 2002). This was for a while the end of my career as an amateur historian due to my busy day job as a health researcher and MSc coordinator at the University of Aberdeen.

Many years later (2010) I ended up talking to the burgomaster of Vlaardingen at the reception organised by the town to celebrate the fact that my father had been awarded the Dutch equivalent of an OBE. Over a drink I asked the burgomaster what the process was for suggesting a new street name in Vlaardingen. He suggested I write to the Street Name Committee with a justification why Francijntje de Kadt deserved a street name. With my recommendation I sent this committee my two Dutch publications. A few months later the secretary to the Street Name Committee wrote to say that my proposal had been accepted and that her name would be given to a street in a new development of the former local hospital grounds.

Then in mid-2015 a Dutch historian Eva Moraal came to Vlaardingen with her partner on a day trip and they ended up walking through the Francijntje de Kadtlaan. She read the subscript on the street sign (see photo) and thought ‘This woman need to have an encyclopaedia entry!’ A few days later she emailed me at Bournemouth University for further information on the live, work and achievements of Francijntje de Kadt to help her write a piece for the encyclopaedia. Two months ago Eva Moraal (2015) published her very nice contribution on Francijntje de Kadt.

So what started as a small historical study as an introduction chapter of a PhD thesis in Medical Sociology ended up with a ‘forgotten’ national midwifery leader having a street named after her in the town she spent most of her working live and her own entry in the encyclopaedia, Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland (in Dutch: Online Women’s Lexicon of the Netherlands). What is even more interesting that this otherwise chronologically logical story is based on three major co-incidents: first, spotting a footnote in commemorative book about Vlaardingen. If Francijntje de Kadt had lived and worked anywhere else in the Netherlands other than my birthplace I would not have paid much attention. Secondly, speaking to the burgomaster of Vlaardingen and having a conversation in which street names cropped up, and thirdly, Eva Moraal who just happened to walk through the Francijntje de Kadtlaan, reading the street sign, and thinking this is an historical figure who needs better recognition.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

References:

Drenth, P. (1998) 1898-1998. Honderd jaar vroedvrouwen verenigd, Bilthoven: KNOV.

Moraal, E. (2015) Kadt, Francijntje de, in: Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland. URL: http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/Kadt

van Teijlingen, E. (2002) Ondergang eerste pensioenfonds voor vroedvrouwen (in Dutch: Decline of the first pension fund for midwives), Tijdschrift voor Verloskundigen (in Dutch: Journal for Midwives), 27(12): 684.

van Teijlingen, E.R. (2003a) Berichten – Francijntje de Kadt (1858-1929), Tijdschrift voor Verloskundigen (in Dutch: Journal for Midwives), 28(12): 630-633.

van Teijlingen, E.R. (2003b) Francijntje de Kadt (1858-1929). Vroedvrouw te Vlaardingen en eerste voorzitter van de Nederlandsche vroedvrouwenvereeniging, Tijd-schrift (in Dutch: Time-Magazine) 88: 14-23.

Committee inquiries: open calls for evidence

Below is a list of committee inquiries with current open calls for evidence. Please contact Emma Bambury-Whitton if you would like to discuss submitting evidence.

 

Commons Select Committee inquiries

 

Lords Select Committee inquiries

 

Joint Committee inquiries

 

Public Bill Committees

 

HE Policy Update

Monday

Higher Education Academy

The HEA has withdrawn its current plans to significantly increase its subscription fees after they were rejected by vice-chancellors. HEA halts plan to hike university subscription fees (THE).

Tuesday

Employment

According to the latest Graduate Market Trends report, employment rate for master’s students has significantly risen for the first time since the recession. Graduate jobs outlook improves for those with a master’s (THE).

Wednesday

Inequality

Former York Chancellor has said that leading universities should lower entry requirements for students from poor backgrounds. Greg Dyke – ‘total cop-out’ to blame access inequality on schools (THE).

Thursday

Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn is still keen that his goal to scrap tuition fees will become Labour Party policy, but acknowledges that it will take “serious debate within the party to achieve” and that he is “not a dictator” in an interview with the THE. Jeremy Corbyn still wants to scrap fees but is no ‘dictator’ (THE).

New Guidance

Following on from the Prime Minister’s announcement of a new requirement for universities to routinely publish data on the backgrounds of their applicants, new guidance has been issued to the Director of Fair Access (DFA) outlining the priorities for widening access and success for disadvantaged students. You can view details of the guidance here.

