Obliging children

Children may sometimes undergo healthcare procedures that are not intended to improve their health status. Such interventions might include the use of young children as bone marrow donors or their enrolment in non-therapeutic research. One of the justifications used to legitimise these interventions is the premise that children have obligations to others; to their family in the case of related bone marrow transplantation, and to wider society in the case of non-therapeutic research. However, this 'obligation model' (the notion that children possess positive obligations to advance the health status of others) fails as a justificatory paradigm because it is based upon a confusion, identified by Hart, between two notions; that of 'being under an obligation to do something' and that of 'being obliged to do something'. Instead the 'obligation model' is a device employed to put a justificatory gloss upon a consequentialist decision-making process; removing the legitimising gloss allows for a more transparent look at the conflict between parental rights and an individual child's right to bodily integrity.     

Comparative Analysis of the Effects of Heat on the PCR‐Amplification of Various Sized DNA Fragments Extracted from Sus Scrofa Molars*

Abstract: This study examined the effects of heat on the amplification of DNA from the dental pulp of Sus scrofa molars and investigated the protection afforded to the pulp tissue by the dental enamel, alveolar process, and soft tissue of the head. Segments of defleshed maxilla and mandible encasing the first molar (n = 60) were subject to a range of temperatures for 15 min. Dental pulps were retrieved. Amplifications using three‐primer and four‐primer multiplexes showed no degradation of the largest fragment following exposure to 450°C. Amplifications in the three‐primer multiplex (283 bp) were successful following exposure to 525°C in maxillary samples only. This study revealed the enamel density of maxillary molars to be greater than mandibular molars in Sus scrofa. Following incineration of intact heads for 15 min (n = 10) and 1 h (n = 4) at an average temperature of 625°C, amplifications of the largest fragment (450 bp) were successful from both maxillary and mandibular teeth.     

The Psychological Impact on Police Officers of Being First Responders to Completed Suicides

When a suicide is completed, police officers are often among the first responders. Little attention has been paid to the emotional and psychological impact on the police officer in this specific situation. This study examines the effects encounters with completed suicides have on the emotional and psychological well-being of the police officer. This is a qualitative study, which intends to bring alive the feelings, thoughts, actions, choices, and challenges of police officers who have encountered completed suicides as imparted through participants' stories. Interviews were done with eight police officers. In addition, interviews were done with a coroner, a police chaplain, and a police psychologist to add some unique perspectives to the police officers’ experiences of encountering completed suicides. Interviews were done in a semi-structured, focused format involving an ongoing fine-tuning of questions. The overarching finding reveals the central role played by police culture in shaping how police officers come to perceive this experience, and how they subsequently choose to mediate it. This study identifies ten strategies police officers use to mediate this experience, and discusses the possible psychological consequences of employing each strategy.     

Sharing a Single Seat: The Poetics and Politics of Male Intimacy in the Vikramāṅkakāvya

In this essay, I trace the enabling conditions for the major statement of the subversive subtext in Bilhaṇa’s Vikramāṅkadevacarita (VDC) by unpacking the operation of the work’s patent, eulogistic text. In particular, I will explore the place given to the depiction of male intimacy as a poetic substitute or simulacrum for the political alliances central to Vikramāditya’s coming to the throne, as described in the mahākāvya’s fourth through sixth sargas. My intention in focusing on the intense friendships between men is to highlight a significant rhetorical strategy of Bilhaṇa’s, which allowed the poet both to introduce and to buffer the poem’s most explicit statement of his skepticism towards royal power. It is this charged affective theme—one that occupied only a tenuous position within the regnant critical discourse of literary emotion at the time—that sets up Bilhaṇa’s most powerful and explicit denunciation of kingship. The explicit theme of royal praise and the subtext of its denunciation can thus be seen as contrapuntally related, which goes some way towards explaining how the court poet was able to successfully carry off his potentially incendiary literary project.     

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.     

The children’s programme: a description of a group and family intervention for children engaging in problematic and harmful sexual behaviour and their parents/carers

ABSTRACT

Children under 10 are increasingly being referred to services for concerning problematic or harmful sexual behaviour, but information about interventions to support these children and their families is limited. A 3-year pilot of a group cognitive–behavioural intervention for children and their parents/carers is described. Forty-nine children were referred to the programme with 27 completing the programme in this period. This is the first intervention of its kind to be delivered with a UK population and demographic information is provided about the children who have been assessed, including information about age, gender, family composition and abuse history. Outcome data from the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children, Child Sexual Behaviour Inventory, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and the Parental Stress and Social Support Scale is reported. The available outcome data indicates the group has been largely beneficial in reducing problematic sexual behaviour. Key learning and implications for practice are discussed.     

Pornography: Reflections upon past and current issues

Abstract

Summary: This article reviews historical and recent - and differing - responses from feminists in the developed and in the developing worlds, to the production and use of pornographic materials. It explores some of the possible reasons for changes in feminist analyses and posits future directions for feminist responses to pornographic materials, based on recent contributions to the debates.     

Political but not partisan: Marketing parliaments and their members

Parliaments are difficult institutions to market and promote to their publics, partly because of their political nature and their institutional complexity. However, because good promotion requires a good ‘product’, thinking about parliaments in terms of their promotion can also focus attention helpfully on how they are actually structured and operated, thereby contributing to the improvement in their effectiveness, both internally and in relation to the wider polity. The Westminster and Scottish Parliaments can be usefully and conveniently compared and contrasted, both in terms of their parliamentary product, and in its promotion. such a comparative analysis highlights some of the defining characteristics of an effective parliament, such as an underlying vision and purpose, substantive institutional autonomy (especially in relation to the executive), and genuine public engagement. It also emphasises that both the operation and the promotion of a parliament are multi-layered tasks for parliamentarians and parliamentary staff.