'The sound of fighting in our ears': Presenting the Great War in Welsh

Health services offer a privileged space to define the proper relationship of the citizen and the modern state. Individuals have been expected to make choices in health care in Wales and England since the 1980s. A new vaccine against some types of cervical cancer was recently introduced for girls. Parents are expected to consent on behalf of their daughters. This paper reports the results of the largest qualitative study in this area world-wide. It depicts attitudes to health care choice and discusses parents’ experiences of consenting or not. Parents’ decisional strategies in the face of uncertainty are analysed. Consequences of the study relate to the individuals’ relationship with the Welsh National Health Service (NHS) and to developing a concept of Welsh citizenship.

This article focuses on the effects of music on sufferers of dementia as a means of communicating through familiar songs within a Welsh context. The fieldwork is based on the author’s experience singing to the accompaniment of the Celtic harp at an assessment unit for dementia and at resident homes for the elderly on the Llŷn Peninsula during the Summer of 2010 and presents insights gained from observing patients recalling familiar songs when conversation was difficult. On this basis, the article examines the way in which music can assist patients who suffer from this condition, describing and analysing the results.

Since the Nineteenth Century, choral singing has played a prominent part in Welsh culture and society. In the latter part of the Twentieth Century, there were increasing demands to consider the influences of quality of life and well-being on health. As a result, there is a growing field of research that considers the role of the community arts, and choral singing in particular, as social capital, and the way in which they can influence personal and social health and well-being. Due to this growing recognition, this article will consider research that examines the relationship between amateur choir-singing in Wales – as both a musical and social event – and general health and well-being.

In an area of Wales where 50% of the population is bilingual one community physical rehabilitation service had no Welsh-speaking therapists. An internationally standardised outcome measure was used to assess the effectiveness of rehabilitation in this area. This revealed that Welsh speaking patients had significantly poorer results from rehabilitation than non-Welsh speakers (p<0.05), while there was no significant difference where the therapists were bilingual. The results suggest that therapists’ ability to speak patients’ first language impacts on therapy effectiveness. The percentage of individuals who could speak Welsh referred (by health or social care professionals) was compared with the percentage of Welsh speakers which would have been anticipated given the percentage in the general population. Significantly fewer Welsh speakers were referred to the rehabilitation service than the anticipated percentage (p<0.001). Whilst this suggests professionals’ inability to speak Welsh may impact negatively on access to services for Welsh speakers, there may be other multifactorial psycho-social reasons to consider.