Evaluating integrative services in edge-of-care work

Children living on ‘the edge-of-care’ are typically known to local safeguarding authorities and are considered likely to face risks to their safety. Many are subject to a child protection plan and/or involved in ‘pre-proceedings’ processes. A growing number of their parents face (un)diagnosed mental health difficulties as well as economic and social precarity. This article draws on a mixed methods evaluation of a pilot service in the East of England offering a therapeutically led attachment-based intervention for families. The service cross-cuts health and social care, allowing psychologists and psychotherapists to work alongside social workers and other practitioners. The evaluation examined psychological and safeguarding outcomes and explored practitioner perspectives. A key outcome was that 85.4% of families were enabled to remain, or reunite with their child, compared with an estimated 50% of ‘edge-of-care’ cases nationally. This supports the need for similarly oriented interventions that could help lower the incidence of child removals.     

Devolution as Process: Institutional Structures,State Personnel and Transport Policy in the United Kingdom

Abstract. Devolution has been described as a key ‘global trend’ over recent decades as governments have decentralised power and responsibilities to subordinate regional institutions. UK devolution is characterised by its asymmetrical nature with different territories granted different institutional arrangements and powers. This paper seeks to examine the role of state personnel in mobilising the new institutional machinery and managing the process of devolution, focusing on transport policy. The research presented shows a clear contrast between London and Northern Ireland, on the one hand, and Scotland and Wales, on the other, in terms of the effectiveness of political leaders in creating clear policy priorities and momentum in transport.     

Is Differentiation of Frequently Encountered Foreign Bodies in Corpses Possible by Hounsfield Density Measurement?

Abstract:  The radiological determination of foreign objects in corpses can be difficult if they are fragmented or deformed. With multislice computed tomography, radiodensities—referred to as Hounsfield units (HU)—can be measured. We examined the possibility of differentiating 21 frequently occurring foreign bodies, such as metals, rocks, and different manmade materials by virtue of their HU values. Gold, steel, and brass showed mean HU values of 30671–30710 (upper measurable limit), mean HU values for steel, silver, copper, and limestone were 20346, 16949, 14033, and 2765, respectively. The group consisting of objects, such as aluminum, tarmac, car front-window glass, and other rocks, displayed mean HU values of 2329–2131 HU. The mean HU value of bottle glass and car side-window glass was 2088, whereas windowpane glass was 493. HU value determination may therefore help in preautopsy differentiation between case-relevant and irrelevant foreign bodies and thus be useful for autopsy planning and extraction of the objects in question.     

The boundaries of law and the purpose of legal philosophy

Many of the current debates in jurisprudence focus on articulating the boundaries of law. In this essay I challenge this approach on two separate grounds. I first argue that if such debates are to be about law, their purported subject, they ought to pay closer attention to the practice. When such attention is taken it turns out that most of the debates on the boundaries of law are probably indeterminate. I show this in particular with regard to the debate between inclusive and exclusive positivists: I present several ways of understanding what this debate is about and argue that none of them is defensible. My second argument focuses more on the purpose of jurisprudential inquiry. I argue there that even if some jurisprudential debates have determinate answers, it does not follow that they deserve our attention, because not all true facts are worth knowing. After discussing and rejecting the claim that jurisprudence could be justified as knowledge for its own sake, I propose one possible justification for engaging in legal philosophy and outline its implications for the kind of issues that should be pursued. Assistant Professor, University of Warwick School of Law. The Essay was presented in the Oxford Jurisprudence Discussion Group. I thank participants there for their comments.     

The Influence of Foreign Voices on U.S. Public Opinion

Public opinion in the lead‐up to the 2003 Iraq War presents a puzzle. Despite the fact that domestic political elites publicly voiced little opposition to the invasion, large numbers of Americans remained opposed to military action throughout the pre‐war period, in contrast to the predictions of existing theory. We argue that some rank‐and‐file Democrats and independents expressed opposition because of the widely reported antiwar positions staked out by foreign, not domestic, elites. Merging a large‐scale content analysis of news coverage with public opinion surveys from August 2002 through March 2003, we show that Democrats and independents—especially those with high levels of political awareness—responded to dissenting arguments articulated in the mass media by foreign officials. Our results, which constitute the first empirical demonstration of foreign elite communication effects on U.S. public opinion, show that scholars must account for the role played by non‐U.S. officials in prominent foreign policy debates.     

Farewell to the Exclusive-Inclusive Debate

In recent years there has an ongoing debate between two versionsof legal positivism. According to one, called exclusive positivism,whenever the law refers to morality, the law necessarily directsits subjects to an external, non-legal, standard, because thereis a conceptual impossibility in incorporating moral standardsinto the law. According to the rival inclusive positivist position,such incorporation is possible, and therefore moral standardscan be (although they need not be) part of the law. In thisarticle I argue that both views are mistaken since they bothassume that whenever words like ‘equality’, ‘justice’etc. appear in the law they refer to moral standards. Rather,I argue, these words refer to legal standards, which are differentfrom the moral standards. As a result the question of the possibilityof incorporation can be avoided, and the debate between exclusiveand inclusive positivists put to rest.     

The meaning of a militia: Understanding the civil defence forces of Sierra Leone

This article is an adapted, narrative version of an expert witnessreport the author wrote for the Defence of one of the accusedbefore the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The case againstthe Civil Defence Forces militia was predicated in part on theargument that the CDF was a military organization with military-stylecommand and control. Based on a close reading of the Prosecution'smilitary expert witness report and the author's ethnographicresearch with the militia, the article outlines a case for understandingthe CDF as the militarization of a social network rather thanas a military organization. This framing has implications notonly for post-conflict adjudication, but for how we think aboutand intervene in violent contexts throughout contemporary WestAfrica.     

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.