The welfare family: Three Generations in Guadeloupean Society

This article analyzes family transformations resulting from the impact of social welfare policies and modernization in Guadeloupe, an island in the French Caribbean. The analysis is taken from a study of three-generational families in which a “pivot” member between 49 and 53 years of age, one parent, and one adult child were interviewed. The study, combining both quantitative and qualitative methods, concerns the forms of cultural, domestic, and economic exchanges between the generations, in addition to the various social welfare allowances received by the members of the families who were interviewed. The results show the complementarity between public and family forms of support. They also show how social welfare benefits have transformed the respective social status of different generations, the functioning of family solidarity, and the ways that poverty is being fought.     

Father–child relations in France: Changes in paternal authority in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

The history of fathers is one of the most suggestive lines of inquiry for understanding adolescents. The power of a father over his children, whether minors or those that had reached their majority, is a simple power, but one that became more complicated. The article assembles the elements needed to illustrate major trends in the long history of paternity. The adoption of the Civil Code in 1804 marked the triumph of a patriarchal system. More than 150 years later, the law of January 4, 1970 abolished paternal authority and replaced it with parental authority. Now, the father could only share parental authority with the mother on the strict condition that he is legally married to her. This seems like a linear movement, but it should be noted that it follows an earlier similar shift.     

Paths toward autonomy: The living conditions of fostered children in western France in the early 20th century

In order to test the validity of widespread notions about the unhappy lives of abandoned French children placed in foster care around the turn of the 20th century, the article uses the case files and inspectors' reports of the Romorantin agency to analyze the nature of fosterage: the children's continuing links to their biological parents, to their foster families, and with the Assistance publique system, which administered the fosterage system and the agency. The Romorantin agency was located in Sologne in the center of France, 120 miles south of Paris, and placed out in the countryside only children “abandoned” in Paris. The analysis suggests that although the lives of fostered children were characterized by constraints and, at times, mistreatment, in many respects, these children were able to experience more autonomy and choice to shape their lives than their peers in “normal” families. A close reading of the sources shows their lives to have had less of the stereotyped unhappiness usually attributed to them.     

A comparative study of family transmission systems in the central Pyrenees and northeastern Japan

The stem-family system tells us much about the mechanisms controlling reproduction in rural areas and the important role women played as mothers, heiresses, or in other roles. In this article, two stem-family rural societies are compared, one located in the central Pyrenees in Europe (Esparros), the other in northeastern Japan (Aizu domain and Nihonmatsu domain). Both are in mountainous areas. Particular attention is paid to the role of adopted sons and sons-in-law in family transmission processes.     

The Twelve Tribes' Communities,the Anti-Cult Movement,and Government's Response

The Twelve Tribes Messianic Communities are approximately 25 communities ranging in size from 30 to 120, on four continents. Since their inception 25 years ago, they have been plagued by continual attacks of the Anti-Cult Movement (ACM), originally in North America, but in recent years also in Europe. These believers live a common life of sharing in Communities according to the pattern they perceive in Acts 2 and 4 in the Bible. Despite repeated vindication in the courts, Twelve Tribes' members continue to battle to maintain the right to parent their children according to their beliefs, outside the mainstream popular culture. Antireligionists have effectively influenced governments to act against these parents, based on information that has not proved to be trustworthy evidence in court.     

Cross-cultural Validation of the Child Abuse Potential Inventory in Belgium (Flanders): Relations with Demographic Characteristics and Parenting Problems

This study examined the reliability and the validity of the Dutch CAP Inventory, a screening instrument that measures parents’ potential for child physical abuse (Milner, The Child Abuse Potential Inventory: Manual (2nd ed.), Psytec, Webster, NC, 1986). The CAP Inventory and measures on parenting stress and parents’ emotions and attributions with regard to childrearing were administered in a nonclinical sample of randomly selected mothers (N = 362) with a 4-to-11-year-old child. The CAP Inventory Abuse scale showed high internal consistency and split-half reliability. Twenty-four CAP Inventories (6.6%) were invalid, because mothers tended to present themselves either as too good or too bad. Sixteen valid CAP Inventories (4.4%) were indicative of high potential for abuse. Scores on the Abuse scale were significantly predicted by an external locus of control with regard to childrearing and by high levels of parenting stress. Results supported the cross-cultural generalizability of the CAP Inventory Abuse scale.     

