text:
Intel 14th generation: architecture, release window and what we want to see
Reports of an Intel 14th gen CPU suggest that the company is looking to extend its performance lead
Jackie Thomas
(Credit: Jackie Thomas / The Shortcut)
➡ The Shortcut Skinny: Intel 14th gen
😍 Intel next-gen chips are ready for manufacturing
🤔 Intel's current processors only came out in October 2022
🏆 AMD needs to catch up
Intel already has the best CPU for gaming, but it looks like the new Intel 14th Generation CPUs could be on their way within the next few months.
Intel has released a new roadmap confirming that the Intel 4 manufacturing process behind its upcoming Meteor Lake processors is "Manufacturing Ready", according to a report from PCWorld. The updated roadmap also suggests that the Intel 15th gen Arrow Lake CPUs won't be released until early 2024.
So, it's still not crystal clear when new Intel 14th gen processors will be available to purchase, but given that the Intel Core i9-13900K landed in the best gaming PCs just a couple of months ago, it's surprising that Intel is already moving to release its next-generation processors.
What is a graphics card?
Contrary to some news reports, the new Intel 4 chip wasn't at CES 2023, but it's likely we'll hear something about the new 14th gen chip, including an actual release date and perhaps a clue of what to expect from Intel Core i9-14900K. However, new rumors have emerged on the desktop processors that may point to a separate release for laptops and desktops.
The Shortcut is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Is the Intel 14th-gen release date so soon?
Intel manufactures our top two CPU recommendations right now, outpacing AMD, according to our reviews and in-depth testing. Our Intel Core i9-13900KS review demonstrates how Intel has reset the CPU playing field and is taking the lead over AMD and running with it.
But it's not like AMD is sitting on its hands. From what we've heard about the company's next-generation Zen 5 architecture, we're expecting AMD to change its outlook on a hybrid chip architecture, according to known components leaker RedGamingTech.
You see, what pushed Intel's 12th-generation Alder Lake processors, and subsequently its 13th-generation Raptor Lake processors, was Intel's move to a hybrid chip architecture. What this shift means is that instead of every CPU core being the same, these processors use slower "efficient" cores to handle background tasks while simultaneously using more powerful "performance cores" to push through more demanding tasks like content creation and gaming.
If you ask me, the reason AMD fell behind Intel with its Ryzen 7000 processors was how AMD hand-waved away hybrid chips and stuck to its guns with traditional CPU design. With rumors that AMD will backpedal on this approach, Intel may want to get ahead of the action with its 14th-generation processors.
We'll just have to wait and see what both companies do in the coming year. Either way, the CPU battleground is going to continue heating up from the look of things.
Intel 14th gen specs: two architectures?
Even though we haven't seen concrete news reports about Intel 14th gen specs, there are hints that it may not end up being all-new architecture at all like some expect. Yes, it was assumed that these new Intel CPUs would be based off of the Meteor Lake architecture, but it may actually just be for laptops, according to a report from Hardware Times.
This is supposedly because Intel is planning to shave down the performance cores in Meteor Lake to further boost battery life and efficiency, and would likely require an all-new socket to slot it into one of the best gaming PCs.
Instead, we're hearing rumors that Intel 14th-generation processors are going to be a refresh of Raptor Lake, the architecture behind the current 13th-generation desktop processors. This wouldn't be the first time this has happened either – most notably the well-received Intel Core i9-9900K was based on a refresh of Coffee Lake, Intel's 8th-gen Core architecture. This all comes from leaks reported by HotHardware, though, so as always take it with a grain of salt until we hear official word from Intel.
Either way, Intel's 13th-generation Raptor Lake processors are extremely fast, so it wouldn't really be a huge deal if the Intel 4 manufacturing process takes another year to make it into an actual CPU on store shelves.
Intel 14th-generation CPUs: what we want to see
No matter which architecture Intel decides to go with for the 14th-generation desktop processors, I want to see the company really push performance forward. And I know that Alder Lake and now Raptor Lake have done that – especially after my Core i9-13900KS review, but Intel needs to keep running with its lead.
Intel has grown complacent with its processors before, clinging desperately to its "best CPU for gaming" crown while Ryzen was constantly blowing Intel Core chips out of the water in literally every other workload – and eventually gaming.
Those days seem to be over for Intel, with the Intel Core i9-13900K not only being the best CPU for gaming, but it's kind of the best CPU on the market period. Intel has proven that its hybrid chip design is the future, and I'm sure AMD will be catching on eventually.
Whatever the Intel Core i9-14900K looks like later this year, I hope it's incredible.


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#ifndef CCE_CONFIGURATION_APPLIER_SERVICEDEPENDENCY_HH
#define CCE_CONFIGURATION_APPLIER_SERVICEDEPENDENCY_HH

#include <list>
#include <set>
#include <string>
#include "com/centreon/engine/namespace.hh"

CCE_BEGIN()

namespace configuration {
// Forward declarations.
class servicedependency;
class state;

namespace applier {
class servicedependency {
 public:
  servicedependency();
  servicedependency(servicedependency const& right) = delete;
  ~servicedependency() throw();
  servicedependency& operator=(servicedependency const& right) = delete;
  void add_object(configuration::servicedependency const& obj);
  void expand_objects(configuration::state& s);
  void modify_object(configuration::servicedependency const& obj);
  void remove_object(configuration::servicedependency const& obj);
  void resolve_object(configuration::servicedependency const& obj);

 private:
  void _expand_services(
      std::list<std::string> const& hst,
      std::list<std::string> const& hg,
      std::list<std::string> const& svc,
      std::list<std::string> const& sg,
      configuration::state& s,
      std::set<std::pair<std::string, std::string> >& expanded);
};
}  // namespace applier
}  // namespace configuration

CCE_END()

#endif  // !CCE_CONFIGURATION_APPLIER_SERVICEDEPENDENCY_HH

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Factors influencing motivation and job satisfaction among supervisors of community health workers in marginalized communities in South Africa
Olagoke Akintola1,2 &
Gamuchirai Chikoko1
Management and supervision of community health workers are factors that are critical to the success of community health worker programmes. Yet few studies have explored the perspectives of supervisors in these programmes. This study explored factors influencing motivations of supervisors in community health worker programmes.
We conducted qualitative interviews with 26 programme staff providing supervision to community health workers in eight community-based organizations in marginalized communities in the greater Durban area of South Africa from July 2010 to September 2011.
Findings show that all the supervisors had previous experience working in the health or social services sectors and most started out as unpaid community health workers. Most of the participants were poor women from marginalized communities. Supervisors' activities include the management and supply of material resources, mentoring and training of community health workers, record keeping and report writing. Supervisors were motivated by intrinsic factors like making a difference and community appreciation and non-monetary incentives such as promotion to supervisory positions; acquisition of management skills; participation in capacity building and the development of programmes; and support for educational advancement like salary, bonuses and medical benefits. Hygiene factors that serve to prevent dissatisfaction are salaries and financial, medical and educational benefits attached to the supervisory position. Demotivating factors identified are patients' non-adherence to health advice and alienation from decision-making. Dissatisfiers include working in crime-prevalent communities, remuneration for community health workers (CHWs), problems with material and logistical resources, job insecurity, work-related stressors and navigating the interface between CHWs and management. While participants were dissatisfied with their low remuneration, they were not demotivated but continued to be motivated by intrinsic factors. Our findings suggest that CHWs' quest for remuneration and a career path continues even after they assume supervisory positions. Supervisors continue to be motivated to work in mid-level positions within the health and social services sectors.
Global efforts to develop and increase the sustainability of CHW programmes will benefit immensely from insights gained from an exploration of supervisors' perspectives. Further, national CHW programmes should be conceptualized with the dual purpose of building the capacity of CHWs to strengthen health systems and reducing unemployment especially in marginalized communities with high unemployment and low-skilled labour force.
Primary health care (PHC) is a philosophy and key strategy for achieving universal access to health care [1]. In many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the adoption of the PHC approach has been characterized by the use of community health workers (CHWs). CHWs typically receive basic health training and provide health and social services in the communities where they live [2]. Globally, there has been a renewed interest in the use of CHW due to health worker shortages, the burden of HIV and AIDS on the health systems and the need to achieve the millennium development goals particularly in LMICs [2, 3]. CHW programmes have been shown to be effective in improving health outcomes particularly among marginalized populations in LMICs [4, 5].
