Protecting the child witness in the courtroom

The 1988 and 1991 Criminal Justice Acts have transformed the law and procedure governing the appearance of children as witnesses in criminal trials. Traditional legal constraints such as the competency test, the requirement of corroboration, the special warning to the jury and the hearsay rule have all been abolished or extensively qualified. In addition, the 1988 Act introduced a major procedural change in the form of the video-link which was designed to make it easier for children to give their evidence. A survey of existing research confirms that children do find the giving of evidence in open court stressful and that the experience may have long-term adverse consequences. A study for the Home Office indicated widespread acceptance of the use of the video-link among courtroom personnel and observational data confirm its effectiveness in empowering children's testimony. The 1991 Act allows pre-recorded video-taped interviews to be admitted as evidence in criminal cases but retains live cross-examination via the link. The legal requirements of such interviews will place heavy demands on interdisciplinary cooperation in training and the establishment of good practice. The impact of this novel scheme on child witnesses and the court deserves rigorous evaluation.     

Short-term international assignments. Military perspectives and implications for international human resource management

Short-term international assignments have been under-explored in international human resource management (IHRM) literature and research. Equally, there is a dearth of studies on international mobility beyond multinational corporations. Drawing on an exploratory study of short-term international assignments in the Irish Defence Forces, this paper considers the implications for IHRM.     

Migrant Parents and the Psychological Well-Being of Left-Behind Children in Southeast Asia

Several million children currently live in transnational families, yet little is known about impacts on their health. We investigated the psychological well-being of left-behind children in four Southeast Asian countries. Data were drawn from the CHAMPSEA study. Caregiver reports from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) were used to examine differences among children under age 12 by the migration status of their household (N = 3,876). We found no general pattern across the four study countries: Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Multivariate models showed that children of migrant fathers in Indonesia and Thailand are more likely to have poor psychological well-being, compared to children in nonmigrant households. This finding was not replicated for the Philippines or Vietnam. The paper concludes by arguing for more contextualized understandings.     

Supporting Children’s Social and Emotional Well‐being: Does ‘Having a Say’ Matter?

This article argues the importance of ensuring initiatives aimed at improving children’s social and emotional well‐being are based on sound participatory principles. The discussion posits links between the recognition of children, dialogic approaches to participation, changing conceptualisations of children and childhood, and children’s well‐being. It explores these links in light of one particular initiative, Seasons for Growth ( Graham, 1996, 2002 , Seasons for Growth; Loss and Grief Education Program. MacKillop Foundation), an education programme built around emerging evidence that giving children a voice assists them to adapt to family change. The paper concludes with insights into what is involved when we locate notions of ‘having a say’ as a key element in promoting children’s well‐being.© 2010 The Author(s). Journal compilation 2010 National Children’s Bureau and Blackwell Publishing Limited.     

The effect of child support enforcement on child support payments

This paper examines the effect of state child support enforcement legislation on child support received from absent fathers by ever-married women due support in 1978 or 1981. The analysis is based upon data from the 1979 and 1982 March/April Match files of the Current Population Survey, two nationally-representative surveys of the eligible child support population, combined with a data set assembled by the authors on child support enforcement techniques available in each state. Based upon probit estimates and OLS estimates corrected for sample selection bias, we find that expedited processes and liens (against real and personal property), as well as wage withholding laws in effect for at least three years, increased the amount of child support received in 1981. In general, enforcement is more effective at increasing the amount received than the probability of receiving something, and is more effective for Blacks than for nonBlacks.     

