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This study aims to critically examine the effects of COVID-19 social discourses and policy decisions specifically on older adult volunteers in the UK, comparing the responses and their effects in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, providing perspectives on effects of policy changes designed to reduce risk of infection as a result of COVID-19, specifically on volunteer involvement of and for older adults, and understand, from the perspectives of volunteer managers, how COVID-19 restrictions had impacted older people’s volunteering and situating this within statutory public health policies.

The study uses a critical discourse approach to explore, compare and contrast accounts of volunteering of and for older people in policy, and then compare the discourses within policy documents with the discourses in personal accounts of volunteering in health and social care settings in the four nations of the UK. This paper is co-produced in collaboration with co-authors who have direct experience with volunteer involvement responses and their impact on older people.

The prevailing overall policy approach during the pandemic was that risk of morbidity and mortality to older people was too high to permit them to participate in volunteering activities. Disenfranchising of older people, as exemplified in volunteer involvement, was remarkably uniform across the four nations of the UK. However, the authors find that despite, rather than because of policy changes, older volunteers, as part of, or with the help of, volunteer involving organisations, are taking time to think and to reconsider their involvement and are renewing their volunteer involvement with associated health benefits.

Working with participants as co-authors helps to ensure the credibility of results in that there was agreement in the themes identified and the conclusions. A limitation of this study lies in the sampling method, as a convenience sample was used and there is only representation from one organisation in each of the four nations.

The paper combines existing knowledge about volunteer involvement of and for older adults.

What will be the effect of the reforms now being introduced in college government? Michael Locke, Research Associate in College Government, Centre for Institutional Studies, North East London Polytechnic, examines the reforms and their history.

Other articles in this section have called for machinery to coordinate the polys and the ‘other colleges’, but within the FE system there is already such machinery. Mr Locke, Research Associate in the Centre for Institutional Studies at North East London Polytechnic, reports why the polys say the system is failing them.

Where does the power lie? Michael Locke continues his discussion of college government

Michael Locke compares theory with practice.

Michael Locke examines the effect of Circular 7/70 on college government.

Michael Locke describes a breakthrough in management education.

The unemployment situation has prompted the Department of Employment to promote the value of retraining for the redundant. Incentives have been improved both for the would‐be worker to learn new skills and for the employer to make fuller use of training capacity. Facilities for retraining are to be increased by the building of new government training centres and by an effort to utilize better the existing ones. Colleges of further education are being urged to rally to the cause by providing facilities for retraining. To do so represents a new departure for the colleges and one which, although the push is on now because of the present crisis, is part of a longer term innovation in their work. The colleges are being asked to take on lower level practical training so that the government training centres can continue to be geared to retraining and refreshing skilled crafts. These courses will operate as part of the Government Vocational Training Scheme.

TWO Government reports in one week—one at first unobtainable because of a union dispute, the other a vast opus of three volumes, with three separate volumes of maps—this was the fate of librarians in Britain during the second week of June 1969. So long to wait for these reports of Dainton and Maud, then so much to read.

The aftermath of the electronics revolution and the probable continuation of a ‘tight’ financial climate; in particular the effects on libraries dealing with biological information and material. Important trends in biological research and their repercussions on library/information services are discussed. The increasingly interdisciplinary nature of many biological topics, e.g. language, the brain, acid rain, and the different clientele this brings to the biology library staff.