DIVORCING FAMILIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN IN THE COURT'S FAMILY SERVICES UNIT Profiles and Impact of Services

Little is known about the families being served by court support services, or the effectiveness of the services provided. This study investigates 137 higher conflict, divorcing families with young children, who received services from the Family Services division. The study utilizes questionnaire data filled out by family services clinicians. The families presented with multiple mental health needs, including allegations of substance use and physical, emotional and sexual abuses of spouses and, to a lesser extent, children. Results detailed evaluation outcomes pertaining to joint legal and physical custody, showing an increase in joint legal custody, with little difference in physical custody arrangements. Evaluators did encourage less parental dropout. The data also profiled parents least likely to attend mandatory parenting education, accept evaluators' recommendations, and settle their case with mediation assistance. Identifying these families early can help family services clinicians track families into individualized service plans as needed.     

Analysing Parliamentary Debate with Computer Assistance

The analysis of parliamentary debates is at the confluence of a number of developments in political science. What light can automated and semi‐automated techniques throw on such analysis? In this paper we compare two such approaches, one semi‐automated (Hamlet) and the other fully automated (Alceste). We use both approaches to identify the prominent themes in debate and to assess how far speakers who favour different positions adopt a distinct pattern of discourse. We seek to assess how far the two approaches yield convergent or divergent analyses. Selecting a second reading debate from the UK House of Commons on a private member's bill on abortion in July 1966, we are able to show similarities of analysis despite the detailed differences between the two approaches. In particular, the analysis in Hamlet al.lows identification of the extent to which individual speakers employ one type of vocabulary rather than another. Alceste is able to provide a statistical basis for the different classes of vocabulary that occur in the debate. However, the two programs rest upon quite different assumptions about the relationship between syntax and meaning, with implications for the practice of political science.     

Government of Canada's teleworking and hybrid policies in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic

This article analyzes the evolution of teleworking and hybrid work policies in the public sector over the last two decades. It focuses on the Government of Canada, concentrating on the paradigmatic shifts brought about by COVID-19, particularly the impact on the development of teleworking and the transformation of the workplace into a hybrid model. Based on a historical neo-institutionalism approach, this article suggests that the pandemic has propelled the expansion of telework reforms, becoming a key driver in altering the application of both telework and hybrid policies. However, this article argues that, despite the general recognition in the effectiveness of telework and hybrid policies, there are still headways to be made, predominantly because there is still disagreement as to how these policies should be defined and ultimately applied in the federal public sector.     

Revolution in the city: On the resources of urban guerrillas

Authors who address the topic of rural guerrilla warfare argue that the ability to engage in political violence is predicated upon support from the local population and the capabilities of guerrilla organizations. We examine the applicability of these arguments for modern urban guerrilla warfare. We find that the Provisional Irish Republican Army draws on individual, organizational and environmental resources, and that the impact of these resources on the IRA has changed over time. Of these resources, the most important appear to be a combination of individual and organizational resources. Organizing into a cell structure in 1977 made the IRA dependent on only the passive support of the Northern Irish Nationalist population, and a high level of political awareness among IRA guerrillas guarantees that the IRA maintains this passive support.