In South Africa, most CHWs are recruited and trained by community-based organizations (CBOs), many of whom are funded by government agencies [2, 6–8]. They help in preventative activities and in the delivery of health services such as maternal and child health services, home-based care for people living with AIDS and chronic illnesses, antiretroviral therapy and TB treatment [2, 3]. CHWs also help in addressing the social determinants of health such as poverty, housing, food and education [8, 9].
CHWs working in CBOs in South Africa are managed and supervised by programme staff that include project managers, coordinators, facilitators and nurses [10]. Unlike CHWs who sometimes receive stipends or work without remuneration, supervisors working in CBOs are usually paid salaries [10]. Currently, the South African Department of Health (DOH) is piloting a reform of the PHC system. A key element of this reform is the incorporation of CHWs into the formal health care system as part of ward-based outreach teams that will facilitate access to health care services in households in marginalized communities across the country [6, 11]. Given the central role that CBOs play in the delivery of health care services to marginalized communities, one would expect CHWs and supervisors working in CBOs to play a critical role in the new PHC initiative. However, the new PHC re-engineering policy does not make explicit what their roles will be in the new PHC initiative [9, 12].
Globally, there is a growing body of work on motivations among CHWs. Motivation is defined as 'an individual's degree of willingness to exert and maintain an effort towards an organization's goals' [13]. An important factor influencing motivation among CHWs and the sustainability of CHW programmes, as demonstrated by several studies, is the management and supervision of CHWs [14–16]. Research has found that the main factors motivating CHWs are altruism, religious and moral obligations, the prospects of paid employment in the health and social services sector, previous experience with HIV and AIDS in the family, and the wish to avoid idleness [10, 11, 17]. Studies have also identified supervision as a key factor influencing retention among CHWs [18, 19]. CHWs participating in a recent study in Mozambique indicated that they felt demotivated by the supervision provided because it was infrequent and irregular and focussed on fault finding [16].
In CBOs, supervisors work at the interface between the management of CBOs and CHWs [10, 16]. This position could enable them to gain deep insights into issues relating to CHWs, supervision and the management of CHW programmes, which could be critical to the success or failure of these programmes. One could argue, therefore, that supervisors' perspectives should be important considerations in our quest to better understand and scale-up CHW programmes. Yet, there are few studies globally that have sought to understand CHW programmes specifically from the perspective of supervisors [14, 20, 21]. One recent review of literature published in 2015 found that only one article was published on supervision post-2010 [21]. We therefore know very little about the perspectives of supervisors: their characteristics, what their work entails and the factors that influence motivation and job satisfaction among them.
Most of the few available studies focus on supervision within the context of national primary health care programmes [14, 20] while neglecting supervision in CBOs. Yet CBOs manage the majority of CHW programmes globally [2, 8]. If CHW programmes are to provide adequate management and supervision of CHWs, it is critical that they are able to attract, satisfy and retain their supervisors. It is therefore imperative to understand the perspectives of supervisors in CHW programmes.
An understanding of factors influencing motivation among supervisors could help inform health policy and organizational interventions aimed at improving satisfaction and retention of supervisors as well as the effectiveness and sustainability of CHW programmes. Yet little is known about job satisfaction and motivation among supervisors working in CHW programmes. In this study, we sought to understand the factors influencing motivation and job satisfaction among supervisors of CHWs affiliated to CBOs in South Africa.
This study draws on Herzberg's dual-factor theory of motivations, also known as the motivation-hygiene theory [22], to help illuminate factors influencing motivation and job satisfaction among supervisors in CHW programmes in South Africa. The motivation-hygiene theory postulates that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction are not opposite ends of the same continuum but instead represent two distinct and separate continua representing two dimensions of job motivation. According to the theory, factors that motivate individuals at work are intrinsic to the work itself and rewards that flow from the performance of that work. These are factors associated with individuals' need for self- actualization and self-realization in work and include achievement, responsibility, growth or advancement, recognition, autonomy, promotion and the work itself, referred to as motivators or sometimes as satisfiers. The presence of these factors leads to job motivation, and their absence leads to demotivation but not to dissatisfaction. Herzberg and colleagues argue that the factors that lead to job dissatisfaction are extrinsic and relate not to the job itself but to the environment or context of the job. These factors are called hygiene factors or dissatisfiers. Hygiene factors include working conditions, salary, job security, company policy and administration, supervision and interpersonal relationships [22]. The presence of hygiene factors can prevent poor performance but cannot improve productivity. Only the presence of motivation factors (motivators or satisfiers) can improve productivity. It follows therefore from the motivation-hygiene theory that, in order to motivate an individual, the job itself must be challenging and be of interest to the individual doing the job.
By drawing on Herzberg's theory, the study aims to illuminate factors that motivate supervisors, thereby helping to gain insights into some of the factors influencing the sustainability of CHW programmes through the lens of supervisors. Although this theory has been critiqued for oversimplifying the relationship between motivation and satisfaction and sources of motivation and dissatisfaction [23], it remains one of the most influential theories for explaining motivation and job satisfaction globally [24] and has been applied extensively in many fields including among CHWs [25–27].
Study setting and context
This study was conducted among supervisors working in CBOs in marginalized communities in the Durban metropolis. The CBOs help fill important gaps in government services delivery by providing health care services as well as social and developmental services to the communities that have limited access to government services. These are poor communities with high unemployment rates and low skills base, where most people are dependent on government grants for income.
All CBOs provide home-based care for people living with HIV/AIDS/TB and other chronic diseases. They also provide health promotion and education, HIV counselling and testing, TB treatment adherence support, care and support for orphan and vulnerable children, day care and drop-in services, psychosocial support, feeding programmes, youth and community development initiatives, paralegal services especially for survivors of rape and support in accessing government health and social services.
Study design and participants
A qualitative research design was used in this study because of its ability to generate in-depth information about the experiences of supervisors of CHWs [28]. CBO staff providing supervision to CHWs constituted the study population because we believed that they were the most suitable to provide information about factors influencing their motivations. CBOs were selected purposively to reflect a range of CBOs working on health and social services in communities in the Durban metropolis. We had hoped to recruit equal numbers of CBOs from peri-urban and rural communities in the study area. However, we were unable to achieve this balance because there are very few rural areas in the Durban metropolis. Our sample therefore comprised one organization working in an informal settlement; the seven remaining CBOs were drawn from peri-urban communities (Table 1).
We used snowball sampling to select CBOs by first contacting two organizations that we had worked with previously who in turn referred us to other organizations in their network. The managers of the CBOs informed all the supervisors about the study and worked with the research team to arrange interview dates. We then used purposive sampling to recruit participants if they were employed in a CBO and provided direct supervision to CHWs for at least 1 year prior to the study. All of the supervisors invited to participate in the study agreed. However, four supervisors—two each from two CBOs—could not participate because they were not available during the time set for the interviews due to work commitments. A total of 26 interviews were conducted with supervisors who were available on the pre-arranged interview dates. Table 2 shows the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants.
Table 1 Participants interviewed in community-based organizations
Table 2 Profile of supervisors
Qualitative data for the study was collected with semi-structured interviews [23]. We used semi-structured interview schedules, which allowed interviewers' flexibility, to collect in-depth information. The interview schedule offered interviewers the opportunity to ask probing questions. The interview schedule was developed after an extensive review of the literature on CBOs, CHWs and supervision in primary health care as well as Herzberg's theory on motivation. Thereafter, we extracted particular themes from the literature which relates to motivation of supervisors and used them to frame open-ended questions. These questions covered the following themes: demographic information of participants, job description and factors influencing motivation.
With respect to factors influencing motivation, we used themes extracted from our review of Herzberg's theory and the literature on CHWs and CBOs in South Africa to generate a list of potential motivators and satisfiers in community-based care, which served as prompts to guide our interview. For example, we asked about participants' experiences regarding the role of the different aspects of the job such as the job itself, achievement in their supervisor position, recognition, career advancement and responsibility within the organization, in motivating (or demotivating) them and then repeated the question in relation to a list of hygiene factors that are in the environment of the job such as supervision, interpersonal relations, organizational policy, working conditions, security and status. The interviews were conducted in the participants' offices in either isiZulu or English by four interviewers (one of the authors and three other trained interviewers) who were fluent in isiZulu. Each participant was interviewed by two interviewers. The interviews were conducted from July 2010 to September 2011 and took between 35 and 65 min.
Ethical clearance was obtained from the Human Sciences Research Ethics Committee of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. In addition, all the CBOs approved of the study. Thereafter, we sought and obtained written informed consent from each participant after the interviewers provided detailed explanation about the study to each of them, assuring confidentiality and anonymity of information collected. The interviewers also obtained permission from the participants to conduct audio-recording of the interviews.
