False allegations in child sexual abuse: the pattern of referral in an area where reporting is not mandatory

SUMMARY. This retrospective study considers all referrals received by child health, social services and police of suspected child sexual abuse between the years 1986–1989, within South Glamorgan, Some 410 children were referred and of these 197 were found to have been abused. Of those cases where abuse was not proven, only 63 were judged to be due to false allegations, some of which were considered |malicious. This pattern, of approximately half of referrals being unsubstantiated, is similar to that reported from the United States, where reporting is mandatory. The criteria for diagnosis, and the identifying and presenting features surrounding possible explanations of false allegations are discussed.     

CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY WITHOUT SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS:

Retracing my own research experience in creating a sociological narrative about a famous industrial engineer and mother, I describe how I began to question modernist images of self, interests, and power. As I reflected on how best to characterize Gilbreth's management of women, I began to see that may notion of how to write critical, historical biography rested heavily on a binary, modernist conceptual foundation. My research experience rocked this foundation by convincing me that we should see selves as multiple and interests as malleable, and that we should broaden our conception of power to include disciplinary power which circulates through people rather than belonging to them. The paper concludes by affirming the merits of new ways of writing about people that acknowledge their multiple selves without sacrificing the political strength of modernist language.     

Under New Orders: The Redefinition of Social Work with Young Offenders

Correspondence to Dr. H. Parker, Department of Sociology and Social Work Studies, University of Liverpool, Eleanor Rathbone Building, Myrtle Street, P.O.Box 147, Liverpool L69 3BX Summary This paper reports on the significant changes in policy andpractice presently being implemented by the Probation Serviceand other social work agencies responsible for work with juvenileand young adult offenders. These changes concern Social EnquiryReport writing, the more intensive supervision of young offendersthrough the attachment of day centre type requirements to Supervisionand Probation Orders and the extension of Community ServiceOrders. Illustrating their analysis with data from a nationalsurvey of the Probation Service, the authors argue that thesechanges which have emanated in various forms from central governmenthave had a mixed reception. Whilst on the one hand, this thrustfrom above has been viewed as an unwelcome extension of communitycontrol through social work practice, it has also been seento contain opportunities to provide genuine alternatives tocustody for young offenders. The authors argue that, taken inthe context of recent overall sentencing trends, it is unlikelythat custody rates will decrease significantly, as Courts willtend to use community service and supervision packages to serveother purposes.     

A NOTE ON THE VANISHING LIQUIDITY EFFECT OF MONEY ON INTEREST

This paper provides a brief review and critique of some of the results and conclusions of Melvin [1983] concerning the effects of inflation on the response pattern of interest rates to changes in money growth rates. It also presents results concerning the significance of two different measures of the inflationary environment ––– the actual rate of inflation and the variance of the inflation rate ––– in explaining this response. The conclusion drawn here is that the variance of the inflation rate better explains the changing money-interest relationship. This conclusion is rather different from that of Melvin.     

Global value chains in international knowledge work: networks,stratifications and labour markets

In this article, I aim to cast light on the arguably indeterminate phenomenon of the global labour market (GLM) by placing the focus on an industry that has sometimes been perceived as epitomizing homogeneity and ‘world flatness’ in its deployment of geographically dispersed knowledge workers, that of international software development. Engaging in a sanguine analysis of this industry with reference to an empirical study of outsourcing to Ukraine it is revealed that labour markets servicing ICT (Information and communication technology) are subject to deep, if fluctuating, social stratifications. With reference to the notion of the global value chain (GVC), 1 1 ¹GVC analysis focuses on the governance patterns and relational dynamics between lead and supplier firms at the sectoral level. The GVC and its predecessor, the global commodity chain (GCC) focus on the inter‐firm linkages and especially power relations between different actors (Feuerstein 2013). The similar concept of global production network (GPN) concerns the broader set of relations of power, positionality and value capture between all relevant firm and extra firm actors within a network (Thompson 2013). For this study on sourcing in the global software industry, the term GVC will be utilized throughout.
the significance of factors such as knowledge, language, citizenship and age as labour market differentiators for knowledge work is brought to the fore.     

