Disability and support relationships: What role does policy play?

Very little is known about how relationships between people with disabilities and their paid support workers are positioned in policy. With the policy shift toward choice of provider, individualised approaches, person centredness and self‐directed funding, the nature of their relationship assumes a more prominent role in the quality of support practice. The policy analysis in this article explores the extent to which current disability policy acknowledges, promotes, or diminishes the relationships between people with disabilities and workers, in their organisational context. It uses Honneth's conditions for recognition—love (cared for), rights (respected) and solidarity or social esteem (valued)—to understand how policy positions mutuality in the relationship. The policy review applied a three‐stage process: categorisation of policies, textual analysis and content analysis to policy documents at four levels—international, Australian federal, state and organisational in two case studies. The analysis revealed that while a rights framework is explicit in most policies, the emphases on the conditions for recognition within a relationship between people with disabilities and workers are compromised in instructional policies that attempt to manage the tension between choice and risk, particularly at the organisational level.     

Comment on Vreeland (2011): Foreign aid and global governance: Buying Bretton Woods��the Swiss-bloc case

This comment discusses highlights of Vreeland's excellent analysis of how Switzerland was able to use foreign aid to secure its election to provide the executive director to the IMF from its group of countries. This sheds light on a little understood aspect of the governance of the IMF. The comment goes on to argue, however, that the formal role of the executive directors in the operation of the IMF has been substantially diminished over time and that inclusion of more representatives from emerging market countries in the IMF's senior management team is a more important way of substantively increasing the influence of these countries on the behavior of the IMF.     

The potential of urinary androstdiene markers to identify 4-androstenediol (4-ADIOL) administration in athletes

Doping control laboratories accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) require criteria that allow endogenous steroids to be distinguished from their synthetic analogues in urine. Methodology based on "looking outside the metabolic box" was used in this study to identify diagnostic urinary markers of 4-androstenediol (4-ADIOL) administration. Androst-2,4-diene-17-one and androst-3,5-diene-17-one are proposed to be formed in urine from acid-catalyzed hydrolysis of 4-ADIOL sulfoconjugate, a major phase II metabolic product of 4-ADIOL. The presence of these markers in the routine gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) steroid screen was suitable to identify samples requiring confirmation by gas chromatography-combustion-isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC-C-IRMS) - to measure the carbon isotope ratio (δ(13)C) of the androstdiene markers and confirm their likely synthetic origin based on depleted (13)C content.     

Perpetrator programmes for partner violence: Are they based on ideology or evidence?

Purpose. The ideologically based view of intimate partner violence has traditionally influenced policy and practice in modern western nations and dominated cross‐national research and practice. This review considers the validity of the position statement of a British organization responsible for accrediting many male perpetrator programmes in the statutory, voluntary, and private sector as an example of this ideological influence. Method. The position statement, informed by the patriarchal view of partner violence, is evaluated using empirical evidence from various branches of the social sciences, including psychology, that have not been guided by the patriarchal view. Results. Overwhelming empirical evidence is presented, which refutes ideologically driven assumptions that have been put forward to guide current practice and evaluation of it. Conclusions. This review highlights the need to investigate intimate partner violence from a scientific and gender‐inclusive perspective. The implications for psychological practice are discussed.     

Editorial

Were the Carmelite order to submit argument based on what itssisters do today, the result in Gilmour v Coats [1949] AC 426would be reversed: but not its finding that the efficacy ofprayer is non-justiciable. Sacramental efficacy is in the same boat. The theologians holdthat the ministers of the sacrament of matrimony are the couplethemselves. In times when the imbalance between the relativesocial positions of the sexes was extreme, the additional requirementof a priestly witness helped protect the weak position in whichthe wife might have found herself