Godparenthood: driving local solidarity in Northern France in the Early Modern Era. The example of Aubervilliers families in the sixteenth–eighteenth centuries

This article studies the choice of godparents in Aubervilliers, a French catholic rural parish near Paris, during the Early Modern Era. At the turn of the sixteenth century, godparenthood essentially served to extend social ties. Vertical godparenthood was quite visible, at least with regards to ‘elite’ local residents. The shift toward kin godparenthood happened over the long term, with a clear acceleration in the second half of the eighteenth century. A second evolution was the result of the Council of Trent. In the north of France, shifts from the ternary model of godparenthood to the godmother/godfather system at the beginning of the seventeenth century increased the proportion of elites amongst the godparents selected. This would indicate a strengthening of the clientele model of godparenthood in the seventeenth century, as suggested by Alfani's works on Italy. Finally, godparenthood was gender-sensitive. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, godmothers from the maternal side were greater in number than those from the paternal side, while godfathers from the paternal side were greater in number that those from the maternal side. Above all, the sex of the christened child took on a decisive dimension at the time when choices became more family-focused in the eighteenth century. This new consideration of the child's gender would seem to indicate a shift in the concept of the tie created at the time of the baptism. The intergenerational link between godchildren and godparents would take on new significance, in contrast to the relationship between parents and godparents that proved so crucial at the beginning of the Early Modern Era.     

Analysing the economic justification for the reforms to social welfare and family law legal aid

The Ministry of Justice plans on saving £450 million per annum from the legal aid budget through reforms contained in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012.Over 60% of these savings will be found by removing whole areas of law and types of problem from the scope of legal aid support. One of the principal justifications for these reforms is the economic imperative; reducing legal aid expenditure is necessary to meet the Government's fiscal targets. This article examined whether these reforms will generate the substantial savings identified in the Government's impact assessment, or whether these costs will be passed on to other areas of government. Data from the Civil and Social Justice Survey were used to model the behavioural responses of people no longer eligible for legal aid under the scope changes. Economic costs were estimated for these responses where they will be incurred by the state, although many of these costs are likely to be underestimates. Many costs could not be estimated including, inter alia, the cost of increased criminality where people seek redress outside of the justice system. The analysis focused on family and social welfare law, which together represent 82% of the proposed savings from the scope reforms. Based upon this analysis, the Government is unlikely to save more than 40% of its prediction. At the same time, these minimal savings could generate inequality of access to justice and overburden an already struggling alternative advice sector. A significant uptake in funded mediation within family law is predicted.     

大陆法系国家行政法院之考察与启示

西方大陆法系国家在多年的探索中,普遍建立了独立的行政法院专司行政审判职能,并取得了较理想的效果。我国有着和大陆法系国家相似的成文法传统,研究西方大陆法系国家行政法院的运作模式,对我国行政审判体制改革具有一定的借鉴意义,我国行政审判体制改革的路径选择就在于建立行政法院。     

Back for the future: a client centred analysis of social welfare and family law provision

The landscape of legal advice provision is entering a period of significant change in England and Wales. Whilst there is a great deal of uncertainty about how the future landscape of advice service provision will evolve, there are lessons to be drawn from past delivery models.

This article first looks back at the period following the Access to Justice Act 1999, setting out a range of delivery models initiated following the Act, as well as research and evaluation conducted in the millennium decade. Findings are then presented from a comprehensive qualitative study on how people experience and deal with social welfare and family problems, and on facilitators and barriers to integrated advice provision, including inter-organisational working. This is explored through the lens of a delivery model which emphasised partnership and the pooling of resources and specialisms to meet client needs: the Community Legal Advice Centre model.     

The collective welfare dimension of dark patterns regulation

Dark Patterns are interface design elements that can influence users' behaviour in digital environments. They can cause harm, not only on an individual but also a collective level, by creating behavioral market failures, reducing trust in markets and promoting unfair competition and data dominance. We contend that these collective effects of Dark Patterns cannot be tackled by existent laws, and thus call for policy intervention. This article reviews how existing and proposed laws in Europe and the US, namely the EU Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act as well as the U.S. DETOUR and AICO Acts, address these collective dimensions of welfare and add to existing protection. We find that the novel legislative measures attain that goal to varying degrees. However, the collective welfare perspective may prove useful to both support a risk-based approach to the enforcement and provide guidance as to which practices should be addressed as priority.     