The data was transcribed verbatim, and the data in isiZulu was translated into English by two of the people who conducted the interviews and are native isiZulu speakers. We used the principles of thematic analysis to analyse the data. Two assessors (one of whom is an author: GC) conducted the analysis separately following the five steps recommended by Braun and Clarke [28]. This entailed first familiarizing themselves with the data after which they proceeded to develop codes. Next, each of the assessors developed themes from the various codes and then reviewed and named the themes [28, 29]. Once these steps were completed, the assessors compared the results of the analyses and made revisions using an iterative process. Both assessors reached consensus before each theme was named.
We conducted member checks in order to improve the quality of the data and the rigour of the analysis [30, 31]. Creswell recommended the presentation of 'polished findings' in form of themes or patterns to research participants in order to receive feedback and improve rigour when conducting member checks [30]. Following Creswell (2009), we presented the emerging themes from our analysis to two supervisors in each of the CBOs. The supervisors were nominated by the other supervisors to represent them. We scheduled meetings with the supervisor representatives where we presented the preliminary themes from our data analysis and invited comments and clarifications. The feedback from the participants was integrated into the analysis process. In order to further harmonize the analysis and minimize bias, a third assessor (also an author: OA), who did not participate in the initial analysis, reviewed all the themes, and all three assessors reached consensus after extensive discussions and revisions were made to the themes.
The results are organized into four main themes identified from the analysis of the data: Who are the supervisors? What do supervisors do? What factors influence job satisfaction and motivation among supervisors? and What factors influence job dissatisfaction and demotivation among supervisors?
Who are the supervisors in CBO-run CHW programmes?
As shown in Table 2, an overwhelming majority of the supervisors were women. The participants' ages ranged from 25 to 64 years, and their years of experience ranged from 2 to 15 years. Most of the participants worked in small CBOs with limited financial resources and therefore could not hire enough supervisors. They were therefore combining the roles of CBO managers with that of supervisors. All the supervisors had some previous experience working in the health, social or development sector (Table 3); the majority had worked for many years as CHWs in the same CBO before being promoted to a supervisory position. Others had worked in a more professional position as community development workers, nurses and social workers. One participant who worked for many years as a trained social worker with the government resigned after she started her own CBO in response to the high burden of AIDS in her community.
Table 3 Work experience of supervisors
I am a social worker by profession and responding to social welfare issues and problems in this country such as AIDS becomes unavoidable because of the high prevalence rate here in South Africa. (Manager/supervisor)
Two of them had worked as nurses in government hospitals but now working as nurse/supervisors for their CBOs. One of them initially worked as a CHW, and the CBOs provided her with financial and moral support to train as a nurse after which she was employed as a nurse with the same CBO.
CHWs are usually promoted to supervisory positions when the positions become available. The criteria used include length of service, track record of performance as CHW and a review of the assessments of their supervisors. The initial recommendation is done by current supervisors who submit the names of top performing CHWs to the CBO management. Thereafter, the CHWs are requested to apply for the position of supervisors and then go through a formal interview process to assess their suitability for the position of supervisor. There are typically many more CHWs who desire to become supervisors and meet the minimum requirements than there are positions. Therefore, only the best performing CHWs get selected after interviews, and unsuccessful candidates are requested to wait for other opportunities.
In small CBOs that did not have funding to support the salaries of supervisors, the managers of the CBOs combined the role of a project manager with that of a supervisor. Five of the managers were the founders of the CBOs and had experience in nursing, social work, community development or community health. One of the founders who trained as a nurse quit her hospital job to avoid clinical practice in a health facility choosing instead to work in a position in community-based care that afforded her less frequent contact with patients.
I actually didn't want to go and see the patients because it (trauma) stays with me, I can't stand it but wanted to help towards caring for the patients. That's why I decided to do community work instead of hospital work. (Manager/supervisor)
What is the role of supervisors in CBO-run CHW programmes?
Most of the participants have some experience working in community health. However, all the participants receive induction training after they are recruited and subsequently participate in training workshops on various topics related to their work. Most of these workshops are train-the-trainer workshops that enable them to acquire knowledge and skills essential for training, managing and overseeing the work of CHWs, keeping records and writing reports.
Supervisors' main role is to facilitate and provide oversight for the work of CHWs. Each was responsible for supervising between 10 and 25 CHWs. Supervisors make regular visits (on average 4 days a week) to the communities to provide supplies to CHWs, review their work and provide support for them. They also provide training to new CHWs and on-going training to current CHWs. Table 4 describes the full range of the activities performed by supervisors. New functions are added regularly as the CBOs develop new programmes or interventions to address the needs of the communities that they serve. The supervisors receive regular training to update their knowledge and skills in order to perform the new tasks. In addition, training is also provided to address new challenges that arise in the community that are added to their job description. The most commonly mentioned supervisory activities are medical and material supply and management, training of CHWs, mentoring and support for CHWs, record keeping, report writing and problem solving. Some of the senior supervisors (with more years of experience) help with the development of training modules while those working with larger CBOs who had many years of experience conduct training sessions for CHWs in smaller CBOs for a fee.
Table 4 Supervisory activities performed by participants
Although the CBOs stated that they needed nurses to work with CHWs, only the three largest organizations could afford to employ dedicated nurses. The nurses' main function is to supervise and train CHWs on how to screen and refer patients to the nurses for assessment and treatment and if necessary to make referrals to the health facilities. In the organizations that do not have nurses, the CHWs refer patients to the local clinics while in the three organizations that employ nurses, the CHWs refer patients to their supervisors who work closely with the nurse supervisors on regular rounds to households in the communities. Nonetheless, the supervisors and nurses also make special visits to deal with urgent cases or emergencies when requests are received from CHWs.
I go with home-based carers (CHWs) who have minimum medical education and training…I teach them so that from the patient's history and the signs and symptoms, they can quickly pick up what is happening and whether and where to refer. (Nurse/supervisor)
Supervisors provide mentoring and support to CHWs who need mentoring as well as assistance and support to deal with challenging situations that they encounter in their daily work. They also help provide advice and practical support in dealing with difficult patients and with general problems.
We go out and I take one of the caregivers with me and tell them that if anyone has a problem with their patient we can go and check because sometimes you find that they have difficult patients. (Manager/supervisor)
In addition, supervisors serve as intermediaries between the CHWs and the management of the CBOs by helping to solve difficult problems confronting CHWs. In cases where supervisors are unable to solve these problems, they help convey these and other grievances from the CHWs to the management. In the same manner, supervisors help convey information, instructions and messages from the management to the CHWs.
Factors influencing motivation and job satisfaction among supervisors of CHWs
Following Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory, we identified two overarching themes: factors facilitating motivation and job satisfaction and factors contributing to job demotivation and dissatisfaction among supervisors (Table 5).
Table 5 Factors influencing motivation and job satisfaction among supervisors
Factors facilitating motivation and job satisfaction
The factors identified as facilitating motivation of supervisors are discussed under two broad system level themes: community level factors and organizational level factors. Most of the factors identified were at the organizational/programme level. We did not identify any factor at the policy level.
Community level factors
We identified two motivators at the community level: deriving benefits from community work and making a difference. We did not identify any hygiene factor at the community level.
Deriving benefits from community work. Although supervisors are based at the offices of the CBOs, their work schedule require that they go to the community 4 days in a week to provide supervision to CHWs. Most of the supervisors explained that although they are based in the office, they visit the communities on a regular basis. One nurse supervisor expressed personal gratification that the community outreach component of their work afforded them the opportunity to develop rapport with patients and their families.
Am enjoying seeing patients because it's nice to be in (in the office) and out (in the community) helping. We are helping now on one to one basis unlike in hospitals, where you have this patient and tomorrow they are going to be discharged and you don't even know his/her name you just help and go. (Nurse/supervisor)
Making a difference and community appreciation. Participants felt motivated by the fact that their jobs provided them with the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of members of the community. They highlighted the various instances that their programme helped in improving the health and social condition of the community members that they serve. For supervisors, one of the measures of assessing the impact of their work on the community is the number of people whose lives are changed for the better.
The good part of this job is when you are counting people that you have helped; when you say I have helped that one and I have helped that one and people coming to you and appreciating. That's the good part about it. (Manager/supervisor)
Supervisors also felt motivated by the show of appreciation from patients and other members of the community that they serve. They indicated that many of the community members showed appreciation by thanking them and acknowledging the value of their work in helping to improve their conditions.