Child support awards: Differentials and trends by race and marital status

This study has analyzed data from combined 1979 and 1982 April supplements to the Current Population Survey to study differences in the award of child support by race and marital status. The following findings emerge from this study: The percentage of women with children present from an absent father who are awarded child support varies greatly by race and marital status. Among all women, nonblacks are more than twice as likely as blacks to have a child support award, and the ever-married are almost six times as likely as the never-married to have an award. Among the ever-married, currently separated women are approximately half as likely as the ever-divorced to have secured an award. The lower probability of child support awards among blacks can be attributed in part to their disproportionate membership in marital status groups with lower award probabilities. Blacks are four and one-half times as likely as nonblacks to be among the never-married and almost twice as likely to be among the currently separated. Racial differences in award probabilities exist within all marital status groups except the never-married. Among the currently separated, blacks are one-third less likely than nonblacks to have an award. Among the ever-divorced, blacks are almost one-fourth less likely than nonblacks to have an award. Among the never-married, unlike the ever-married, virtually no statistically significant socioeconomic characteristics appear to distinguish mothers who have a child support award from those who do not. Among all women, 50 to 60 percent of the gross racial differential in award rates can be explained by observed differences in such economic and demographic characteristics as marital status, educational attainment, age, place of residence, and number of children. Among the ever-married, 50 percent of the gross racial difference can be explained by these factors. Among the ever-married, the likelihood of being awarded child support at marital disruption has increased over time, but this upward trend has been different for blacks and nonblacks. Among nonblacks, the proportion of women obtaining a child support award increased 1.3 percent per year between 1960 and 1975 and then declined 0.4 percent per year since then. Among blacks, the proportion increased 0.8 percent per year between 1960 and 1975 and then accelerated to 1.6 percent per year since then.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

The dynamics of social exclusion

Much mainstream analysis of the dynamics of social exclusion is concerned with the changing circumstances of households, using panel and cohort studies. However, changes in these circumstances are mediated by institutional processes and can be adequately explained only if the interactions of institutional and household strategies are taken into account. This is also a precondition of sound inferences for policy. These interactions may involve feedback loops and cumulative change: these require analysis as dynamic systems. The article explores how such dynamic systems can be modelled. It proposes a toolkit that brings together qualitative and quantitative modelling techniques, checks them against empirical data and roots their interpretation within an action frame of reference.     

Authoritarian neoliberalism and capitalist transformation in Africa: all pain,no gain

ABSTRACT

As a region of the world capitalist political economy, Africa has been the epitome of neoliberalism as a universal project to remake societies in its image. In Africa, the neoliberal project encountered a region already ensconced in state-forms that were authoritarian, albeit very often weaker than their analogues in Latin America or Southern Europe. In these circumstances, neoliberalism both reconstructed and relied upon authoritarian state practices: reassertions of law and order, rising technocracy, re-built bureaucracies, and ‘choiceless democracy’. Liberal advocates of neoliberalism indulged authoritarian governance in the belief that economic liberalization would generate economic growth and transformation. Reviewing these authoritarian neoliberal constructions, one is struck by how poorly they performed as vehicles for market-based capitalist transformation. In a phrase, the pain of neoliberal adjustment was accompanied by no palliative of sustained economic ‘gain’. Liberalization, executed by top-down and undemocratic governance, has generated fragile growth, instability, some enrichment and no economic transformation. This conjuncture is pivotal to an understanding of moves by some governing elites to explore and at times implement non-neoliberal development strategies. The article concludes by suggesting that neoliberalism is currently a somewhat besieged orthodoxy. However, the exploration of unorthodox development strategies has taken place within an authoritarian political shell.     

Deliberative Disjunction: Expert and Public Understanding of Outcome Uncertainty

Many environmental and risk management decisions are made jointly by technical experts and members of the public. Frequently, their task is to select from among management alternatives whose outcomes are subject to varying degrees of uncertainty. Although it is recognized that how this uncertainty is interpreted can significantly affect decision‐making processes and choices, little research has examined similarities and differences between expert and public understandings of uncertainty. We present results from a web‐based survey that directly compares expert and lay interpretations and understandings of different expressions of uncertainty in the context of evaluating the consequences of proposed environmental management actions. Participants responded to two hypothetical but realistic scenarios involving trade‐offs between environmental and other objectives and were asked a series of questions about their comprehension of the uncertainty information, their preferred choice among the alternatives, and the associated difficulty and amount of effort. Results demonstrate that experts and laypersons tend to use presentations of numerical ranges and evaluative labels differently; interestingly, the observed differences between the two groups were not explained by differences in numeracy or concerns for the predicted environmental losses. These findings question many of the usual presumptions about how uncertainty should be presented as part of deliberative risk‐ and environmental‐management processes.