法国法中海底文化财产的法律地位

法国传统法律制度对海底文物没有提供足够的保护,随着非法采掘海底文物的活动日益猖獗,法国于1989年出台了《关于海底文化财产的法律》。该法确立了“海底文化财产”这一新的法律概念,突出了对海底文化财产的保护。此外,该法还对文化财产发现者的权利和义务作了修改,并将文物的所有权归于国家,从而突出了海洋文化财产的国家财产特征。     

Minors,gender, and family: The discourses in the court system of traditional Buenos Aires

The article deals with public attitudes toward family responsibility in early-nineteenth-century Bienos Aires, particularly as revealed in lawsuits occasioned by disputes over the custody of minors. The care and education of minors was ordinarily entrusted to parents, but death, incapacity, licentious conduct, poverty or abandonment often resulted in the minor being removed from parents and taken by others into custody of guardians or institutions of public welfare. The majority of the analyzed lawsuits resulted from an attempt by parents to recover their authority over their children. The lawsuits indicate that the racial, gender, social, and generational “disadvantages” of plaintiffs did not a priori determine the judgement, but rather that arguments for family stability frequently were decisive when heard by sympathetic judges. Disadvantages persons thus frequently argued sucessfully about the meaning of the family, as protagonists in the legal system that otherwise often marginalized them.     

Contact,welfare and children in care: revisiting the significance of birth family relationships after finding significant harm

The focus of this paper is the issue of continuing birth family involvement in the child’s life once the child is living in care. Drawing on a psychosocial study and free association narrative interviews with care leavers it focuses on the harm to a young woman called Frances, caused by direct contact with her birth family and the cessation of such contact. The paper addresses the tension between these two types of harm, in particular the role of contact in safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in care. It presents an argument for the child’s care plan to emphasise the need for ongoing review of the role and impact of the child’s close relationships and contact with their birth family once the child is in care. This includes ongoing consideration of the child’s changing relationship with the birth mother and siblings with a view to reconciliation in young adulthood.     

Judicial decision-making in family court involving children with autism spectrum disorder

The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children and adolescents has increased over the past decade. Consequently, the courts and experts are more likely to be exposed to these children whose needs are highly heterogeneous. The present study aims to document judicial decision-making about children with autism spectrum as well as the parenting recommendations made by experts involved in these cases. There were 104 court decisions reviewed in Quebec over the past ten years. The results show that 85.6% of the decisions included a child custody assessment and that judges are more likely to order primary care to mother (56%). However, shared parenting (27%) and primary care to the father (17%) were also ordered in disputes involving an autistic child. Bivariate analyses revealed that challenges with parental monitoring and supervision were associated with court-ordered parenting arrangements. The present study revealed that a child custody assessment as well as father custody are more often observed than in the general population. This study highlights the need for further research to shed light on the best interests of children with ASD following the separation of their parents.     

Settlement of refugee women and children following the Second World War: challenges to the family

Abstract

Following the Second World War, refugees that were displaced as a result of conflict became a global concern. Many of these displaced persons were resettled under the auspices of the International Refugee Organization. Large numbers of European displaced persons settled in Australia, with significant numbers living in Queensland. The wartime and migration experiences of refugees have the potential to influence settlement experiences, and for displaced persons who settled in Queensland, these prior experiences continued to resonate within the family throughout the settlement process. Many refugee children became separated from their families, and while some were reunited, the process was lengthy and not without its difficulties. The effect of separation and loss experienced by these families dominated the post-war experience. It presented challenges to mothers, children and families as they negotiated the uncertainty of displacement and the potential for resettlement, and affected their approaches to separation and reunification. The separation and reunification of children and families played a significant role in the settlement process, influencing interactions with Australian organisations and the development of familial and social network connections during settlement. The legacy of conflict and separation continued to resonate within families and influenced perspectives of the ongoing settlement process for child refugees.     

Changing policy and practice in the child welfare system through collaborative efforts to identify and respond effectively to family violence

The Greenbook provides a roadmap for child welfare agencies to collaborate and provide effective responses to families who are experiencing co-occurring child maltreatment and domestic violence. A multisite developmental evaluation was conducted of six demonstration sites that received federal funding to implement Greenbook recommendations for child welfare agencies. Surveys of child welfare caseworkers show significant changes in several areas of agency policy and practice, including regular domestic violence training, written guidelines for reporting domestic violence, and working closely and sharing resources with local domestic violence service providers. Case file reviews show significant increases in the level of active screening for domestic violence, although this increase peaks at the midpoint of the initiative. These findings, coupled with on-site interview data, point to the importance of coordinating system change activities in child welfare agencies with a number of other collaborative activities.