Clinical psychologists’ perceptions of barriers and facilitators to engaging service users in index offence assessment and formulation within a medium secure unit

Index offence assessment and formulation (IOAF) helps service users (SU) in secure units to make sense of their index offence, provides detailed understanding of risk and contributes to treatment planning and discharge decisions. Clinical psychologists’ perceptions of barriers and facilitators to engaging SUs in IOAF within the men’s and women’s services of one medium secure unit were explored through focus groups. Thematic analysis identified two relevant domains: person-specific factors and the organisational context. Person-specific barriers included challenges in working with fragmented narratives, conflicting motivations to engage, SU defences and distorted perceptions of clinical psychologists’ roles. Giving clarity and choice to SUs facilitated engagement with the work. Regarding the organisational context, clinical psychologists within both services identified the importance of having adequate resources and care-team support to complete this work. Findings highlight the importance of developing an evidence-based framework for IOAF to be embedded within clear ‘risk’ care pathways through secure services.     

Exploring the Indirect Effect of Preference Discrepancy on Intimate Partner Violence

Preference discrepancy is the difference between partners’ ideal and real relationship, and is assumed to have a negative effect on the relationship. This study examines its effect on psychological and physical intimate partner violence perpetration and victimization, and hypothesizes this effect will be mediated through relationship satisfaction, communication quality and/or conflict resolution ability. A sample of 156 respondents participated in this study. Bias-corrected bootstrap analyses revealed indirect effects of preference discrepancy on psychological and physical violence victimization through conflict resolution. People with high preference discrepancy scores report lower conflict resolution abilities, and in turn, higher victimization rates. There was also a significant total effect of preference discrepancy on physical violence perpetration, suggesting high preference discrepancy increases the chance of using physical violence against one’s partner. Further investigation is thus recommended, to assess if preference discrepancy could function as an additional anchor in the prevention of IPV within couples.     

The Violence of Aid? Giving,power and active subjects in One World Conservatism

Abstract

Using ?i?ek's theorisation of power, we analyse the UK Conservative Party's Green Paper on international development, ‘One World Conservatism’ (OWC). We argue that by placing the West's giving of development aid as something beyond politics, on the moral high-ground of self-evident certainty, it acts to deflect attention from critical engagement with the nature of globalisation, power and aid itself, hiding both economic and epistemological violences behind the apparently benevolent act of giving. An analysis of the nature of the green paper demonstrates the ways in which it draws in UK citizens as active subjects complicit with this vision of the world.     

Public perceptions of India’s role as an international development cooperation partner: domestic responses to rising ‘donor’ visibility

The literature on South–South Development Cooperation (ssdc) has grown exponentially in the past few years. One focus of analysis has been how domestic institutions and agendas shape the approaches to development cooperation of different Southern partners. However, few analysts to date have commented on how the ‘ordinary’ general public of these countries might perceive or assess their country’s role in international development. Through a study based on interviews and media analysis, this paper attempts to tease out the slim evidence currently available on ‘public’ attitudes in India, concentrating, for reasons explained, exclusively on elites and ‘middle classes’. It argues that, while some domestic criticism will certainly accompany the growing visibility of Indian development cooperation, the attractive blend of discursive positioning and material benefits may provide the Indian government with broad support for its growing investment and profile in international development, or at least offset a degree of criticism. At present there appears to be little public discussion about whether and how India’s external role relates to domestic poverty, or the nature of growth and ‘development’ that India is helping to stimulate in partner countries. The paper also discusses ‘boundary making’ with China through the public construction of Indian development cooperation.