Degree Apprenticeships

Sajid Javid, the Business Secretary, has called on all universities to provide degree apprenticeships to raise the quality of what is available Russell Group should introduce degree apprenticeships, says business secretary (Research Professional).

Vice-Chancellor Salary

The University and College Union used Freedom of Information requests to reveal vice-chancellor’s pay packages and expenses. University bosses’ pay ‘inflation-busting’ (BBC News).

Friday

Ucas

Ucas has said that it is in talks to open up access to more of its data, after the admissions service was branded a “barrier” to gathering better information on disadvantaged students by the president of Universities UK. Ucas a ‘barrier’ to better data on access, says UUK president (THE).  

Student Loans

As part of the new strategy designed to help recoup more of the £457 million portion of the UK student loan book that is held by non-paying or “unverified” borrowers who live overseas, the UK and Australian governments are set to share data on expatriate graduates to improve student debt collection. UK and Australia set to collaborate on student loan repayment (THE).

Gender Pay Gap

Companies with over 250 employees will be forced to reveal their pay gap under new plans. Firms forced to reveal gender pay gap (BBC News).

Latest Funding Opportunities

Funding opportunities

money

The following is a snap-shot of funding opportunities that have been announced. Please follow the links for more information:

Royal Society of Chemistry

Emerging Technologies Competition

Our Emerging Technologies Competition aims to accelerate the commercialisation of innovative technologies in the following areas:

  • Health & wellbeing
  • Energy & environment
  • Food & water
  • Materials

The competition is free to enter and open to small companies, universities, and research institutions, who can apply using our online application form.

Maximum Award: £20,000 Deadline: 14 March 2016

Outreach Fund

Our Outreach Fund provides financial support to individuals and organisations in order to enable them to run chemistry-based events and activities for public audiences.

Maximum Award: £25,000 Deadline: 29 April 2016

Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council

Large-area Electronics Pathfinder

The EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Large-Area Electronics (LAE) is seeking proposals from academic and postdoctoral research staff at UK universities and associated research institutions for short pathfinder projects with the following objectives:

  • To demonstrate novel approaches to tackling critical manufacturing problems
  • To promote technology transfer to and collaboration with industry
  • To pump prime new research collaborations and facilitate larger scale collaborative projects.

Maximum Award: £40,000 Deadline: 31 March 2016

 Manufacturing the Future

The EPSRC Manufacturing the Future challenge theme invites investigator-led proposals which address key research challenges facing manufacturing in the UK today and in the future. First grants as well as standard research proposals are invited. All proposals will be assessed in accordance with standard EPSRC procedure and prioritised within the most appropriate capability theme panel (i.e. Engineering, ICT, Physical Sciences or Mathematics).

Maximum award: Total budget available – £5 million Deadline: Open, next batching date 31 August 2016

Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board

Management for Soil Biology & Soil Health – Research Partnerships

AHDB, in collaboration with the British Beet Research Organisation (BBRO), is inviting researchers to form a collaborative Research Partnership, which will be responsible for devising and implementing a new programme of research and knowledge exchange projects to address challenges identified for the UK agricultural and horticultural industries on the call theme “Management for Soil Biology and Soil Health”.

Maximum Award: £200,000 Deadline: 28 April 2016

Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council

Flexible Interchange Programme

Our FLexible Interchange Programme (FLIP) supports the movement of people from one environment to a different one to exchange knowledge/technology/skills, developing bioscience research/researchers and addressing our strategic priorities.

Maximum Award: £120,000 Deadline: 17 August 2016

British Ecological Society

Research Grants

These grants support scientific ecological research where there are limited alternative sources of funding. Small projects can be awarded up to £5,000 and early career ecologists can apply for funding up to £20,000.

Maximum Award: As above Deadline: 21 March 2016

British Society of Soil Science

Field Equipment Grant

This grant is designed to enable institutions to buy field equipment to aid in the instruction and understanding of soil science.

Maximum Award: £1000 Deadline: 1 April 2016

Burdett Trust for Nursing

Men’s Health & Emergent Longer-term Conditions

The Trustees are interested in supporting nurse-led projects that will help to define proactive strategies and interventions that promote better self-care and reverse the negative impact that undetected and untreated men’s longer-term health challenges may impart.

Maximum Award: Various Deadline: 2 April 2016

If you are interested in submitting to any of the above calls you must contact your  RKEO Funding Development Officer with adequate notice before the deadline.

