Reform for Australian Family Law

This article examines the Commonwealth Family Law Amendment Bill 1981 and considers the extent to which some of the proposed reforms will affect family law in Australia. The article analyses existing jurisdictional and procedural limitations of the Family Court originating from the High Court decision in Russell v Russell (1976). It is argued that most of the proposed reforms contained in the Bill are welcome and should improve the financial and psychological position of spouses and children who are subject to the trauma of marital breakdown.     

Parenting through the lenses of risk and othering: Constructions of parental cannabis use in child protection court proceedings

The construction of parents' cannabis use in the context of child protection has far-reaching implications for how their parenting is perceived and assessed and for the decisions made regarding their children's lives. Yet little is known about the meanings various stakeholders in child protection processes attribute to parents' cannabis use. This paper aims to explore constructions of parents' cannabis use in child protection court proceedings and position them within a political and social context. A qualitative data mining method was used to examine 32 Family Court judgements in care proceedings that involved parents using cannabis in England and Wales. The analysis of the judgements revealed that most portrayed parents' cannabis use as a negative, deviant and harmful activity. Three constructions of cannabis use were identified: cannabis use as a risk to children, cannabis use as proof of parents' deficits, and cannabis use as (responsible) self-medication. The discussion considers the findings in light of two social and political processes that underpin child protection policy and practice: the adoption of a risk perspective and the manifestation of othering processes. Implications for policy and practice highlight the importance of developing a critical framework for responding to parental cannabis use.     

Anticipated Ethics and Regulatory Challenges in PCORnet: The National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network

PCORnet, the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network, seeks to establish a robust national health data network for patient-centered comparative effectiveness research. This article reports the results of a PCORnet survey designed to identify the ethics and regulatory challenges anticipated in network implementation. A 12-item online survey was developed by leadership of the PCORnet Ethics and Regulatory Task Force; responses were collected from the 29 PCORnet networks. The most pressing ethics issues identified related to informed consent, patient engagement, privacy and confidentiality, and data sharing. High priority regulatory issues included IRB coordination, privacy and confidentiality, informed consent, and data sharing. Over 150 IRBs and five different approaches to managing multisite IRB review were identified within PCORnet. Further empirical and scholarly work, as well as practical and policy guidance, is essential if important initiatives that rely on comparative effectiveness research are to move forward.     

The Family Law Act, 1975: One Consumer's Viewpoint

This is a paper about some of my experiences as a consumer of the Family Law Act, 1975. I decided to write about these experiences because few other consumers have done so. The literature in this area is dominated by the experts — the lawyers, the court counsellors, the social scientists. There is no formal provision for consumers' opinion to be considered. My personal experiences highlighted how different it was to be on the receiving end as a consumer in contrast to my academic understanding of the Family Law Act as a university educator. Unless consumers begin to voice their opinions loudly and clearly, we are not going to see further reforms to this legislation, and indeed the high expectations of the people who created the Family Law Act will not be realized. I believe my professional background, personal experiences and the time lapse since my case, afford me the opportunity to evaluate the effects of the Family Court upon me. In attempting to take a dispassionate view of this process, I hope others will take heart and write about their experiences too.     

Running Against a Woman: Do Female Opponents Shape Male Candidate Behaviors?*

Objective. The male‐dominated nature of U.S. politics still means that the vast majority of women who run for office face a male opponent. As a result, one dramatic change in U.S. politics—the increase in women candidates—may contribute to another change, that being the experience of men who run for office. The research reported here begins to consider how running against a woman might have influenced the behavior of male candidates for Congress in 2002 and 2006. Past research suggests that men who run against women feel that they need to take steps to appeal to women voters by giving attention to issues of concern to women in their campaigns. Methods. To test the hypothesis that men will alter their attention to women's issues in the face of a woman candidate, I use campaign websites to examine the issue priorities of men who ran against women and compare them to a sample of men who ran against other men. Results. Counter to expectations, I find no evidence that men “play” to women voters through their attention to women's issues and instead demonstrate the relatively limited visibility that men give to these issues when they run against a woman. Conclusions. Running against a woman may have some limited impact on male candidate behaviors, but does not appear to be a significant influence.     

Ethical guidelines for research with children: A review of current research ethics documentation in New Zealand

Abstract

Children's rights to participate in matters affecting them, including research, have gained increasing recognition over recent decades. This recognition, and the growth in research with children as participants, has given rise to greater attention from researchers to ethical issues related to child research. This article reviews the current ethics documentation in New Zealand. The findings indicate that considerable variation exists between ethical codes and guidelines in relation to research with children. The dominant focus is on attending to issues of consent and protection from harm, at the outset of the research, rather than recognition of the ongoing nature of ethical issues throughout the research process. Although the findings indicate an increase in the consideration of ethical issues, the existing documentation is inconsistent and inadequate in attending to specific child‐related issues. Suggestions are made to enhance children's participation in research and demonstrate a respect for their participation rights.     