To see the smile on the face of that child saying thank you for the plate of food that I gave her each and every day makes me proud to say I can feed the whole world by begging from different people. (Manager/supervisor)
Organizational level factors
We identified four motivators: promotion to supervisory position, acquisition of skills, taking opportunities to develop programmes and build capacity, and opportunity to advance career. We also identified hygiene factors: incentives that come with the position of supervisor.
Promotion to supervisory position. The promotion that many of the participants receive to become supervisors serves as a motivator for them. Majority of the supervisors who started out as volunteers felt 'happy', 'blessed' or 'grateful' for the opportunity to be promoted to the position of supervisor. Furthermore, the position comes with a number of opportunities which served as hygiene factors. Supervisors were gratified that the CBOs provided these incentives which include monetary incentives that they receive in this position which they did not receive in their previous position as CHWs. These incentives vary across CBOs depending on available resources with larger and better resourced CBOs providing more incentives. Monetary incentives include monthly salaries, yearly salary increments, retirement benefits, yearly performance bonuses, salary advances to cover educational expenses, financial support, educational loans and study leave.
Acquisition of management skills and experience. In some of the larger CBOs, participants receive induction training and learn new skills when they are employed. They also receive on-going training and acquire experience on the job which the participants saw as invaluable. As stated earlier, the skills training component of the job provides on-going experience. Training is provided each time supervisors are assigned new tasks.
So it helps to work in a community like this because I have faced challenges that a social worker or a nurse has not faced. So it really helps to start in a CBO because many things happen here… I have learnt a lot… a lot. (Supervisor)
Participants were also excited about the prospects of using the skills and experience gained to secure better paying jobs in the future.
I gain experience, so that if I get a (another) job they can pay me better. (Supervisor)
Participation in the development of programmes and capacity building. Supervisors provide training to CHWs within their own organization while a few of them had the opportunity to provide training to CHWs working in smaller CBOs, and they expressed gratitude for this opportunity. Many stated that they derived personal gratification from the opportunity to contribute to capacity building for CHWs.
The work is very rewarding and it's something that I enjoy. I can finally say that I am in a job that I love to do. I love training people; I love empowering people and it is very gratifying. (Manager/supervisor)
They were also excited about the opportunity to participate in the development of new programmes to address community needs. As one participant put it: 'so yah there is always something new that keeps you excited about what you are doing'.
Educational advancement opportunities. The CBOs also provided non-monetary incentives which served as motivators for participants. These include encouragement from line managers and board members to pursue their desires for educational advancement. Some of the organizations also gave supervisors study leave for personal development which enabled them to study for diplomas and degrees in tertiary institutions on a part-time basis. In one organization, for example, some of the supervisors received leave support to study for nursing diplomas, and degrees in social work and education.
Factors contributing to demotivation and dissatisfaction
The factors identified as contributing to demotivation and dissatisfaction among supervisors are discussed under three overarching system level themes: community level factors, organizational level factors and policy level factors.
We identified only one demotivator: non-adherence to health advice, and one dissatisfier: working in communities with high crime prevalence.
Non-adherence to health advice. A majority of the participants felt frustrated and demotivated when they are not able to make a difference in their patients' lives. Some of their patients defaulted in taking their antiretroviral medication while others failed to maintain healthy lifestyles as advised. One of the nurses expressed her frustrations.
It stresses you out if you don't know what to do and whatever you are trying to do doesn't work. It stresses you a lot. Like with HIV/AIDS although you can help as far as you can you don't see any improvement. People default in treatment and though we try to help them not to default and to stick to the treatment, they don't. [Adhere to treatment] (nurse/supervisor)
Working in communities with high crime prevalence. A real source of dissatisfaction for supervisors is their work context. CBOs work in communities with high levels of crime, and a few supervisors complained about the risk of sexual violence confronting both supervisors and CHWs. They also expressed the need to be vigilant while on visits to the community. A few of the supervisors indicated that the CHWs were generally afraid to work alone. Therefore, they encourage CHWs to go on home visits in pairs to provide support to each other. Supervisors working in CBOs that provide vehicles for supervisory visits identified the risk of losing their vehicles (and their lives) to robbers while driving in the communities where there is a high incidence of crime as a dissatisfier. A few of the supervisors indicated that they had experienced attempted robberies and/or witnessed other people being injured and/or robbed of their vehicles.
We identified five dissatisfiers: remuneration for CHWs and supervisors, problems with material and logistical resources, confronting job insecurity, dealing with work-related stressors, and working at the interface of CHWs and management. We also identified one demotivator: alienation from decision-making.
Remuneration for CHWs and supervisors. CHW stipends are sometimes irregular because of administrative challenges and reduction in funding allocation in the government funding agencies. The challenges with funding also meant that not all CHWs are paid stipends. Together, these contributed to attrition among CHWs and supervisors and also made it difficult for CBOs to attract and recruit new CHWs, which in turn led to shortage of supervisors and CHWs. Supervisors felt dissatisfied with having to deal with consequences of these challenges which undermines their work. A manager of a small CBO said:
Currently we have a staff shortage, only four of us here. Some people (CHWs) leave because we do not give stipends and people only work to get money at the end of the day. At the moment we need more hands so that we can try to help the community. (Manager/supervisor)
In addition, participants indicated that they were poorly remunerated when compared with colleagues working in government agencies. This caused some dissatisfaction with their jobs but did not seem to dampen their spirits or motivation and they continued to be motivated by other intrinsic factors.
Financially, the pay is not good but I always tell myself that whatever I am doing is helping in some way, somewhere, somehow. (Supervisor)
Problems with material resources and transport. All the participants reported that they were demoralized by the shortage of food items meant for needy households. In addition, only three of the CBOs had vehicles for delivering material supplies to their beneficiaries during supervisory visits. Therefore, supervisors had to deal with transport and logistical challenges.
We don't have transport to help people; like in this organisation we need transport because we visit the patients and we use our cars. (Manager/supervisor)
Confronting job insecurity. Majority of the supervisors highlighted job insecurity as a source of dissatisfaction. The challenges with funding led to a situation where CBOs could not guarantee the job of supervisors and had to retrench some staff in order to stay afloat. All programme staffers were on 1-year contracts that are renewable subject to availability of funding. This means that when there are challenges with funding, CBOs can, and do, relieve supervisors of their jobs at the end of their contracts. These factors in turn led to job insecurity among supervisors with participants constantly living in fear of losing their jobs.
Some of our staff were retrenched which was quite sad because financially the organization could not afford to keep them.
Work-related stressors. The most common dissatisfier discussed by participants is work-related stressors. This mainly comes from work overload. Work overload is compounded by inadequate funding to hire supervisors and recruit CHWs. As a consequence, the few supervisors working in the CBOs had heavy workloads. Majority of the supervisors indicated that they sometimes felt overwhelmed with having to replace or fill in for absentee CHWs sometimes at short notice, conduct regular supervisory field visits and at the same time do a lot of administrative work. They found it daunting to combine the field visits, which they do 4 days a week, with administrative work. Additionally, managers in small CBOs reported work overload stemming from having to combine their managerial responsibilities which includes attending meetings, fundraising and overall management with the supervision of CHWs.
Sometime I have to go to Cape Town …for the whole weekend and then (the) next weekend I have to go somewhere else for a meeting. I don't have time for my five children. I go home at 4.00 pm or 5.00 pm and I'm sleeping at 2.00 am trying to do the work that is supposed to be done. (Manager/supervisor)
Navigating the interface between CHWs and management. About half of the supervisors felt demotivated by having to bear the brunt of the frustrations of the CHWs about the shortage of materials, delay in the payment of stipends, lack of remuneration and lack of advancement opportunities. At the same time, supervisors have to account for the behaviour of CHWs who sometimes undermine their work.
Some CHWs let you down, stealing or not going to work. They tell you that they are going to work but they just go to those one room houses and stay there for the whole day and they come to you and they lie to you that they visited so many houses. It's very sad. (Supervisor)
Alienation from decision-making. A major demotivating factor for some of the supervisors in three of the larger CBOs is the perceived alienation by the top management (board and manager) in decision-making. Supervisors claimed that the management make some important decisions without consulting them despite their wealth of experience. Participants argued that supervisors are better placed to provide invaluable contribution because of their first-hand experiences working in the community.