For more funding opportunities that are most relevant to you, you can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in  RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

Win £50 by testing your memory or dart throwing skills!

The centre for sport and event research is running two studies looking at performance of dart throwing or working memory in competitive  environments. From the 15th to the 19th of February the research team is running an exclusive research week where these studies will run all day every day! So why not sign yourself up and have a go! The only inclusion criteria is that you are actively competing in sport.

If you are interested please contact Emma Mosley: emma.mosley@bournemouth.ac.uk. 

Reminder: Undergraduate Research Assistantships – academic applications live

Funding opportunities, Fusion Investment Fund, student research

A reminder to staff that applications for the Undergraduate Research Assistantships (URA) programme are live.  The closing date for applications is 21st February.

The programme is funded by the Fusion Investment Fund and aims to support undergraduates to undertake paid work under the guidance of an experienced academic in a research position that is directly related to their career path and/or academic discipline.

The summer programme is for students to work full-time (37.5 hours per week) for six weeks over the summer. This programme will have the capacity for approximately 20 placements.

Further information of the URA programme as a whole can be found here.

To apply for a summer URA, please complete the following application form.

If you have any questions relating to the programme, please contact Rachel Clarke, KE Adviser (KTP) on 01202 961347 or email clarker@bournemouth.ac.uk 

 

KTP Surgery – Friday 19th February

Business Engagement, Funding opportunities, Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer

The Innovate UK KTP Advisor for our region (Dorset/Hampshire) will be on campus next Friday, 19th February from 10am-12pm.

If you would like to make an appointment with Stephen to talk through any KTP ideas/potential projects or existing KTP, please contact Rachel Clarke, KE Advisor (KTP) on 61347 or email clarker@bournemouth.ac.uk.  Each appointment will be 20 minutes long.

If you miss this surgery, the next one is scheduled for Friday 18th March – 10am-12pm.

KTP@40-block-logo-white

NHS England call for 2016 Healthcare Science Award nominations

Are you and your team working on the cutting-edge science that is delivering the NHS of the future? Have you created an award winning health device or introduced a new innovation that benefits  patients and radically changes diagnosis or management?  NHS England are calling on the healthcare science community to put forward nominations for this year’s annual Healthcare Science Awards.

The awards, now in their 10th year, will be held on 29 February and 1 March as part of the annual healthcare science conference hosted by NHS Chief Scientific Officer for England, Professor Sue Hill OBE.  This year there are seven categories including:

 

  • Healthcare Scientist of the Year;
  • Healthcare science Rising Stars; (Life Sciences, Physiological, Medical Physics & Clinical Engineering, Bioinformatics) •Innovation in Scientific Services; •Improving Quality and Efficiency through Workforce Transformation; •STEM Engagement; •Healthcare Science Provider Organisation; and •Healthcare Science Patient and Public Participation.

 

Winners last year included Angela Douglas from Liverpool Women’s Hospital – awarded the Healthcare Scientist of the year – for the impact she has made on NHS Genetics over 35 years at a local, national and profession-wide basis; Professor Art Tucker – celebrated in the Service Innovation category for novel medical devices including one for DVT prevention.

The annual schools science conference and website created by the Science4U organising committee at Great Ormond Street secured the Ambassador of the Year category for the positive impact it has had on year 9-11 students, with many from less academic backgrounds. That conference now involves over 100 scientists and catered for 270 students and teachers last year.

The winners will be announced at an event in central London. Professor Sue Hill OBE, NHS Chief Scientific Officer for England, said: “The NHS Constitution makes it clear that a central principle of the health service is that it ‘operates at the limits of science.’ These awards showcase the incredible contribution healthcare scientists make to patients’ health care and it is only right to celebrate the talent and achievements of the NHS.

“We are keen to capture and highlight the world-leading science that is going on in services up and down the country and are urging people to get their nominations in by 17 February.

“These awards are a key highlight of the annual Chief Scientific Officer’s conference and nominations are invited from individuals, groups and teams of healthcare scientists from across the profession who have made an exceptional contribution.”

Details of the categories, entry forms and guidance on nomination is available on the NHS Networks website. Completed nomination forms should be returned to england.cso@nhs.net no later than 17 February.

The Health Service Journal is supporting this year’s awards.

More details of last year’s winners and finalists can be found on the NHS Networks website.

Lightning Talks at Cafe Scientifique Bournemouth- Interested in presenting?

