A Negligent Blow to Children at Risk: MAK and RK v United Kingdom (European Court of Human Rights)

In MAK and RK v United Kingdom the European Court found that the absence of a common law duty of care owed to parents by doctors falsely suspecting them of their child's abuse violated the European Convention on Human Rights. This appears to be so even where the suspicion is a reasonable and blameless one to make, all things considered. In such circumstances, the court's decision to find that a parents' Convention rights had been unjustifiably infringed, and to order compensation accordingly, is likely to have the effect of frustrating the effective protection of children genuinely at risk of abuse.     

The future of online social work education and Title IV-E child welfare stipends

ABSTRACT

In this concept paper, the authors explore online learning in social work and how IV-E education has been and will continue to be impacted. An empirical estimate of the national prevalence of online IV-E social work degree options is presented. Using Colorado as a case example, the authors share some of the opportunities and challenges presented by online education. Universities in Colorado have realized that online education connects rural and indigenous communities, reduces the need for students to relocate, and promotes a well-prepared, qualified child welfare workforce, but online options also challenge programs with localization issues. With connectivity increased and the physical location of students becoming less and less relevant, IV-E child welfare education providers need a proactive national dialogue to further assess the benefits and barriers to IV-E partnerships across state lines and the development of promising approaches in this area. The recruitment and retention of a well-educated and prepared child welfare workforce is critical for positive outcomes for children and families. Online social work education continues to grow nationwide. Now is the time for a national workgroup, including a broad group of stakeholders, to explore how the IV-E community will respond to online delivery of social work education.     

Healthy aspirations? Crypto-eugenics and the aim to create healthy families in Australia, 1946–1970s

This paper explores the incorporation of eugenic objectives within family focused and psychologically based public health initiatives throughout the 1940s–1970s. By focusing on three of Australia’s enduring public health initiatives – family planning, marriage guidance and sex education – I consider how post-war eugenic rhetoric in Australia was initially dominated by educational services which centred on creating a conducive environment for eugenically aligned reproductive choices within the nuclear family structure. The fact the term ‘eugenics’ was increasingly omitted from what remained eugenically aligned public health activities will also be considered.     

Equality Law and the Protected Characteristics

UK anti‐discrimination law is founded on a grounds‐based system of protected characteristics. For this system to function as a legitimate and workable legal framework the characteristics must satisfy three conditions: they must have some definitional and categorical stability, they must broadly reflect people's understanding of social reality and lived experiences and they must align with the most significant axes of discrimination in society. This article argues that all three conditions are becoming increasingly difficult to satisfy as a result of dramatic shifts in social configurations of identity and the ongoing failure to include socio‐economic status as a legally protected characteristic. The future of the legislative framework may depend on the willingness of courts and policy‐makers to adopt a more context‐based approach to the protected characteristics. This would require them to interrogate claims of individual instances of discrimination in the context of wider, but also more particular substantive group disadvantage.     

Diversity in the Judiciary: The Case For Positive Action

A range of policies has been developed in England and Wales to reform the judicial appointments process so as to promote greater diversity. But despite two decades of official activity, the pace of change has been far slower than anticipated. Increasing awareness of the intransigence of the problem has led to a greater willingness to revisit some of the more fundamental tenets which have underpinned the approach to the problem to date, in particular, the unquestioning and inflexible commitment to the principle of equal treatment. This article examines the different forms of positive action which might play a part in the development of new diversity strategies for the judiciary. It reviews the arguments for and against different types, in terms of effectiveness, quality of appointments, and equity. It goes on to consider the legal frameworks which govern diversity and equality policies and assesses the legal implications of adopting different forms of positive action.     

Examining the Link Between Funding and Intellectual Interventions Across Universities and Think Tanks: a Theoretical Framework

Policy-oriented expert knowledge is increasingly applied, collaborative and socially accountable, created in a variety of organisations and institutions that display a diversity of funding patterns with a wide range of requirements and expectations. Given the complexities of knowledge production and recent changes in its funding environment (e.g. mode and availability of research funding and evaluation), few existing theoretical elaborations consider tensions between structural funding conditions and intellectual production in policy research contexts. This paper examines the role of funding in shaping the policy issues, format and content of intellectual output across two research contexts (universities, think tanks). It sets out a theoretical and methodological approach to understand the link between funding modalities and the type of knowledge and intellectual interventions they facilitate or thwart.     

Unpacking the Public Private Partnership Revival

This paper examines the recent resurgence of interest in public-private partnerships (PPPs) to provide infrastructure in developing countries. First, the paper demonstrates that there has been a revival of support for private sector participation in infrastructure. Second, the paper argues that this revival differs from earlier attempts to increase the involvement of the private sector in public service provision in a number of respects. In particular, the current support for PPPs is related to an increased availability of global financial capital. Third, the paper considers the implications of this distinct feature of the revival for development.     

Civil society: Bringing the family back in

This article explores the complex and contradictory positioning of the family within civil society literature. In some accounts, the family is seen as the cornerstone of civil society. In others, the family is positioned firmly outside – even antithetical to – civil society. This paradox arises from the ways in which civil society is variously defined through a series of binary oppositions – in relation to each of which the family sits uneasily. And while feminist critiques have tried to bring women back into view, they too tend to marginalize the family. In addition, the normative nature of these oppositions has meant that while civil society tends to be seen as the property of the political ‘left’, the family is often associated with the political ‘right’. The article argues that we need to move beyond oppositional definitions of civil society and assumptions about the family if we are to understand the multiple ways in which the family is implicated as not only the ‘reproducer’ of particular resources and dispositions but as a principal source and focus of civil society engagement and activism.     

Missing Masculinities: Gendering Practices in Australian Alcohol Research and Policy

The issue of ‘alcohol-fuelled violence’ has been the subject of intense policy debate in Australia. While this debate is warranted, its contours and content have been informed and shaped by a surprisingly narrow range of research resources. Narrow research engagements of this kind warrant scrutiny because they can exclude from consideration crucial issues. In this article we identify one such issue, that of gender. Following a review of the Australian literature on gender, alcohol and violence, our analysis explores four case studies drawn from the Australian research corpus, focusing on large quantitative studies as these tend to receive most attention and citation in policy debate. Such studies consistently erase the contribution of key gender dynamics, namely enactments of particular (often youthful) masculinities, to violence involving alcohol, even where they simultaneously provide strong support in their data for such a conclusion. We show how this research is mobilised specifically in support of claims about the causal role of alcohol in violence and of blanket population-level responses to the problem. There is an urgent need to map the character and scope of the tendency to erase certain gender issues in research on alcohol and violence in order to better inform policy responses.     

Feeling Things: From Visual to Material Jurisprudence

Law and Critique - In this article I analyse the extent to which there has been a shift in the cultural turn in legal scholarship and specifically from visual to what I call material jurisprudence,...