The State as Parent: The Reluctant Parent? The Problems of Parents of Last Resort

This paper will explore the idea of the local authority as a reluctant parent. It will consider the extent to which this reluctance is produced by the care proceedings system and its consequences for children. Local authorities are both expected to refrain from intervening (care proceedings are a measure of last resort) and to be fully prepared for intervention (whilst leaving children with their parents). Amongst the themes which will be developed here are the impact of the juridification of social work and the emphasis on the courts for holding local authorities to account; the balance between voluntary accommodation and compulsory care; and the problems of resourcing care services. Its main focus will be on children who enter care because of abuse or neglect. Its thesis is that the conflicting expectations on local authorities, resource constraints, and considerations of legal process make them reluctant parents.     

The ‘relics of Joan of Arc’: A forensic multidisciplinary analysis

Archaeological remains can provide concrete cases, making it possible to develop, refine or validate medico-legal techniques.In the case of the so-called ‘Joan of Arc's relics’ (a group of bone and archaeological remains known as the ‘Bottle of Chinon’), 14 specialists analysed the samples such as a cadaver X of carbonised aspect: forensic anthropologist, medical examiners, pathologists, geneticists, radiologist, biochemists, palynologists, zoologist and archaeologist. Materials, methods and results of this study are presented here.This study aims to offer an exploitable methodology for the modern medico-legal cases of small quantities of human bones of carbonised aspect.     

A decade on from the NCH Report (1992): Adolescent sexual aggression policy,practice and service delivery across the UK and Republic of Ireland

Abstract

This paper considers the issues involved in the use of manuals to guide the treatment of sexual offenders. I identify problems in the use of manuals, particularly their failure to encourage satisfactorily the implementation of therapeutic skills, the restrictions they place upon the therapist's ability to address the responsivity principle, the limits to which manuals can accommodate changes as a result of new evidence and the suppression of innovation. I offer suggestions for an alternative set of strategies to ensure the integrity of treatment delivery while at the same time overcoming the problems associated with manualization.     

Struggling for food sovereignty in the World March of Women

This contribution focuses on how food sovereignty is being re-signified as a feminist issue by a non-peasant transnational feminist network, the World March of Women. First, we review the feminist literature on women, gender and food sovereignty and make suggestions regarding how to conceptualize the latter to better analyze women’s and feminist struggles on this terrain. Second, we highlight the variety of discourses and practices through which food sovereignty is appropriated in the different spaces and scales of the March. Third, we identify the political dynamics that underlie the uneven deployment of the project of food sovereignty among the national coordinating bodies of the March. Our conclusion stresses the role of discursive articulations and of internal and external alliances as processes through which food sovereignty is both diffused and transformed, and draws some implications for the larger scholarship on food sovereignty.