They (management) must be able to sit down with us as our superiors and involve us in decision making processes; get our input on situations because we understand the community better than they do because we work with the community on a daily basis. (Supervisor)
According to the participants, a consequence of alienation is that the management sometimes make impracticable decisions. Not only does the implementation of these decisions cause tensions between supervisors and management who resist these decisions, it also affects their relationship with CHWs and the community. One supervisor said with a sigh:
Uhmm! The challenge is with the management higher than my level. Sometimes they make some strategic decisions which are very stressful in terms of the decisions being made at that level and the implementation happening at my level. So if you don't agree with the strategies it can be very challenging. (Supervisor)
Policy level factors
We identified two hygiene factors at the policy level: shortage of resources and funding for stipends and salaries and challenges of partnering with government agencies but did not identify any motivating factor.
Shortage of resources and funding for stipends and salaries. The major problem identified at the policy level is the failure of government agencies to provide sufficient funds for the operations of CBOs. This impacted on every aspect of CBOs' operations at the organizational level. Participants complained that the shortage and irregularity of funding makes it difficult for the CBOs to meet their obligations of paying supervisor salaries and volunteer stipends on a regular basis. This also affects the ability of the organizations to provide services to their clients.
The management [CBO] is always complaining that the funding that they receive from government is not regular. Sometimes the government just cuts their funding without notice. (Supervisor)
Challenges of partnering with government agency. Participants discussed the challenges they encountered in working with the Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA): the government agency responsible for maintaining standards in education. They complained that bureaucratic delays make it difficult for them to secure approval for the curriculums that they developed for innovative training programmes in response to the needs in the community. In addition, the lack of government approval for in-house training curriculum that is not from government also makes it difficult for trainees to be accredited by government agencies. One supervisor who works as a training coordinator said:
I work with SETA and SETA is not the most supportive of institutions. They really delay the process and it's that bureaucracy and time frames that almost hampered the program at some point. (Supervisor)
We drew on Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory to illuminate specific factors that could be critical for sustaining motivation and job satisfaction among supervisors. By doing this, we hoped to facilitate a deeper understanding of intrinsic factors that influence motivation (motivators) and the extrinsic factors that influence dissatisfaction (hygiene factors) among supervisors.
Our study shows that supervisors found a number of intrinsic motivators in their work which find expression in the terms that they used to describe their work: 'meaningful', 'personally rewarding' and 'personally gratifying'. Intrinsic motivators include promotion from the position of CHW to that of supervisor, skills training and on-the-job experience, and the opportunity for personal development.
The finding that supervisors derive intrinsic motivation from being promoted to the position of supervisor provides support for the finding of previous studies among CHWs that show that the hope of acquiring skills and the need to pursue career paths within the health system are key motivations for CHWs in South Africa [10, 11, 17]. Most of the supervisors had only high school education when they enrolled as CHWs. Their work with CBOs provides opportunities for them to acquire skills and experience on the job. This together with the fact that CHWs come from marginalized communities with few opportunities for employment and income explains why acquisition of skills and the pursuit of career advancement are strong motivating factors for participants [10, 11, 17].
Yet, while supervisor positions in CBOs represent good opportunities for CHWs to learn new skills, advance their careers and earn an income, CBOs confront major funding problems that make it difficult to remunerate CHWs and support supervisor positions [7, 11]. A study among supervisors of community peer counsellors in South Africa showed that supervisors had to deal with attrition among community peer counsellors which the supervisors attributed to the low remuneration received by the CHWs [32]. Our study shows that funding problems undermine the ability of CBOs to pay for supervisor salaries and CHWs' stipends and this leads to attrition among CHWs. CBOs in this study retrenched supervisors as a result of the shortage of funds with negative consequences for the work load and emotional wellbeing of the CHWs and supervisors who remain in the CBOs. These factors, together, constitute a source of dissatisfaction for supervisors in this study.
Globally, studies among CHWs identify attrition as a major factor undermining the sustainability of CHW programmes [2, 17–19]. Recent studies on CHWs in South Africa have highlighted the link between CHW motivations and attrition, and a number of studies have sought to gain deeper and more nuanced understanding of CHW motivations and factors influencing sustained volunteer CHW motivations in order to better inform policies intended to address the problem of CHW attrition [11, 17]. Dageid and colleagues argue that an important motivation for sustained volunteering among CHWs is the hope to secure a more stable position in the health and social services sectors and that this motivation develops over time as CHWs acquire skills and experience which leads to a desire for professional acknowledgement, job benefits and paid employment.
The findings of our study on supervisors support the findings of previous studies exploring the motivation of CHWs [2, 11, 15, 17, 19]. It demonstrates that many of our study participants were promoted from CHWs to supervisor positions, and this fulfils their motivations to secure paid jobs. However, the precarious funding situation confronting CBOs leads to job insecurity for supervisors, a factor that causes dissatisfaction. This, among other factors, makes it difficult for supervisors to 'rest on their oars'. It therefore makes sense that supervisors continue to seek for paths to jobs that are more regular and more secure in the health and social services sectors [9, 11]. Our finding shows that the quest for career advancement among CHWs does not stop with promotion to paid supervisor positions in their organizations but supervisors also continue to be motivated to acquire higher-level skills to become nurses, social workers, community developers or some other high-skilled professional in the health and social services sectors. As our study demonstrates, the position that supervisors occupy provides them with the platform to, in addition to acquiring skills and experience, pursue opportunities for further training and professional qualification that improve their skills and employability in more stable positions in the health sector.
Some authors have argued that the context of poverty and unemployment in which many community care worker programmes are situated influences CHW motivations [11, 17]. We argue that it is reasonable for supervisors who have limited skills, come from scarce resource settings and are acutely aware of the precarious funding situation confronting CBOs to want to pursue a career path which offers job stability and security in the health and social services sectors. The desire for secured positions among supervisors who participated in this study finds expression in their pursuit of further education in nursing, social work and education fields.
Following Herzberg's theory, CHW programmes should offer opportunities for training and promotion of CHWs to the position of supervisors; this could provide a platform for empowering women from marginalized communities—who constitute the majority of CHWs offering unpaid labour—with skilled jobs [11, 17] over the medium to long term. A failure to provide opportunities for CHWs to satisfy this motivation will not only lead to demotivation and low performance and productivity but could also lead to attrition among CHWs [22, 23]. Our findings support growing calls for health policy-makers to create career paths for CHWs [9, 11, 17, 33]. In addition, we argue that primary health care policy should not only be limited to the creation of career paths that enable CHWs to be promoted to the position of CHW supervisor but should also provide an opportunity for supervisors to move up to mid-level health care cadres such as nurses and auxiliary social workers [34].
Supervisors in previous studies reported insufficient skills training to handle supervisory tasks [16, 21, 32]. Our study, on the other hand, showed that supervisors were motivated by the supervisory skills received. Participants did not mention any deficiency in training which one could interpret to mean that they were satisfied with the training provided to function in the position of supervisors. On the other hand, it could be because the focus of our questions was on factors influencing motivation and job satisfaction and not specifically on their experiences of skills training and practice. Research focusing on supervisors' experiences relating to their training and practice will be an invaluable addition to the literature on supervisors in CHW programmes.
The opportunity to earn an income is a hygiene factor that helped to prevent dissatisfaction among supervisors. Nonetheless, supervisors were dissatisfied with their low income but appeared determined to not allow it to demotivate them. Instead, supervisors kept their focus on intrinsic factors - making a difference, opportunities for development of managerial skills, building capacity of CHWs and career advancement opportunities - that enabled them to stay motivated. Thus, as discussed earlier, the opportunity for career advancement and hopes of a better job were strong motivations for not quitting despite their low remuneration. This finding supports Herzberg's theory, which argues that the absence of hygiene factors (presence of dissatisfiers) does not lead to demotivation but to dissatisfaction [22] and suggests the need for policy-makers to not only address the remuneration of supervisors but to also provide opportunities for them to satisfy their motivations for educational and career advancement.
Previous studies have identified issues with supplies and transport as major problems confronting CHW programmes globally [9, 10, 15, 32, 35]. Supervisors in our study identified challenges with availability of material supplies as well as transportation and related logistical problems as major sources of dissatisfaction. Our findings have important implications for existing CBO-run CHW programmes as well as countries intending to develop national CHW programmes. Both these models require technical and financial resources in order to be sustainable.