Care Management and Information Provision: Towards a Reasoned Method of Assessing the Range and Extent of Problems and Needs in Child-Care Social Work

Correspondence to Professor Michael Sheppard, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA Summary The new managerialism associated with care management has, aswith other areas of health and welfare work, promoted ideasof efficient use of resources, quality assurance and the capacityto audit the work of welfare agencies. This approach placesa high premium on measurement, and emphazises a long-standingdesire to develop instruments the use of which would providethe basis for resource allocation. This paper presents a methodby which such data can be rigorously generated and analysed.It uses as its basis an instrument of established reliabilityand validity, designed to collect data on problems identifiedin clients in the child and family care social work group. Ituses a combination of principal component and cluster analysisto provide a clear picture of the nature and range of problemsand the grouping of cases with similar characteristics. Thesedata provide a quantitative basis upon which judgements aboutresource allocation can be made.     

On the Contingent Valuation of Safety and the Safety of Contingent Valuation: Part 2 - The CV/SG "Chained" Approach

This article reports the results of a study aimed at estimating a willingness-to-pay based value of statistical life for road risks using a multi-stage approach which involves "chaining together" responses to contingent valuation and standard gamble questions.The rationale for employing a multi-stage approach is to break the wealth/risk of death trade-off down into a number of conceptually manageable steps, thereby trying to attenuate the various biases that appear to be pervasive in responses to more direct contingent valuation questions in the health and safety field.     

Sexually Abused Children's and Young People's Perspectives on Investigative Interviews

Correspondence to Helen Westcott, Lecturer in Psychology, Gardiner Building, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA Summary The findings of a small qualitative study of sexually abusedchildren's and young people's experiences in investigative interviewsare presented. Fourteen children, nine girls and five boys,aged six to eighteen years participated. They were questionedabout all aspects of the investigative interview: its location,duration, structure and content. Additionally, the childrenwere asked about the presence of others during the interview,and their feelings concerning the interview, as well as whatthey liked/disliked, found helpful/unhelpful, about the interviewand interviewers. A number of issues were raised by the youngpeople, concerning their choice about what was happening (e.g.where the interview was held and who was present), as well asdifficulties with some interviewers' language, and problemswith evidential requirements for specific details. The interviewswere experienced as stressful by the majority of children. Methodologicalissues are highlighted, and the findings are discussed in thelight of recent legislation affecting children, especially the1991 Criminal Justice Act and ‘Memorandum of Good Practice’.     

Adults' perceptions of children's videotaped truthful and deceptive statements

SUMMARY. This article uses a research study on decisions about children's truth telling to discuss the difficult issues involved in using video-taped evidence in child abuse cases. The adult raters had to decide whether each child recounting a school trip was telling the truth or had only seen a video recording of the day's events. Raters were just above chance in detecting truth and deception, were better able to detect truth tellers than deceivers, and were more successful in decoding deceptive behaviour presented by boys and younger children. Most accuracy-confidence relationships were not significant.     

Children's credibility on camera: the influence of age and production factors

SUMMARY. An experiment was conducted to examine whether the use of different camera shots-medium or close-up-affected the way in which child witnesses were perceived by adult raters. School children were video-recorded describing an event in which they had participated, and students rated the children s perceived credibility on a number of scales. Type of shot used did not influence perceived credibility in a consistent manner, although it did influence some aspects of a child's credibility when the child's age and/or sex was taken into account. Children seen in medium shot were judged more honest than children seen in close-up. Age of the child was the most influential factor, with older children generally perceived as more credible than younger children; this effect was particularly noticeable for girls and children seen in medium shot. The relevance of the current study for the testimony of child witnesses is discussed in the light of current and proposed legal reforms.