Racial/ethnic and socio‐economic biases in child maltreatment severity assessment in Spanish child protection services caseworkers

Evidence from several countries has shown the over‐representation of racial/ethnic minority groups in child protection services (CPS). The objective of the present study was to explore whether racial/ethnic and socio‐economic biases influence Spanish CPS caseworkers' judgements of the severity of child maltreatment. Moreover, the study attempted to explore the influence on these judgements of the use of structured instruments and professional experience. Two case vignettes of child maltreatment were presented to 405 CPS caseworkers and 169 students of social work and psychology. Family ethnic origin and income were manipulated in the vignettes. The findings showed no statistical evidence of biases related to family ethnic origin or socio‐economic status (SES) in Spanish CPS caseworkers' judgements of maltreatment severity. Biases related to family SES were found for students for the vignettes of physical abuse. CPS caseworkers and students who did not use a structured instrument to assess maltreatment severity tended to underestimate the severity for the vignettes of parental incapacity to control child/adolescent behaviour and to overestimate it for the vignettes of physical abuse. CPS caseworkers who used a structured instrument showed higher percentages of accuracy and inter‐rater agreement, supporting the relevance of structured tools in reducing potential caseworkers' biases.     

EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW: THE LIMITS OF LEGAL AID AND THE COST OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

The High Court decision in the Dietrich case highlighted the perilous state of legal aid in Australia when it instructed judges to refuse to hear criminal trials when a person has no legal counsel due to inability to pay and has been denied legal aid. The decision of the High Court places pressure on the Federal Government to resolve the situation by legislating a guaranteed right of legal representation. This article discusses the inadequacies of the legal system by examining the implications of the Dietrich case. It is argued that recent government reports only provide a piecemeal approach to improving access to justice and what is needed is wider systemic change in the form of universal legal insurance. Only in this way can citizenship rights he reasserted to ensure social justice.     

Ethics,Gender, and Ethnicity in Single-Case Research and Evaluation

Social work practitioners and students are now being encouraged to do single-case research or at least, to evaluate their practice outcomes objectively. Ethical issues in both endeavors, including issues related to clients' gender and ethnicity, need more attention than they have been given. This article explores a number of ethical issues in single-case research and evaluation, with special attention to possible gender and ethnic bias in selecting clients or target problems to monitor. Guidelines for reducing bias, seeking informed client consent, and use of human subjects review are proposed.     

FOUR PLUS FOUR

This article describes a family group with a changing, heterogeneous, short-term membership. The host setting is an alcoholism treatment unit within a traditional, private psychiatric hospital. Family group members come on behalf of another, not for themselves. This paper treats issues of selection process, structure, objectives. themes, specific problems of this type of group, leaders' techniques for dealing with such problems, and cotherapy roles and interactions, recording both individual and group change and applicability to other settings.     

Disclosing Conflicts of Interest to Research Subjects: An Ethical and Legal Analysis

In this article, I examine the ethical and legal issues related to disclosure of conflicts of interest to research subjects, and discuss some empirical studies related to the topic. I argue that researchers have an ethical obligation to disclose conflicts of interest to research subjects, provided that they take steps to help subjects understand information about conflicts of interest and how to interpret it. Researchers also may have a legal duty to disclose conflicts of interests to subjects, depending on the facts of the case and the court's interpretation of the law. To reinforce and clarify the legal obligation to disclose conflicts of interest, the federal regulations should be amended to include disclosure of conflicts of interest as one of the informed consent requirements. Institutional review boards play a key role in helping researchers to disclose conflicts of interests to subjects in an appropriate manner. Institutional review boards should approve the disclosure language in informed consent documents, and they should require researchers to disclose financial interests to research subjects, if they have any, as a condition of approval.     

Practitioners' perceptions and decision‐making regarding child sexual exploitation – a qualitative vignette study

There has been intense controversy about the appropriate response to child sexual exploitation, with debates in the UK particularly hinging on the meaning of consent and coercion. For professionals with a duty to safeguard young people from child sexual exploitation, a key site of tension is how to avoid limiting young people's experience of agency without placing them at risk. Drawing on new qualitative research findings from a vignette study designed to trace professional perception and decision‐making, this paper argues that practitioners' perceptions regarding what counts as consent are refracted through conceptions of age and choice. However, many initial perceptions of agency and its links to age were modified through the interview process. This has implications for how supervision should operate. These topics raise issues of the need for practitioners to have nuanced conceptions of consent in the context of manipulation.     

Sense‐making in a social work office: an ethnographic study of safeguarding judgements

Social workers are routinely required to make finely balanced judgements on matters defined by subjectivity and uncertainty. Often, these judgements have to be made on the basis of information which is incomplete, inconclusive and contested. The way in which social workers make sense of such information is a crucial component of effective assessment and intervention. This ethnographic study of judgements in a social work office describes some of the practices which practitioners employed in making sense of information about children and young people's needs. The findings suggest that initial statements in dialogue may potentially act as signposts for preceding intuitive sense‐making. Observations offer insights into the way in which individuals construct professional responsibility. The study also suggests that sense‐making is not necessarily an individual activity but can be an activity which is shared between people and across teams. The findings indicate the importance of emotional intelligence and intersubjectivity in social work judgements.     