A study among supervisors in Mozambique found that supervisors found it difficult to solve issues relating to material supplies and remuneration because of a lack of administrative power [16]. Our finding shows that supervisors find it challenging working at the nexus of CHWs and management. They felt demotivated by having to deal with the shortage of materials and unfavourable work conditions of the CHWs and to advocate for CHWs at the management level. At the same time, supervisors had to oversee the implementation of CBOs' policies and manage CHWs who may sometimes undermine their work. On the one hand, CHWs implement management decisions at the grassroots level by supervising CHWs who provide health and social services in the communities. On the other hand, they help solve problems confronting CHWs and convey CHWs' concerns as well as that of patients and service users to management. Therefore, supervisors occupy a unique and critical position within CBOs as they are able to provide first-hand assessment of the delivery of health care services to management and at the same time gain unique insights into CHWs experiences, challenges and concerns [16]. Supervisors are therefore an indispensable bridge between policy-makers, programme planners and management on the one hand and the CHWs and communities on the other.
Given these considerations and the link between supervision, retention, performance and productivity of CHWs, and sustainability of CHW programmes [16, 20, 21, 35], we call on policy-makers and researchers to pay particular attention to understanding perspectives of supervisors in order to gain better insights into factors related to CHWs, supervisors and CBO management that could inform the development and sustainability of national CHW programmes. In addition, CHW programmes could benefit immensely by drawing on supervisors' insights and offering them greater managerial responsibilities that allow them to participate in programme development and contribute to decision-making at the management level. These measures could in turn help improve the quality of decision-making, work relations, and the development of managerial skills, experience and competencies among supervisors. All these interventions could have positive knock-on effects on supervisor motivations and insights from supervisors could help inform policy and programmes aimed at improving retention of CHWs as well as the sustainability of CHW programmes [20].
Our findings have implications for the global drive to scale-up CHW programmes and to strengthen health systems. Given the potential value of supervisors, it seems reasonable for national CHW programmes to budget for the funding of supervisor positions. Yet the scaling-up of CHW programmes in some African countries has been fraught with funding problems. In Kenya, for example, a policy decision to remunerate CHWs had to be scaled back because of insufficient funding [36]. And in South Africa, government's efforts to remunerate CHWs and create career paths executed through a public works programme had mixed success [34, 37], (Parenzee and Budlender: South Africa's expanded public works programme: exploratory research for the social sector, unpublished). While the programme provided funding to CBOs to remunerate a large number of CHWs, an even larger number of CHWs did not have the opportunity to participate in the programme [33, 34], (Fridman, Behngu, Mothibe, Reynolds & Mafuleka: Executive Summary: scaling up the EPWP social cluster, unpublished). Moreover, the programme encountered challenges in building the capacity of CHW to facilitate skills acquisition to pursue career paths as mid-level skilled health care workers because of insufficient trainers [33, 34, 37], (Parenzee and Budlender: South Africa's expanded public works programme: exploratory research for the social sector, unpublished).
The South African PHC re-engineering model provides for outreach teams operating from clinics at the ward level. Each team comprises CHWs, environmental health practitioners and health promoters who provide outreach services to communities under the supervision of a professional nurse. Supervisors working in CBOs could play a central role in this PHC initiative. Yet, the PHC re-engineering policy does not make explicit, the role of CBOs in the new PHC outreach model [6, 9, 12] much less that of supervisors affiliated to CBOs. It therefore seems expedient for policy-makers to work with other stakeholders to explore how to make use of the skills of supervisors who are affiliated to the numerous CBOs working in marginalized communities across the country in the new PHC initiative. This should involve making use of supervisors' skills at the community (grassroots) level through innovative formalized collaborative models.
Further, researchers have expressed concern that the new PHC initiative might affect the funding of CBOs negatively. i.e. there is concern that government funding agencies as well as donor agencies who provide funding support to governments in order for them to support CBOs may channel their funds to the PHC re-engineering initiative thereby denying CBOs of much needed financial and technical support [9, 12]. These highlight the need for policy-makers and programme planners to explore how to make certain that the PHC re-engineering initiative benefits from the vast experience of supervisors in CBOs and to ensure that CBOs receive regular funding and technical support from relevant government agencies in order to address their funding problems and deliver critical health and social services to marginalized communities.
Our study suggests that it is worthwhile for policy-makers and stakeholders globally and particularly in LMICs to explore a broader conceptualization of the role of CHW programmes to encompass health systems strengthening as well as economic development of marginalized communities. We argue that CHW programmes should be conceptualized with the dual purpose of strengthening health systems for health services delivery and creating jobs for citizens in poor and marginalized communities who currently carry the burden of providing unpaid community health care particularly in LMICs. In this regard, policy-makers and programme planners need to explore the possibility of developing and budgeting for models of national CHW programmes that help build capacity to address health care worker shortages in health systems at the primary care level and create jobs in poor communities in LMICs. This could be achieved through creating paid positions for supervisors at the community level and providing high quality training to supervisors to help in the delivery of community health services. In addition, there is a need for national governments to support formal training of supervisors to progress to mid-level health care workers such as primary health care nurses [34]. In addition to strengthening health systems, this approach could help reduce unemployment and poverty in marginalized communities with potential multiplier ramifications for these communities and the economy at large [34].
The limitations of this study should be considered when interpreting the findings. First, the use of a snowball sampling technique may have led to an overrepresentation of CBOs in the same network that may have similar experiences. Thus the experiences of participants might not adequately reflect that of all supervisors working in CBOs. However, we addressed this potential problem by including a range of CBOs working in a range of community settings in order to include diverse perspectives from supervisors from diverse CBOs. Second, all the supervisors in our study were employed by CBOs who have limited resources. The experiences of supervisors employed by government in formal primary health care settings such as primary health care clinics might differ. A third limitation is the fact that we did not explore the perspectives of CHWs and managers of CBOs in order to gain more insight into the motivations of supervisors.
Given that supervisors are in a unique position to identify issues that are critical to the success of CHW programmes, policy-makers must pay attention to factors that could sustain job satisfaction and motivation among supervisors in CHW programmes. This could help improve effectiveness and sustainability of CHW initiatives. There is also a need to build the capacity of supervisors to address health worker shortages in primary health care in South Africa and globally and particularly in LMICs aiming to formalize and scale-up the use of CHWs in their national health systems. Finally, it is critical for policy-makers and researchers to seek to explore the perspectives of supervisors in order to gain deeper and richer insights into CHW programmes which will help inform more appropriate policies and planning for CHW programmes globally.
CHW:
DOH:
LMIC:
Low- and middle-income countries
PHC:
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We are very grateful to the community-based organizations and the supervisors for giving of their time to participate in the study. We are also thankful to Nqobile Dlamini, Siphokazi Ntetha, Netsai Gwelo and Lydia Hangulu who assisted with data collection. OA would like to thank the McMaster Health Forum, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada, for hosting him during the time we were working on this project.
We gratefully acknowledge funding support from the National Research Foundation of South Africa grant no 71011. NRF was not involved in the design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data, and writing of the manuscript.
OA contributed to the conception and design of the study, coded the data and prepared the drafts of the manuscript. GC contributed to the conception and design of the study and coordinated the data collection and analysis process. Both authors reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript.
This study received ethical approval from the Human and Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa.
School of Applied Human Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Mazisi Kunene Road, Glenwood, Durban, 4041, South Africa
Olagoke Akintola
& Gamuchirai Chikoko
School of Human and Social Development, Nipissing University, 100 College Drive, ON, P1B 8L7, North Bay, Canada
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Correspondence to Olagoke Akintola.
Akintola, O., Chikoko, G. Factors influencing motivation and job satisfaction among supervisors of community health workers in marginalized communities in South Africa. Hum Resour Health 14, 54 (2016) doi:10.1186/s12960-016-0151-6
Community-based organization

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


OTTAWA, Nov. 7, 2018 /CNW/ - The Honourable Ralph Goodale, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, the Honourable Bill Blair, Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction, and Peter Schiefke, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Youth) and Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction, will make a funding announcement on combatting gun and gang violence.
Following the announcement, Minister Goodale, Minister Blair and Parliamentary Secretary Peter Schiefke will take questions from the media.
The announcement will be available via Periscope.
Journalists who are not members of the National Press Gallery will require accreditation from the gallery in advance. For more information, contact Philippe Perrier at philippe.perrier@parl.gc.ca.


text:
Vol. 17 No. 17 · 7 September 1995
In Praise of Ulster Scots
In his Diary Tom Paulin refers to the film he is making, with David Hammond, about the Ulster Scots dialect (LRB, 24 August). In passing he describes a poem of mine as 'packed with Ulster Scots words'; and goes on to wonder: 'Maybe the poet is wanting to ruffle his deft parnassian or to raise certain readers 'hackles? For there's a calculated over-determined quality to the language in the poem that makes it more like a piss-take.' In my new collection The Ghost Orchid there are, in fact, two poems so 'packed', and a few others which use the dialect more sparingly. I hope that I can allay Paulin's apparent suspicions about my motives.
