Perceived Risk for Future Intimate Partner Violence among Women in a Domestic Violence Shelter

Research investigating women’s risk assessments for intimate partner violence (IPV) shows that women can predict future violence with relative accuracy. Limited research has investigated factors that are associated with perceived risk and the potential behavioral consequences of victim risk perception. Results from a survey of women in a domestic violence shelter (N = 56) indicated that women perceive lower risk of future violence if the abusive relationship were to end and higher risk of violence if it were to continue. Certain abuse experiences were related to elevated perceptions of personal risk for future violence. Further, perceived personal risk predicted the women’s intention to terminate their relationship upon leaving shelter. Results are discussed as they may inform interventions preventing IPV.

Caregiver and Youth Agreement Regarding Youths’ Trauma Histories: Implications for Youths’ Functioning After Exposure to Trauma

Epidemiological research has demonstrated that youth are exposed to potentially traumatic events at high rates. Caregivers play an important role in youths’ successful recovery following exposures to potentially traumatic events. However, past research has documented poor caregiver–youth agreement regarding youths’ exposures to potentially traumatic events, indicating a potential lack of support for many youth exposed to such events. This study examined caregiver–youth discrepancies in the reports of youths’ lifetime exposures to potentially traumatic events, and the relationship between these reporting discrepancies and youths’ post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, mood symptoms, and functional impairment following disclosures of sexual abuse. Participants included 114 caregiver–youth dyads participating in a family-based intervention at four Child Advocacy Centers in New York City. Standardized measures of trauma history, youth PTSD symptoms, youth mood symptoms, youth functional impairment, and caregiver PTSD symptoms were given in interview format to caregivers and youth at the time of intake into the intervention. The demographic composition of the youth sample was 86.8 % female, 13.2 % male, 32.5 % African American, 54.4 % Latino/a, 2.6 % Caucasian, 0.9 % Asian American, 8.8 % other race/ethnicity. Youth ranged in age from 7 to 16. Results demonstrated poor agreement between youth and caregivers regarding youths’ exposure to a range of potentially traumatic events and regarding youths’ PTSD symptoms, mood symptoms and functional impairment. Both caregiver–youth discrepancies regarding youths’ histories of exposures to potentially traumatic events and caregiver PTSD symptoms were significantly associated with youths’ self-reported symptoms and functional impairment. Only caregiver PTSD symptoms were related to caregivers’ reports of youths’ symptoms and functional impairment. Findings underscore the importance of family support and communication regarding exposures to potentially traumatic events and the detrimental associations of caregiver–youth disagreement about youths’ exposures to potentially traumatic events. Recommendations are provided for the assessment and treatment of families presenting in the aftermath of traumatic exposures.     

The Importance and Benefits of Supervision in Youth Work Practice

This article explores the concept of supervision and its implementation within a youth work context. The article describes and explores a process of staff development facilitated by the author which involved providing supervision training to a group of youth work practitioners at Cork YMCA in Ireland and continuing to meet them on a monthly basis over a period of a year in a mentoring capacity. These sessions provided a supportive space for supervisors and aimed to facilitate a reflective process in relation to their own supervisory practice. This article explores the opportunities and challenges of the supervision process, advocates the importance of supervision in ensuring effective youth work practice, and identifies the beneficial impact of this at a number of levels.     

Addressing identity crime in crime management information systems: Definitions,classification, and empirics

Identity fraud as a term and concept in its formative stages was often presumed to be identity theft and visa versa. However, identity theft is caused by the identities (or tokens) of individuals or organisations being stolen is an enabling precursor to identity fraud. The boundaries of identity fraud and identity theft are now better defined. The absence of specific identity crime legislation could be a cause of perpetrators not classified as breaching identity crimes but under other specific entrenched law such as benefit fraud, or credit card fraud. This metrics overlap can cause bias in crime management information systems. This study uses a multi-method approach where data was collected in both a quantitative and qualitative manner. These approaches are used as a lens for defining different classes of online identity crimes in a crime management (IS) security context. In doing so, we contribute to a deeper understanding of identity crime by specifically examining its hierarchical classes and definitions; to aid clearer structure in crime management IS. We seek to answer the questions: should current law around identity fraud continue to be reinforced and measures introduced to prevent identity crime; should laws be amended; or should new identity crime laws be constructed? We conclude and recommend a solution incorporating elements of all three.     

Social divisions in caring

This article is concerned with the perspectives on caring developed by academic feminist researchers in Britain over the last decade. It notes how these perspectives defined caring in terms of the unpaid domestic and personal services provided through the social relations of marriage and kinship to those who found it hard to meet their own care needs. The article draws on Black feminist and disabled feminist perspectives, together with recent autocritical work by academic feminist researchers, to unpack this concept of care. It focuses on what the concept obscures about the social divisions that mediate women's experiences of care. It examines what is eclipsed and who is excluded from feminist perspectives on caring which are grounded in the experience of giving care on an unpaid basis within kinship networks based on marriage.     

Some Reflections on the Relationship between Citizenship, Access to Justice, and the Reform of Legal Aid

The reflexive, reciprocally constitutive relationship between law and society makes a substantive right of access to justice pivotal to the content of citizenship. It is therefore arguable that the establishment of legal aid, however limited in practice, was fundamental to the expanded citizenship which the post-war settlement sought to achieve. However this social form of citizenship has been attenuated by the reconfiguration of the state and the neo-liberal reconstruction of the public sector. Yet at the same time, the concepts of citizenship and social exclusion have become key discursive mechanisms in this reconstruction, including in the New Labour reform of the legal aid sector. This paper considers the various meanings attributed to the concepts of citizenship, social exclusion, and access to justice through the optic of the history of policy changes in legal aid. The impact of globalization and economic restructuring on social citizenship is explored, both in terms of the experience of recipients of public goods like legal services, and the professionals who supply them. The commensurability of the New Labour Community Legal Service (CLS) model with other models of justice is discussed. The conclusion briefly returns to the theme of law's 'citizen-constitutive' role and considers the potential of the CLS for combating social exclusion.     

International Law: A Discipline of Crisis

This article examines the way that international lawyers tend to focus on crises for the development of international law. It uses the reactions of international lawyers to NATO's intervention in Kosovo in 1999 as a case study of this tendency and argues that the crisis focus impoverishes the discipline of international law. The article proposes the idea of an international law of everyday life as an alternative.     

Working with boards: The experiences of Australian managers in performing arts organisations

Corporate governance has long been a feature of the arts and cultural sector and is a requirement for all cultural organisations seeking public funding, regardless of their size. However, despite the ubiquity of corporate governance in the arts and cultural sector, there is little research addressing the experiences of managers. This study examines the experiences of managers in performing arts organisations in working with their boards, based on data collected across 20 performing arts organisations in Australia using a stakeholder salience lens. Our results indicate that while the board is seen as a key organisational stakeholder, managers have a range of concerns about the governance role of boards, and in particular their limited effectiveness on the dimensions of legitimacy and urgency. We find that arts managers often must wrestle with competing agendas around creative autonomy and the low‐risk appetite of their management boards. Our findings highlight the need to re‐align, particularly in small‐ and medium‐sized organisations, the organisational needs of arts managers with corporate governance arrangements, without detracting from creative endeavours.     

Local adaptation policy responses to extreme weather events

Policy Sciences - At a global level, climate change is expected to result in more frequent and higher-intensity weather events, with impacts ranging from inconvenient to catastrophic. The potential...