Reducing recurrent care proceedings: initial evidence from new interventions

The English family justice system faces a crisis of recurrence. As many as one in four birth mothers involved in public law care proceedings in English family courts are likely to reappear in a subsequent set of proceedings within seven years. These mothers are involved in up to one-third of total care applications, as they are – by definition – linked to more than one child . Few birth mothers experiencing the removal of a child to care are offered any follow-up support, despite often facing multiple challenges including poverty, addiction, domestic violence and mental health problems. Since 2011, however, a number of new services have been established to begin to address their unmet needs. This article summarises the findings of the first academic-led evaluation of two of these initiatives. Presenting evidence from a mixed-methods evaluative study, it concludes that the new services were able to foster relationships that ‘worked’ in reducing recurrent proceedings. None of the women engaging with the services went on to experience what could be described as a ‘rapid repeat pregnancy’ within the evaluation window. Just as significantly, a number of clients reported some improvement in their psychological functioning, and the practitioners involved reported positively on their experience of delivering and managing innovative services. The article closes with a discussion of the challenges of evaluating personalised, strengths-based interventions and the possibilities of evidencing empowerment in these cases.     

Litigation Versus Legislation: Forum Shopping by Rent Seekers

To change the law, an interest group must choose between lobbyingthe legislature and litigating for new precedent. Lobbyingbecomes more likely as the relative benefits from rule changebecome greater, as the costs of lobbying become smaller and asthe voting strength of the interest groups becomes larger.Litigating becomes more likely as trial costs fall, as therelative benefits from rule change become greater, as theinclination of courts to change existing precedents increases,and as the interest group is involved in more trials. Examplesof using a litigating strategy include the NAACP is its battlefor racial integration and attorneys seeking change in tort law.Business, in resisting changes to tort law, has used the judicialprocess. The nature of equilibrium, if any, is not clear.     

Longitudinal Disparities of Hazardous Drinking Between Sexual Minority and Heterosexual Individuals from Adolescence to Young Adulthood

Sexual minority (lesbian and gay, bisexual, mostly heterosexual) individuals are at an increased risk for hazardous drinking than heterosexual individuals, but little is known about the nature of the disparities as adolescents reach adulthood. We used four waves of a nationally representative data set, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), to examine disparities of hazardous drinking outcomes between sexual minority and heterosexual men and women from adolescence to young adulthood. Participants were 14–18 years old at the first assessment (N = 12,379; 53 % female) and 27–31 years old at the fourth assessment. At the fourth assessment, 13 % self-identified as sexual minority individuals, 16 % were Hispanic, and 36 % were of minority race, including primarily African Americans (60 %) and Asian Americans (18 %). There were clear hazardous drinking disparities between sexual minority individuals and heterosexual individuals over time. During adolescence, sexual minority individuals, particularly females, reported higher levels of hazardous drinking. As study participants reached adulthood, the magnitude of the hazardous drinking disparities increased among sexual minorities, sexual minority men in particular. Additional research is needed to better understand the developmental mechanisms that underlie the emerging sexual orientation related disparities of hazardous drinking in young adulthood.     

‘HOTTEST 100 WOMEN’

Social movement theorists have developed several concepts to explain the role of social networking in maintaining social movements. This is particularly relevant for periods when levels of public activism are low due to backlash, hostile social contexts and structural uncertainties. As part of my study of the women's movement online and feminist blog networks in Australia, I provide a review of several of these concepts, interrogating their applicability to the study of online communities. This paper explores the relevance of the social movement theory concepts of submerged networks, abeyance structures and the related idea of counterpublics for the study of feminist blog networks. In 2009, the radio station Triple J's ‘Hottest 100 of All Time’ poll featured no solo women artists, and women played on few tracks. In response to this, several strands of discourse developed in the Australian feminist blogosphere identifying ways that the history of rock music excludes or erases women. Activists developed a cross-platform poll on Twitter, Facebook and email, and promoted it through blogs and Twitter, to counter the ‘Hottest 100 Men’ with a ‘Hottest 100 Women’. This paper shows the ways these women have used blogging networks to challenge mainstream discourses and generate new ones.     

From Fashion Colours to Spectrum Analysis: negotiating femininities in mid-Victorian women's magazines

This article closely examines the first set of accusations in the Matthew Hopkins witch‐hunting phenomenon in early modern England by paying particular attention to the female actors. It reveals that Matthew Hopkins was not only a member of the elite group that lent credibility to the witchcraft accusations arising from within the community, but he also had kinship ties with Susan Edwards, mother of the child supposedly bewitched to death by this group of women. This impacts on the traditional historiography concerning Hopkins's role as a witch‐finder. Secondly, the evidence reveals a group of marginalized women who befriended and supported one another. It is argued that this group of independent women, meeting together without the supervision of a man, challenged the social order. Witchcraft was a social phenomenon that had the ability to satisfy many divergent needs. When multiple agendas converged, a suggestion by a cunning person could end in the execution of many victims. The author suggests that the so‐called witches' meeting was actually a prayer meeting of semi‐literate, devout women, who fell outside the parameters of the ‘godly’ community of Mistley parish. In this case, the accusations may not have spread any further than the two women who were initially suggested by the cunning woman, if it had not been for the women's group meetings.     

Research integrity — it's about more than misconduct

The definition of integrity is "the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles that you refuse to change" (meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary). Yet research integrity is frequently discussed through the lens of misconduct or concerns around reproducibility. However, as we can see from this quote, integrity is about more than that. It is about who you are as a person and your behaviour. Your behaviour in terms of how you do your work, towards your immediate colleagues and towards those with whom you communicate; whether across the research and innovation (R&I) system or the general public.     

Sa`id Ahmad Al-Jinahi’s I was in Dhufar: gendered militarization and modern space in revolutionary Oman

Sa`id Ahmad Al-Jinahi’s journalistic account of the Dhufar Revolution (1965–1976) seeks to define an aspirational revolutionary modernity by describing how militarization has the potential to transform gender roles in Dhufar. For Jinahi, revolutionary masculinity is the combination of an ideological commitment to armed liberationist struggle and the physical ability to master Dhufar’s challenging natural environment. Inside militarized spaces, both men and women may participate in this masculinity. Once Jinahi encounters women outside of these spaces, however, he sees them as sexual objects rather than as revolutionary comrades. This article argues that Jinahi articulates an aspirational modernity by, first, connecting Dhufar to a global space of liberationist struggles and, second, emphasizing an ideologically infused and environmentally savvy masculinity that strictly limits female participation to militarized spaces and proscribes women’s agency outside the physical boundaries of revolutionary armed struggle.