Investigation of Children's Custodial Wishes

One of the criteria used by judges of the Family Court in reaching custody decisions is the wishes of the child. A total of 104 children who were subjects of custody disputes were interviewed for the purpose of trying to ascertain their custodial wishes. Most children expressed a wish, and this preference was usually to remain with the parent the child was already living with. Children's wishes as to whether to remain where they were living or to move to live with the other parent, and their preferences as to whether to live with the mother or the father, did not differ according to age or sex.     

Considerations in the Evaluation of the Short Term Program—The Barwon Experiment

Evaluation of welfare projects is a difficut and demanding process. There are particular difficulties and considerations associated with an evaluation of the short term program—which for the purpose of this article is defined as one established with an initially guaranteed life of up to twelve months. The author examines some of the issues and practical considerations which emerged during the evaluation of one such program, the Barwon Regional Family Aide Scheme, and presents the model which was developed.     

Ethics in population-based genetic research

Population-based genetic research, including genetic epidemiology, shows tremendous potential to elucidate the role of genes as causal factors in complex and common human diseases. Like all research with human subjects, full realization of these benefits requires careful attention to its ethical conduct, establishing an appropriate balance between individual protections and the advancement of scientific and medical knowledge. This article reviews the growing literature on genetics research and ethics to describe some of the fundamental ethical issues in population-based genetics research, including research design, recruitment and informed consent, and dealing with research results. Its focus is on areas where consensus is forming and where future work is needed.     

Emotional labour and befriending in family support and child protection in Tower Hamlets

This paper describes the emotional labour and befriending of families in East London by Family Support Workers (FSWs). The study is derived from an evaluation of the Family Welfare Association's Tower Hamlets Family Support Service. A key finding is that engaging the emotions of families enables high quality and effective support in the family home. FSWs win trust and elicit narratives from families, particularly from mothers and children. The narratives of families are a rich source of informing better practice. In line with Government objectives, the participatory work of FSWs helps to balance understanding on family support, health and child protection. According to Government and research, the early identification of child protection issues is particularly important in mitigating their worst effects. FSWs gain trust and early disclosure on child protection cases. This prevents child care problems from deteriorating into child protection issues. FSWs also act as informal advocates and help to balance social service assessments with the views of families. FSWs take a proactive, non‐stigmatizing, non‐intrusive approach to families. FSWs are sensitive and responsive to the emotions, ethnicity and specific needs of families.     

Conversations at the End of Life

Abstract

Oregon's Death with Dignity Act (ODWDA) has been in effect for eight years. The United States Supreme Court recently decided that Oregon's law did not violate the Controlled Substances Act. Other states may consider a law similar to Oregon's through legislative process or ballot measures. Although social work is not mentioned in the law, our profession interfaces with the terminally ill, particularly in hospice. Eighty-seven percent of those who have used the law were enrolled in a hospice program. As a pilot project, this article explores conversations that the authors have had with patients, families, team members and health systems in hospices and oncology settings under Oregon's unique environment. The following four themes emerged from these conversations: (1) mental health, education, choice; (2) team concerns; (3) family issues; and (4) values, ethics, restricted conversations and professional struggles.     

Joint Reviews: Judgement Day and Beyond

Correspondence to Jill Humphrey, Adoption and Family Finding Unit, 3 Unthank Road, Norwich NR2 2PA, UK. E-mail: jill.humphrey.socs{at}norfolk.gov.uk Summary Joint Reviewers are the central regulators of social servicesauthorities in England and Wales. This article explores howreviewers arrive at their judgements about the performance ofsocial services authorities and how these authorities respondto Joint Review reports and recommendations. It also offersa framework for evaluating the costs and benefits of Joint Reviewswhich enables us to appreciate the ambivalence which local authoritystaff harbour towards their central regulators.     

The Duality of Mobilisation—Following the Rise and Fall of an Alibi‐Story on its Way to Court1

This article suggests a discourse analysis suitable for multi‐dimensional processes. The exemplar in focus is a single narrative that travelled a long way through an English criminal pre‐trial to the finalising Crown Court‐hearing. The following case study asks how this story was mobilised by the defence to challenge the prosecution's case. The resulting sequential analysis of the story's career profits a good deal from Laboratory Studies. Like ethnographies in Science and Technology Studies, the analysis involves an extended production process—and the productivities of the artefacts produced. It shows, furthermore, how the mobilisation of the alibi is at some points threatened by emerging potentialities to undermine it. All in all, the resulting micro‐history on the story's career hinges on as well as exceeds common preferences in social constructivism: for collaborative and local accomplishments, for structural and antagonistic oppositions, and for success stories.