Family Peacemaking with an Interdisciplinary Team: A Therapist's Perspective

Interdisciplinary teams provide an unparalleled opportunity for peacemaking in families within the consensual dispute resolution continuum. This interdisciplinary environment was born out of the integration of Collaborative Law, in which lawyers limit the scope of their services to settlement by way of a signed agreement, and Collaborative Divorce, a team approach to divorce services that includes a lawyer for each party along with a Collaborative Divorce Coach for each party, a neutral financial specialist, and a neutral child specialist. Taken together, Interdisciplinary Collaborative Practice supports the resolution of legal issues out of court as well as addressing any emotional, relational, or behavioral problems that create obstacles to the successful resolution of the separation process.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:
• Collaborative Practice creates legal representation in a consensual environment limiting services to settlement negotiations by way of a written agreement.
• The International Academy of Collaborative Professionals includes 5,000 members in twenty‐five countries.
• Legal representation in a consensual environment together with interdisciplinary teams create endless possibilities for dispute resolution processes.
• Collaborative Lawyers, Collaborative Divorce Coaches, child specialists, and financial specialists can create custom‐fit interdisciplinary teams that work together out of court to support families through marital transition.
• Interdisciplinary teams are family centric, bridging appropriate disciplines and resources to the needs of the family to address the vast majority of divorce‐related problems.
• Divorcing families are moving targets, learning and evolving through the process.
• Therapeutic teams support families with more complex relational, emotional, and mental health problems to find resolutions out of court.
• Divorce is a mainstream event in Western culture; we need supportive processes to encourage the best possible outcomes for all family members, especially the children.

     

Collateral report of psychopathy: convergent and divergent validity of the psychopathic personality inventory-short form

Psychopathy is a personality syndrome comprised of interpersonal, affective, and behavioral features that has emerged as a correlate of intimate partner violence perpetration. One commonly used self-report measure of psychopathy is the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Short Form (PPI-SF). The current study employed a multi-trait, multi-method approach to test convergent and discriminant validity of the measure in partner-violent couples by comparing males’ self-report of psychopathy to the informant report of their female partner (N = 114). It was hypothesized that the female partner report of the male’s psychopathy would be highly correlated with the male report of his own psychopathy, thus providing evidence for the construct validity and interrater reliability of the PPI-SF. Analyses found that male and female reports were correlated significantly on the two major factors of the PPI-SF. Furthermore, the female report explained a significant amount of variance over and above men’s self-report on PAI scales designed to indicate antisocial personality traits.     

Livelihood recovery after disaster

A lack of monitoring and evaluation on the outcomes of livelihood recovery programming has typified many post-disaster recovery initiatives. This article uses a case study of the 2006 Yogyakarta, Indonesia earthquake to analyse longer-term impacts of livelihood programming after disaster. The article includes an overview of the programming implemented in five case study villages and the perspectives of impacted populations on the livelihood interventions. Results indicate the importance of longer-term programming, early interventions, local leadership, and an integrative strategy focusing on replacing assets, providing capital and credit to jumpstart entrepreneurial activities, capacity and skills building, and developing markets and networks.     

Negotiating one position: Switzerland at the Global Forum on Migration and Development

The paper explores intra-governmental processes in migration policy-making, using the example of Switzerland and examining its preparations for chairing the Global Forum on Migration and Development 2011. Switzerland's “one joint position”, presented at the forum, required intensive negotiations and cooperation between different Swiss federal offices. The paper highlights how and why Switzerland achieved this joint position. It analyses the intra-governmental tensions between national securitisation and global migration and development debates and how they were overcome. This experience of a “whole-of-government approach” offers an insight into politics underlying migration and development debates within donor countries, and its implications for global migration debates.     

India’s Growth Slowdown: End of an Era?

This article examines the sources of rapid economic growth in India in the 2000s and explanations for the growth slowdown in more recent years. We use the Indian national accounts and the National Sample Survey (NSS) to perform a growth accounting analysis. We disaggregate the total economy into agriculture, industry and services and separately identify the contributions of labor, capital and improvements in productivity. Services account for the largest share of the acceleration in 2000-10. Industry, on the other hand, is the sector most reflective of the recent slowdown. The high growth of the 2000s can be traced to strong capital accumulation, improvements in labor skills and large productivity gains. A slowing in the pace of economic reform and a general deterioration in fiscal and monetary policies appear to be the major factors responsible for the slower pace of growth since 2010.     

The Homicide–Suicide Phenomenon: Findings of Psychological Autopsies

Homicide–suicide represents a single episode of violence which may decimate an entire family. This study aimed to further describe motives and context of these tragedies. Psychological autopsies were completed for 18 homicide–suicide cases in Dallas, Texas. This included postevent interviews with surviving family members and review of police and coroner records. Two‐thirds of perpetrators had made either verbal or written threats prior to the homicide–suicide. A simplified typology describing victim–perpetrator relationship and motive type is suggested for future studies and clinical ease. Two‐thirds of perpetrators fell into the category of Intimate‐Possessive, most of whom were depressed men who were abusing substances and undergoing separation. Additional categories included Intimate‐Ailing, Filial‐Revenge, Familial‐Psychotic, and Friend‐Psychotic. Further, implications from this psychological autopsy study regarding risk assessment include use of collateral interviews regarding threats and past violence.     