In the Poetry Book Society's Bulletin for Summer 1995 I try to explain what I am up to: 'I had long wanted to make a self-contained lyric out of the scene in Book XXII of the Odyssey where Phemios the bard and Medon the herald beg for mercy from Telemachos and Odysseus who have just finished slaughtering Penelope's suitors. By serendipity or subconscious design I was leafing through an Ulster Scots glossary, and found that dialect from my region was making available to me the terror and comedy of this scene out of Greek epic. Words such as banny, bam, gabble-blooter, keeking made fresh sounds and suggestions.'
Or perhaps Paulin has the other poem in mind, 'The Mad Poet', in which I use Ulster Scots to underline the satire at the end of Horace's Ars Poetical? As someone who speaks fairly standard English I would, as a rule, choose Ulster Scots words only when they set free a concept or phrase or emotion which would otherwise not be accessible to me. In a third poem, for instance, dialect words for 'birdsong' (tweetle, wheep, chitter, chirl) help me to write tenderly about a very old (Scottish) relative who suffers from Alzheimer's disease.
Paulin is right to praise the Ulster Scots poet and United Irishman James Orr, the Bard of Ballycarry. His 'Donegore Hill' (according to Paulin, 'a brilliant, almost unknown political poem') is probably the greatest poem to come out of 1798. As directors of Field Day as well as students of Ulster Scots, how did David Hammond and Tom Paulin allow the compendious Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1991) to omit not only 'Donegore Hill' but all writing in Ulster Scots? James Orr is represented by one poem, but it is in standard English, alas.
Michael Longley
Tom Paulin in his references to Hazlitt and Coleridge omits (admittedly in the company of other commentators past and present) to identify as Unitarian the church at Wem, of which the poet's father, the Rev. William Hazlitt, was minister. A toast and watchword of Unitarianism from the 18th century onwards has been 'civil and religious liberty' and so it should be no surprise to find many of the revolutionary and Romantic thinkers of the early 19th century associated with it. Samuel Taylor Coleridge preached in a number of Unitarian pulpits in the West Country and it was to the Unitarian chapel in Shrewsbury that Hazlitt walked ten miles to hear him. Indeed Coleridge had been proposed as the new minister and it was only an annuity provided for him by a Unitarian layman, Thomas Wedgwood, son of Josiah, that enabled the poet and philosopher to devote himself to writing.
May I add a footnote? In the (often fitful) light of the turbid history of Christianity in Ireland, I think – when referring to Presbyterian churches and meeting-houses – Paulin should acknowledge his awareness of the non-subscribing (to the Westminster confession) Presbyterian Church of Ireland, a creedless denomination, albeit small, which for two centuries has preached and practised tolerance in religion, in education and in social service.
Peter Sampson
Tillyard and Leavis
Frank Kermode (LRB, 24 August) rightly says that Dr Tillyard disliked Leavis. As one of Tillyard's pupils, however, I can attest that he positively encouraged me to attend Leavis's lectures and classes in order to hear a point of view different from his own. I learnt a lot from both, and remain deeply grateful to both of them.
S.S. Prawer
The Queen's College
Sister-Sister
Professor Castle takes the British media too seriously. What she calls their 'hysterical reaction' (Letters, 24 August) was simply journalists earning their keep in hyping up a story. I was interviewed by four or five and can testify that they were their usual hard-nosed selves.
As to Cassandra's feelings for Jane, we have the surviving letters to go on and we must make of them what we can. Professor Castle finds Jane writing to Cassandra 'flirtatiously', Cassandra being 'seduced' by the 'constant foolery' of the letters. Guided by accounts of 'the psychic complexity of female-female relationships in late 18th and early 19th-century Britain', Professor Castle is able to identify in the letters 'a kind of homophilic fascination' in Jane Austen's 'physical descriptions of women', 'the sexuality of women's bodies' eliciting 'oddly visceral effects'. In her letters to Fanny Knight, Professor Castle suggests, one could look for evidence to support 'the vulgar case for Austen's homoeroticism'.
Discussions of Jane Austen's sexuality are notable for their rarity, largely, one suspects, because they have so little to do with the way we read the novels. The yield from Professor Castle is meagre and curiously unconvincing: 'that so many of the final happy marriages seem designed not so much to bring about a union between hero and heroine as between the heroine and the hero's sister'; and that 'the heroes are often more like sisters than lovers in the conventional sense.' One hunts for examples. Professor Castle produces Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney. And the rest?
On the matter of sexuality, too, Professor Castle must be judged on the evidence produced and its handling. Her major exhibit is an extract of twenty lines from a letter Jane wrote to Cassandra in May 1801 describing a new gown, a description Professor Castle calls 'so fantastically detailed as to border on the compulsive'. 'Such passages remind us strikingly of how important a role clothes have played in the subliminal fetish-life of women.' Professor Castle's paragraph of commentary concludes by connecting the gown description to the two women's acting out of 'unconscious narcissistic or homoerotic imperatives'. And, in the next paragraph, the discussion is extended, referring back to the gown description, with the idea of Jane's 'desire to be seen and imaginatively embraced' by Cassandra.
Whether or not we like this line of argument, it has to be taken seriously. But there's something missing, the sentence before, a sentence which tumbles the entire edifice of Professor Castle's speculation. For, in introducing the description of the gown, Jane tells Cassandra a signal circumstantial fact: 'Mrs Mussell [her dressmaker] has got my Gown, & I will endeavour to explain what her intentions are.' The 'compulsive' diagnosis, and all that follows from the discovering of that first neurotic trait, collapses before our eyes. For Jane Austen's description of the gown is an accurate and detailed explanation of Mrs Mussell's 'intentions': the outcome of discussions with Jane, using Mrs Mussell's professional knowledge about what can best be done with these particular materials. Far from being 'compulsive', all this is what any woman would meet with today, as Jane Austen did in Bath, two hundred years ago, in submitting her ideas to the judgment of a dressmaker.
This part of the letter, packed with information, is written from one amateur dressmaker to another, for that is what the Austen sisters were, except on special occasions, such as this, when one or other of them could afford to splash out on a real dressmaker's gown, or, in this case, possibly, be treated to one, by Mrs Leigh-Perrot, the well-to-do Aunt at whose smart address (No 1 Paragon) Jane and her mother were then staying. Hence her concluding sentence, about fearing she has not been 'particular enough'. Jane wanted to tell Cassandra what was fashionable about her gown as well as what was practicable; and she continues the letter to its end, nine lines later, with an account of what is in fashion in Bath by way of 'Bonnets' (both 'straw' and 'Cambric Muslin') and 'Cloaks' of 'Black gauze'. Pursuing her case, Professor Castle could have quoted these lines, too, as evidence of Jane Austen's 'compulsive' bent, as further evidence of the sisters' 'subliminal fetish-life'. But we know different.
Professor Castle complains that, in the press, her 'comments have been grotesquely, indeed almost comically, distorted'. We could reply, on behalf of Jane Austen, that this passage from her letter has been treated to no less distortion – equally grotesque, equally comic – at the hands of Professor Castle.
Brian Southam
Jane Austen Society
Shame on the London Review for deliberately provoking a controversy over Terry Castle's review of the new edition of Jane Austen's letters (LRB, 3 August). The mischief created by your eye-catching rubric 'Was Jane Austen Gay?' was compounded in your 24 August issue by your publication of Marianne Macdonald's letter in which she erroneously assumed that Castle must be a man. Obviously knowing that Ms Macdonald was making an embarrassing mistake, you nevertheless chose to publish her letter, apparently because it offered the smug opportunity to humiliate her on the spot, whilst also allowing a dig at the Independent for employing such an 'unalert' Arts Reporter.
Linda-Jo Bartholomew
Wivenhoe, Essex
I am flattered you thought my letter on Terry Castle's absurd review of Jane Austen's Letters worthy of publication, even though you wondered at the end what I would have written had I been 'alert to the fact that Terry Castle is a woman'. A fair enough point, had not your own press release on the subject described Ms Castle as a man.
Marianne Macdonald
Arts Reporter, the Independent
Would Ms Macdonald like to take another look at the press release?
