Back to school for parents: implementing responsible parenting agreements and orders in Western Australia

Managing student behaviour is a primary task of principals and teachers, but it is not their responsibility alone. Parents are also responsible for their children's behaviour inside and outside school. As primary educators and caregivers parents have a duty of care and are responsible for nurturing, disciplining and socializing their children. In the wake of growing concerns about the apparent increase in antisocial behaviour inside and outside schools, the Government of Western Australia is planning to introduce the use of responsible parenting agreements and orders, modelled largely on UK policy. The aim of responsible parenting agreements and orders is to provide a statutory mechanism for directing parents to take responsibility for their children. The goal is to reduce truancy, antisocial behaviour and juvenile crime and to improve children's socialization and school performance. The Children's Court will be given power to issue orders that impose certain requirements on parents regarding the upbringing and discipline of their children. The purpose of this article is to examine the Western Australian government's policy on responsible parenting agreements and orders and their use in the school context. The article first provides an introduction to the role of parents in the area of school discipline, followed by an analysis of the State Government's discussion paper Parental responsibility orders and an overview of the proposed legislation. The discussion then focuses on the application of responsible parenting agreements and orders within the school context as a strategy for engaging parents in improving school discipline.     

Sending mixed messages: gender-based analysis and the “status of women”

Sommaire: Adoptée en 1996 en tant qu'élément clé de la stratégie du gouvernement libéral fédéral visant à promouvoir l'égalité des femmes, strategie énoncée dans Ouvrant la voie au siècle prochain: le plan fédéral pour l'égalité des sexes, l'analyse basée sur le sexe a été conçue pour favoriser la formulation et l'évaluation des politiques selon une perspective qui tient compte du sexe. Ce processus est un début, mais cet article examine les limitations de l'analyse basée sur le sexe. Il soutient qu'en mélangeant les objectifs d'égalité des femmes à ceux de l'égalité entre les sexes, le Plan fédéral et l'analyse basée sur le sexe sèment la confusion chez ceux qui formulent les politiques lorsqu'il s'agit de savori comment incorporer des mesures qui tiennent compte des réalités sociales et économiques propres aux femmes. Cette confusion découle des contraintes conceptuelles et de l'étroitesse du terme «sexe», étant aggravée encore par la capacité organisationnelle limitée qu'a Srtatut de la femme canada pour mener et coordonner une solide analyse basée sur le sexe. Abstract: Unveiled in 1996 as one of the key components of the federal Liberal government's wider strategy to promote women's equality, outlined in Setting the Stage for the Next Century: The Federal Plan for Gender Equality, gender-based analysis was devised to facilitate the development and assessment of policies from a gender perspective. While acknowledging that weaving gender into the policy process is a beginning, this paper examines the limitations of gender-based analysis and argues that given the intermingling of women's equality goals with gender equality, the Federal Plan and gender-based analysis are sending mixed messages to policy developers about how to incorporate into policy-development measures that attend to women's specific social and economic realities. These mixed messages derive from the narrowness and conceptual constraints of the term gender and are exacerbated by the limited organizational capacity of Status of Women Canada to effectively lead and coordinate substantive gender analysis.     

COMMENTARY ON TIPPINS AND WITTMANN'S "EMPIRICAL AND ETHICAL PROBLEMS WITH CUSTODY RECOMMENDATIONS:

Although in substantial agreement with Tippins and Wittmann's analysis, their call for a moratorium on the practice of custody evaluators making recommendations to the court does not solve the many problems that they have raised, and may have unintended consequences which place families at even greater risk. This commentary reflects our agreement with some of the authors' major points of contention, focuses on several points of disagreement, and suggests alternative remedies for the shortcomings and ethical problems described in child custody evaluations.     

Aggregation effects on male-to-female arrest rate ratios in New York State, 1972 to 1984

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of data aggregation on a specification of the relationship between sex and arrest rate trends. The analysis focuses on the empirical implications when arrest data are aggregated across dimensions that are likely to affect the sex-crime relationship. The data for the analysis consist of 4,119,358 male and female adult arrests in New York State for the 13-year period ending in 1984. Results indicate that race, regional differences, and the legal seriousness of the arrest charge produce significantly different patterns of sex convergence across time. On the basis of these results, we suggest serious limitations in past analyses of female crime rates and in the value of Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data for addressing theoretically relevant questions concerning the social correlates of official crime.     

The use of multiple informants to assess children's maltreatment experiences

Most researchers rely exclusively on the reports of protective service workers to determine children's abuse history. In this report, information about children's maltreatment experiences is obtained from protective service workers and three supplementary sources of data: parents, medical records, and clinical observations. Fifty-six children from 34 families receiving protective services for verified reports of physical abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, and/or emotional maltreatment participated in the study, with most children known to have experienced more than one type of abuse. The supplementary data provided important information about the range and severity of children's maltreatment experiences. Review of the parent and medical record data led to identification of 28 children who had additional types of maltreatment experiences that were not reported by their protective services workers—nine cases of physical abuse, two cases of neglect, five cases of sexual abuse, and 12 cases of emotional maltreatment. Supplementary data also revealed information about incidents of specific types of abuse that were more severe than those reported by the children's protective service workers in an additional 24 cases. A method was devised to synthesize information provided from the different sources of data examined in this report to derive 0–4 point ratings of four categories of maltreatment experiences: (1) physical abuse, (3) neglect, (3) sexual abuse, and (4) emotional maltreatment. The Kappa reliability coefficients for each of these scales were .88, .73, .83, and .90, respectively. Data demonstrating the relationship between these maltreatment ratings and various indices of the children's socioemotional and cognitive functioning were also presented to provide preliminary support for the validity of these scales. The findings from this study suggest that multiple sources of data should be examined in order to obtain accurate assessments of children's maltreatment experiences, and that independent raters can synthesize discrepant data to obtain reliable and valid estimates of children's abuse history. Clinical and methodological issues relevant to the improved assessment of children's maltreatment experiences are also discussed.     

法律全球化

提到法律全球化,我们可能联想到整个世界生活在单一法律规则下的程度。基于全球合意或者由于全球所有组成部分的平行发展而形成,这种单一法律规则可能由单一的强制执行角色付诸实施。尽管两极世界和冷战的结束带来些许欣慰,但我们并没有过多移近国际法体制,无论是通过确立单一全球法律提供者和实施者,还是通过坚强有力的民族国家协商一致。如果我们已经有的话,我们会说国际法,而不是法律全球化。我们甚至也不能信心十足地说,法律已经全球化或普遍化,具体表现是不管他/她走到地球的什么地方,人际关系均被一定的法、即使不是各处都相同的法律…