The Meaning of Champion Dyeing and Finishing: EIL Insurance Must Be Available in the Year That the Precise Risk Manifested Itself

Champion Dyeing & Finishing Co., Inc. v. Centennial Insurance Company and North River Insurance Company, decided in November 2002, represents a decisive victory for policy holders in environmental coverage litigation involving the availability of EIL insurance after 1985 or 1986. EIL coverage was generally unavailable after 1985 and until 1995, particularly for old leaking underground storage tanks (UST's). The availability issue arises in environmental coverage cases where the court adopts a prorata rather than joint and several theory of allocating responsibility for cleanup costs, and when in such cases there are periods of no insurance, because, for example of the insertion of the absolute pollution exclusion in commercial general liability (CGL) policies. In those circumstances, the courts apply the “willing self-insurer” rule and allocate responsibility to the insured who willingly decided to retain the risk. Until Champion Dyeing, there was little guidance about how to determine availability in the context of site-specific environmental pollution. The case was part of a 1998 declaratory judgment action by a small manufacturing company seeking reimbursement for cleanup costs attributable to pollution from two fuel oil storage tanks found leaking in November 1997. Reversing the trial court's decision, the New Jersey appellate court found that defendants failed to prove insurance available to the insured in 1997 and that therefore the duty to indemnify should have been apportioned solely among the insurers. In doing so, it stressed the necessity of demonstrating that insurance could have been purchased covering the precise risk that manifested, not simply that EIL insurance covering undefined risks was available. Its rationale was based on a recognition of the two essential differences between EIL and CGL insurance: claims made trigger of coverage and coverage of specific pollution conditions rather than generalized occurrences. In addition, testimony at trial failed to demonstrate the availability in 1997 of insurance providing coverage for the risk at issue because the testimony at the insurer's expert lacked foundation. This decision indicates that, in order to prove or disprove availability, the parties must first hire a competent environmental insurance expert and then must ask and answer three questions: What policies were being issued in the market that applied to the particular type of risk during the relevant time period, and especially in the year that the risk manifested? Would the insured have been able to purchase one of these policies or endorsements for its particular risk? Would the policy terms have provided coverage for the specific manifested risk in question? After applying these three questions to a number of hypotheticals with typical fact patterns, it is evident how impossible it is to prove coverage available for UST risks such as in the Champion case and how extremely difficult it will be to do so for non-UST, generally-site specific risks.     

Implementation Studies: Time for a Revival? Personal Reflections on 20 Years of Implementation Studies

This paper presents a review of three decades of implementation studies and is constructed in the form of a personal reflection. The paper begins with a reflection upon the context within which the book Policy and Action was written, a time when both governments and policy analysts were endeavouring to systematize and improve the public decision-making process and to place such decision-making within a more strategic framework. The review ends with a discussion about how public policy planning has changed in the light of public services reform strategies. It is suggested that as a result of such reforms, interest in the processes of implementation have perhaps been superseded by a focus upon change management and performance targets. It is further argued that this has resulted in the reassertion of normative, top-down processes of policy implementation. The paper raises points that are important ones and indeed are reflected throughout all four papers in the symposium issue. These are: (1) the very real analytical difficulties of understanding the role of bureaucratic discretion and motivation; (2) the problem of evaluating policy outcomes; and (3) the need to also focus upon micro political processes that occur in public services organizations. In conclusion, the paper emphasizes the continued importance of implementation studies and the need for policy analysts to understand what actually happens at policy recipient level.     

The impact of litigants' baby-facedness and attractiveness on adjudications in small claims courts

The effects of litigants' facial appearance on judicial decisions were investigated in 506 cases heard in small claims courts. Replicating previous laboratory studies, both baby-facedness and attractiveness exerted a significant impact on adjudications. As plaintiffs increased in attractiveness, defendants were more likely to lose the case. Also, as defendants increased in baby-facedness, they were more likely to win cases involving intentional actions and less likely to win cases involving negligent actions, although the latter simple effect was not significant. Finally, as defendants increased in facial maturity, they were required to pay larger monetary awards to baby-faced plaintiffs, albeit not to average or mature-faced plaintiffs. This pattern of decisions was interpreted as reflecting assumptions about the psychological attributes of baby-faced versus mature-faced individuals. The effects of the extralegal variables of litigant attractiveness and baby-facedness were sufficiently large to have practical as well as statistical significance, and they were independent of each other and the age of the litigants as well as of legal variables predicting adjudications.This research was supported by NIMH grant No. BSR 5 R01 MH42684 to the first author. Thanks are extended to Philip Shapiro for his help with legal terminology, to Steven Samuels for his help in the data collecton, and to Michael Berbaum and Avron Spiro III for their statistical assistance in the data analysis.