Editor, 'London Review'
Find Your Level
In his review of Edward O. Wilson's Naturalist and Bert Hölldobler and Wilson's Journey to the Ants (LRB, 20 July), Steven Rose repeats some of his objections to sociobiology. He is entitled to be uncomfortable with 'reductionism' but he cannot discredit sociobiological research by reducing it to a straw man; and he cannot dictate what can or cannot be explained in the sciences. He trivialises Wilson's position by stating that in his 'reductionist argument' Wilson fails to see that 'it is not only religion which cannot be explained exclusively in terms of atoms or genes.' Neither Wilson nor (probably) any other sociobiologist claims that cultural systems can be explained 'exclusively' by biology (or physics). As for Rose's assertion that 'even the self-organising properties of a single cell' cannot be explained 'merely' in terms of atoms or genes, that issue is the subject of ongoing research. Rose's confident pronunciamento cannot close the question. His metaphysical argument that 'each level of complexity of living systems requires study in its own terms' carries little weight at this point in the history of science. Those hallowed 'levels' – presumably mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology – are shifting historical artefacts, not rigid categories, and what they can or cannot explain are subjects of research. In the 17th century the Church advised Galileo that in science planetary astronomy may be studied in terms of mathematics but not physics. How the planets actually move, it was claimed, had been determined on the 'level' of theology.
Gabriel Dover's review of Robert Pollack's Signs of Life: The Language and Meaning of DNA (LRB, 3 August) is an ill-tempered attack on evolutionary genetics. He refers to theoretical geneticists as 'thousands of molecular zombies' and his review makes the unsubstantiated claim that the fundamental processes of life are not merely unknown, they are unknowable. He quotes approvingly Pollack's prediction that 'experimentation on human genes, no matter how imaginative, will never give a single, complete meaning to the human genome' as well as his belief that 'genes and proteins … are time-dependent and historically rooted; and we are finding out the hard way, neither is totally knowable or predictable.' (Pollack's argument, incidentally, is based on an analogy between the levels of physics – 'unpredictable atoms' – and biology.) Many scholars and scientists are understandably concerned that the liberal programme of reforming society may be restricted by the misuse of scientific knowledge to perpetuate social injustice. Rose faults Wilson for failing to 'comment on the pseudo-scientific use of sociobiological claims by racists on the far right'. Would it not be better to engage political opponents on the 'level' of politics rather than by finding philosophical fault with scientific research?
Harold Dorn
Will Blair do it?
While I am sure that Scotland is entitled to whatever form of autonomy or independence its people may decide they want, how does Tom Nairn (LRB, 24 August) think the experience of the ordinary person in Glasgow is any different from, for example, that of the ordinary person in Tottenham? If the answer is that there is no difference of significance, as I believe it is, then the question becomes not one of Scottish independence but of how ordinary people can get the profit system off their backs. This leads to a second point. If it is possible to achieve some form of Scottish independence, why stop there? Why no discussion of John Maclean's workers' republic? Finally, does Nairn think that Tony Blair and New Labour will grant Scotland independence?
Keith Flett
London N17
Down with Authenticity
Daniel Eisenstein takes up the gage for authentic classical music performance (Letters, 20 July). I'd like to thwack it back into his court. First, most of the classical repertoire familiar to us carries great increments of significance picked up in its passage through the Romantic period onwards. I love this patina and wouldn't want it too thoroughly scrubbed away. Second, though study of performance practice years ago does lead to new insights into the meaning of the work, to follow them closely may not convey what was then intended. For instance, an all-male Shakespeare production in the commercial theatre today will have lots of unintended resonances. As far as musicians being able to play whatever they want if not tied to rigorous period authenticity, we all know who they are and will bad-mouth them on plenty of other valid grounds.
Caroline Norwood
In his review of surveys of sexual behaviour, Lawrence Stone (LRB, 3 August) notes that the Kinsey Report used 'biased samples' and received 'devastating reviews at the time in the scientific journals'. Given his awareness of the controversy around Kinsey's claim that 10 per cent of men were homosexual, Stone's unquestioning acceptance of the new, but equally controversial, claim of 3 per cent is bizarre. The new surveys use samples that are geographically random, meaning that a 30-year-old white skilled working-class male living in Northumberland was as likely to be interviewed as a similar 30-year-old in London. The method fails to recognise that if the man in Northumberland was gay and didn't want to live in the closet, he would probably have chosen to leave Northumberland several years before the re searchers arrived.
Roger Pebody
London W1
Lawrence Stone accuses Shere Hite of using biased samples in her Reports. He refers to her use of respondents recruited through magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse, giving the impression that these were her only sources. In this he reveals his own bias and prejudice. First, although he does not say so, he is referring only to The Hite Report on Male Sexuality, and not to the three Hite Reports which dealt with female sexuality. Second, in The Hite Report on Male Sexuality, only 11 per cent of the replies came from readers of men's magazines, and I would think that at least 11 per cent of the US male population read sexually-oriented magazines. Fifteen per cent of the responses came from men who had read The Hite Report on Female Sexuality, and 48 per cent from members of men's clubs, church organisations, professional associations and sports groups. The remaining 26 per cent came from geographical areas and sectors of the population that were not adequately represented in the first wave of replies.
Ethna Viney
Westport, Co. Mayo
Emerson's Great Essay
Injury succeeds insult for Ralph Waldo Emerson in the pages of the London Review of Books. Ian Hamilton's poem 'Steps' (LRB, 3 August) reads like a hastily versified set of notes taken from the first paragraph of 'Experience'. The text of Emerson's great essay reads as follows:
Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. But the Genius which according to the old belief stands at the door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday.
Hamilton's poem reproduces not only the paragraph's central image (that of the staircase), which is commonplace enough, but also, word for word, its opening sentence ('Where do we find ourselves?'), its second sentence, in a somewhat altered version ('we know not the extremes'), and, in a very slight variation, one of the paragraph's most striking phrases ('this lethargy at noon'). I question the tact of the author, and the judgment of his editors, in publishing this work without acknowledgment.
J. Mark Smith
Mammoth Lakes, California
Ian Hamilton made it clear when he offered us 'Steps' for publication that the poem had its source in an essay by Emerson. Archaisms like 'We know not' and 'Alas' surely signal that there is a source and that the poet is not addressing us in his own person. A formal acknowledgment, it seemed to us and to him, would have been heavy-handed.
What's the fuss about?
Ian Sansom offers a provocative explanation for the popularity of Carol Ann Duffy's verse (LRB, 6 July). He suggests it 'has undoubtedly made a lot of English teachers very very happy'. It's 'accessible', i.e. it's easy, so kids like it.
I sympathise with teachers who are nervous of poetry: it is difficult to teach, especially if you neither like nor read it yourself. But anxiety can make one easy prey to unscrupulous 'experts'. Witness the amount of mediocre contemporary poetry on English syllabuses and exam papers and crowding stock-room shelves. Outside the narrow world of contemporary poetry most of this stuff would pass unremarked. Good stand-up comics are wittier and more perceptive; much TV drama (including soaps) more skilful and thought-provoking; most popular music more fun. But here's Ian McMillan telling teachers that this very ordinary poet is 'at the height of her powers' and Sean O'Brien placing her 'high on my list' of exemplars. Come off it.
Barry Simner
Tywyn, Gwynedd
Crazy Don
Michael Wood's essay on translations of Cervantes's Don Quixote (LRB, 3 August) brought back memories of some seventy years ago when as a teenager I read this masterpiece translated into Hungarian, my mother tongue. Professor Wood writes about 'the great challenge' in translating Cervantes and mentions, as an example, the opening of the first chapter. Translated literally, as he says, the sentence should be in English: 'In a place in Mancha whose name I do not want to recall'. Though I'm aware that very few, if any, of your readers understand the difficult language of Magyars, I venture to quote this beginning in Hungarian: 'La Mancha egyik falujában amelynek nevét nem akarom emliteni'. Well, the Hungarian translation should please Professor Wood. In English it reads: 'In a village of La Mancha whose name I do not want to mention'. Striking similarity, isn't it? The two-volume Don Quixote was among the few books I could bring out from Hungary after the 1956 Revolution. Now, having read Professor Wood's excellent piece, I am especially happy I did.
Endre Marton
Chevy Chase, Maryland
'Chambers' wins
Professor Sutherland, in his review of John Willinsky's Empire of Words: The Reign of the 'OED' (LRB, 8 June), informs us that 'no longer will scholars use OED in the same way that Scrabble players use the Shorter Oxford and Webster, as a Bible on matters linguistic.' I do not know about Webster and the US, and I would not quibble about the Shorter Oxford as a Bible on matters linguistic but, according to the information inside the cover of my copy of the 1993 edition of Chambers Dictionary, it is the official reference dictionary for the UK National Scrabble Championship. Chambers is, therefore, the Bible for Scrabble players.
L.B. McKenzie
West Pennant Hills, New South Wales