The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996: an overview

"On September 30, 1996, President Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (1996 Act), Pub. L. No. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009. After an intense lobbying effort by the business community, most provisions relating to legal immigration were omitted from the final bill. Instead, the 1996 Act focuses on illegal immigration reform and includes some of the toughest measures ever taken against illegal immigration." Aspects considered include border enforcement, penalities against alien smuggling and document fraud, deportation and exclusion proceedings, employer sanctions, welfare provisions, and changes to existing refugee and asylum procedures.     

Children,Parents and the State: The Children Act, 1908

SUMMARY: This article examines the first major consolidating piece of child welfare legislation in Britain, the 1908 Children Act. The focus is on the relationship established between child, parent, and state. Contemporary reasons for the need for this re-ordered relationship are suggested, but it is also argued that in certain respects parallels can be found between the Edwardian Act and that of 1989. This in turn suggests the persistence of certain issues in child welfare, and especially that of the division of responsibilities for the care of children between parents and State.     

Young Children in Rural Areas: Implementing the Children Act

SUMMARY. This article is based on the results of the first stage of a study of the Children Act (day care and preschool education), and looks at how the Children Act 1989 has been put into practice with respect to services for children under eight, in rural local authorities in England and Wales. It considers the duties given by the Act to local authorities from a rural perspective, including providing a range of services for children in need, reviewing the services that are available for all young children, and setting standards for day care services provided by the voluntary and private sectors. It concludes that although the Act has helped to focus attention on the needs of children in rural areas, there is a danger that nothing will be done to meet them because of the principle of targeting resources on children who are most in need. Rural isolation was rarely specified as an indicator of need, and other criteria often had an urban bias which may work against the development of services in rural areas. The article also argues that there is a particular need to develop new models of service delivery and ways of providing training and support to early years workers which are appropriate for rural areas.     

Children at the Centre? The Childcare Act 2006

The Childcare Act 2006 is the first piece of legislation of its kind in the UK, and is a significant development for the early years sector and childcare services more broadly. Ensuring every child has the best start in life is one of the guiding principles of the Government's 10‐year strategy for childcare, but the strategies for implementation do not always appear to place the child so firmly at the centre. The childcare agenda is primarily focused on the needs of parents and families to respond to changing working patterns and balancing work and family life.     

Promoting the Children Act (1989) in Day Services to Disabled Children: Findings from an Action Research Project

SUMMARY: This article describes an action research project designed to assess and promote the implementation of the Children Act (1989) in day services to disabled children under five. Evaluations of six service were undertaken with staff in different local authorities in England and Wales. Each service was evaluated twice, in 1992 and again in 1993. The quality of care on offer to children was consistently high across services, and local authorities appeared to be adopting a flexible approach to the promotion of standards. In addition, services had made improvements in areas such as publicity and information, cultural sensitivity and partnership with parents. Some suggestions are made about factors which contributed to these developments, and issues requiring further attention are highlighted.     

Feminism and bioethics: an overview

Despite differences in style, tone, and emphasis, the various schools of feminist thought share a primary concern with the stories and lives of women. This concern gives them distinctive perspectives on medical practice and the field of bioethics.     

Threat and trauma: an overview

Common responses after exposure to threat include reexperiencing the event, intrusive thoughts and images, hyperarousal, avoidance and numbing, a sense of a foreshortened future, and shattered assumptions about control and safety.     

Custodianship and its implications for the Children Act

SUMMARY. Custodianship of children was introduced by the 1975 Children Act, but not implemented until 1985. It has now been overtaken by new concepts in the 1989 Children Act, but the experience thus far provides useful indications of how Residence Orders may be operated. Based on Department of Health funded research, this article shows how careers and birth families see such measures designed to give security to children while maintaining contact with their original parents. The article gives important information to all professionals who will have to work with the new principles of parental responsibility.     

The Act of Abuse:

Abuse is a problem that is of a social and moral as well as medical and psychological nature. A semiological approach is introduced as a way of encompassing those aspects in one definition. Abuse is seen as a social act, involving a witness: the necessary third actor who is evaluating the legitimacy of the act. Only those actions that are found to be illegitimate can be labeled abuse. Any definition of abuse must somehow consider morality.     

Transnational households and ritual: an overview

In this article we introduce five papers, all by social anthropologists, all concerned with transnational households and ritual. Despite wide–ranging research on transnational migration and diasporas, many aspects have been accorded less consideration than they deserve. The transnational practices of migrant families, other than remittances and other economic activity, remain under–investigated. Some thought has been given to the transnational dimension of religious belief systems, notably Islam, but the micro–politics of religion has been largely ignored, and there has been little discussion of transnational religious practices (rituals) at the level of households and families, especially those performed by migrants back in their countries of origin. Household–level analyses of the performances of and meanings attributed to life–crisis rituals and consideration of what Salih has called the ‘transnational division of ritual space’ offer a valuable route to understanding relations between place, culture, ethnicity and gender among migrants in a transnational world, and illuminate contemporary processes of globalization.     

Relationships across multiple settings: an overview

It is not the method of interaction but the quality of the interaction between patient and therapist, student and teacher, mentee and mentor, or youth and youth worker that is the most critical determinant of success in a myriad of fields.