Cafe Sci runs every first Tuesday of the Month from 7.30pm – 9pm and takes place at Cafe Boscanova in Boscombe.DSC_7906

You can find out more about Cafe Sci here: https://cafescibournemouth.wordpress.com/

We are looking for BU Academics, Researchers, PGR students and URA students to present a Lightning Talk on their Research as part of Cafe Scientifique on Tuesday 5th April.

What is a Lightning Talk; In essence it is a short, to the point talk on a particular subject.

If you are interested in taking part in this event and sharing your research in an enganing and lively manner then please contact Rhyannan Hurst in RKEO on 61511

 

The use of technology to provide physical interaction experiences for cognitively able young people who have complex physical disabilities

PG research, staff profile pages

We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Creative Technology Research Centre.

 

Title: The use of technology to provide physical interaction experiences for cognitively able young people who have complex physical disabilities

ShivaSpeaker: Mark Moseley (a post graduate researcher from the Centre for Digital Entertainment (CDE) based in the Faculty of Media and Communication)

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 17th February 2016

Room: P302 LT, Poole House, Talbot Campus

 

Abstract:

Young people who have severe physical disabilities and good cognition may face many barriers to learning, communication, personal development, physical interaction and play experiences. Physical interaction and play are known to be important components of child development, but this group currently has few suitable ways in which to achieve this.

 

Technology can help to facilitate such experiences. This research aims to develop a technology-based tool to provide this group with the potential for physical interaction and physical play, in order to develop their knowledge of spatial concepts. This tool will utilise eye-gaze technology, robotics and haptic feedback (artificial sensation).

 

This presentation will explain the rationale behind this research as well as the aims and approach used in the development of a proposed tool.

 

 

We hope to see you there.

 

New taskforce launched to combat fraud across the UK

Dr Lee-Ann Fenge – Deputy Director NCPQSW
lfenge@bournemouth.ac.uk

The Home Office is setting up a new taskforce to combat financial fraud which will include banks, the police and government officials http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35536322

This is a response to the growing recognition that financial fraud is undermining business and the wider economy. There has been a growth in particular types of financial fraud in the last year including online banking fraud which rose by 48% in 2014. Another growth area for fraud has been the CEO or ‘bogus boss’ fraud, where staff are instructed to transfer money for a specific reason out of a company account, believing the instruction to come from a senior member of staff. Although the development of a national taskforce is positive and to be welcomed, the emphasis of this taskforce appears to be on financial fraud affecting business, and the risk is that the impact of financial scams which affect the general public might get overlooked.

Financial scams and in particular mass marketing fraud is a growing problem and can affect anyone. These types of financial scams are often targeted at older people and vulnerable groups, and the risk of becoming a victim of fraud can increase if the individual is lonely or socially isolated. The National Scams Team have identified that victims of scam mail have an average age of 74 and have typically lost more than £1,000 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34489206

Victims of mass marketing type fraud are often placed on so-called “suckers lists” and their details are then sold on to other fraudsters, increasing their risk of becoming a victim of fraud again. Those who become victims of mass marketing fraud often do not report it and therefore the true scale of the problem is unknown. However scam involvement can cause long lasting damage to an individual’s health and well-being.

Lee-ann blogsmaller

The NCPQSW is undertaking research with the National Scams Team into the problems posed by mass marketing fraud, and in particular ways of protecting those most at risk. The Care Act (2014) has recognised the risks posed by financial abuse/crime on individuals and places a statutory responsibility on local authorities to take a lead in safeguarding those at risk. This requires collaboration from key agencies involved in identifying and protecting victims of financial scams, including the police, trading standards, the financial sector, local authorities and health care.

We believe it is important that certain groups are recognised as being at increased risk of scam involvement, and those with dementia find it difficult to understand risk and apply caution to decision making due to their cognitive deficits and reduced financial capability. This makes people with dementia at increased risk of responding to scams. Therefore banks and other financial institutions should have a ‘duty to care’ for those with cognitive impairments who may make an ‘unwise decision’ a result of their cognitive state rather than simply an unwise decision.

If you want to find out more about the work of the NCPQSW please visit our website http://www.ncpqsw.com/

Publications

Olivier, S., Burls, T., Fenge, L., Brown, K. (2015) “Winning and losing”: vulnerability to mass marketing fraud, The Journal of Adult Protection, 17:6, 360 – 370.

Olivier, S., Burls, T., Fenge, L., Brown, K. (in press) Safeguarding Adults and Mass Marketing Fraud – perspectives from the Police, Trading Standards and the Voluntary Sector, Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law.