MomConnect is an mHealth initiative giving pregnant women information via SMS. We report on an analysis of the compliments and especially complaints component of the feedback. We scrutinised the electronic databases containing information on the first seventeen months of operation of MomConnect. During this time, 583,929 pregnant women were registered on MomConnect, representing approximately 46 per cent of pregnant women booking their pregnancy in the public sector in South Africa. These women gave feedback on services received: 4173 compliments and 690 complaints. Nearly three quarters (74 per cent) of all complaints were resolved. The complaints were classified into those related to health services (29 per cent), staff (22 per cent), health systems (42 per cent) and other (6 per cent). These complaints were fed back to managers in the health facilities. This has resulted in improvements in the quality of services, e.g. decreased drug stock-outs and change of behaviour of some health workers.
An examination of the factors associated with the halving in the number of custodial sentences made on male juveniles since 1981. The paper discusses the reduction in the general population and the numbers being sentenced, the role of new legislation and changes in sentencing practice brought about by disillusionment with custody, systemic intervention by welfare agencies and the injection of resources into community based alternatives to custody by the DHSS IT Initiative.
New Labour’s youth justice reforms have left progressives disappointed by a failure to take more radical steps to raise the age of criminal responsibility and phase out penal custody. This paper argues that the basic punitive orientation governing youth justice policy was established in the early 1990s, in the wake of concern about persistent juvenile offenders and the high-profile James Bulger case. The punitive orientation of policy is apparently supported by public opinion, or at least the perception of public opinion held by policy makers. The paper summarises what is known about public attitudes to adult and juvenile offenders and suggests a strategy to increase understanding and raise the level of debate, which are prerequisites for any fundamental change in policy orientation.
This article analyses lessons from a range of initiatives aimed at increasing public and sentencers' confidence in community sentences over the last five years. In particular it addresses the question of what more could be done to boost confidence in a way which contributes more directly to the replacement of short terms of imprisonment by community sentences.
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