Beyond reason: A feminist theory of ethics for journalists

In ethical decision making, emotion can be superior to reason, although historically emotion has been generally considered inferior to reason. A single concept serves as the principle for emotional development and decision making—empathy. For journalists, legal questions are often easy, ethical questions hard. “Newsworthiness” gives journalists a broad defense against privacy suits. Photographs have caused much controversy. As this article shows, usually journalists win suits involving photographs. Still, ethical questions persist. In the heat of time pressure, emotivism provides a fairly simple and accurate method of deciding whether to use photographs, and this article provides steps for applying emotivism.     

Gaining Satisfaction? An Exploration of Foster-Carers' Attitudes to Payment

The payment of foster-carers has long been controversial, reflectingboth philosophical debates as to whether fostering should bea voluntaristic or professional activity and concerns aboutplacement provision and service delivery for children. Althoughmany research studies have touched upon the question of foster-carers’satisfaction with payments, this has not been explored in anydepth. Drawing on findings from a study involving 1,181 foster-carersin twenty-one agencies, this article attempts to provide suchan analysis with four main objectives. These comprised: examiningassociations between attitudes towards payment and demographic,socio-economic and fostering career variables; comparing responsesbetween carers based in local authorities (grouped accordingto levels of payment and performance criteria) and independentagencies (IFAs); gauging the influence of carers’ ‘orientations’towards foster-care as a ‘professional’ task; andanalysing payments in terms of their different components, suchas fees, maintenance and certain designated expenses. Amongmany detailed findings to emerge were the generally low levelof satisfaction among local authority carers, especially incomparison with their IFA counterparts and the growing supportamong carers for salaried status. There was mixed evidence onlinks between attitudes towards remuneration and the performanceof agencies.     

Health care segregation and race disparities in infectious disease: the case of nursing homes and seasonal influenza vaccinations

Examining nursing home segregation and race disparities in influenza vaccinations, this study demonstrates that segregation may increase both susceptibility and exposure to seasonal flu for black Americans. Evidence based on the 2004 U.S. National Nursing Home Survey shows that individuals in nursing homes with high percentages of black residents have less personal immunity to flu because they are less likely to have been vaccinated against the disease; they may also be more likely to be exposed to flu because more of their coresidents are also unvaccinated. This implies that segregation may generate dual disease hazards for contagious conditions. Segregation appears to limit black Americans' access to personal preventive measures against infection, while spatially concentrating those people who are most likely to become contagious.     

Complex families and equality in child support obligations: A comparative policy analysis

Family complexity creates difficulties for child support policy. We examine whether policy in 14 countries results in nonresident parents having equal financial obligations to children in different complex family situations. We find that when a nonresident parent owes support to two nonresident children in different families, the most common policy is to have unequal obligations favoring the older child. However, nearly as many countries achieve equal orders, but do so by reducing the obligation to the older child. When a nonresident parent has one nonresident child and a new resident child, the most common strategy is to reduce the obligation to the older nonresident child, but to make no attempt to equalize obligations for both children. Each of the four main policy strategies we identify has advantages; tradeoffs among three principles of equality, affordability of obligations and protecting the first child's standard of living are discussed.     

An Examination of the Use of Coercion by Assertive Outreach and Community Mental Health Teams in Northern Ireland

In mental health services over recent decades, the positivemove away from hospital-based care to community-based serviceshas entailed that people with higher levels of need are beingsupported by community mental health services. This paper beginsby reviewing the literature on coercion in the field of community-basedmental health care and treatment. It is argued that the lackof a critical understanding of the concept and how it is usedby practitioners and agencies can have serious repercussionsfor the rights of service users. Using a quasi-experimental,longitudinal design, the authors then seek to test some of theideas about coercion by comparing the activities of assertiveoutreach and community mental health teams in Northern Ireland,particularly the key ideas of perceived coercion, workers’strategies and engagement with services. Key findings were thatassertive outreach appeared to be more successful at reducingperceived coercion, minimizing the need for coercive strategies,engaging high-risk clients and reducing inpatient bed use. Thesefindings are compared with other studies in this area. The authorsalso argue that there is a need for greater transparency inthe way that practitioners use coercive measures and more explicitguidance is required in this crucial area of mental health practice.     

Matches and Mismatches: The Contribution of Carers and Children to the Success of Foster Placements

Correspondence to Professor Ian Sinclair, Social Work Research and Development Unit, University of York, York YO10 5DD. E-mail: acs5{at}york.ac.uk Summary Data were collected on 472 foster children at an interval of14 months. The children's social workers, the family placementsocial workers and the foster carers reported on disruptions,and the reasons for placement success or lack of it. These views,combined with comments from the children, led to hypothesesabout the origins of successful placements. Statistical testsof these hypotheses suggested that success depended on threeaspects of the placement. First of these was the children'scharacteristics. Children, who wanted to be fostered (had attractivecharacteristics and low levels of disturbance), did better.Second were the qualities of the foster carer. Placements withwarm, child-oriented carers were more successful. Third wasthe interaction between carer and child. The findings emphasizethe crucial importance of the foster carers to outcomes. Theyalso support the need to pay close attention to children's views,and the potential importance of early intervention to preventnegative spirals of interaction between carer and child.     

Men Who Murder Children Inside and Outside the Family

The focus of this paper is on men who murder children. The dataare drawn from a larger study of Murder in Britain,¹ which examinedall types of murder and included data from a total sample of866 case files of both men and women convicted of murder andserving a life sentence in England or Scotland. This analysisis based on a subset of ninety cases of men convicted of themurder of a child. Two types of child murder are compared: menwho kill children within the family (FM, n = 49) and men whomurder children outside the family context (NFM, n = 41). Thetwo types of murder are compared in terms of the childhood andfamily backgrounds of the perpetrator, the circumstances atthe time of the murder and elements of the murder event itself.The main findings reveal many significant differences betweenthe two groups of perpetrators, indicating a need for more nuancedpolicy and practice responses to the murder of children.     

Balancing Justice and Welfare Needs in Family Group Conferences for Children with Harmful Sexual Behavior: The HSB-FGC Framework

In England and Wales, family group conferences (FGCs) are most often found either in the field of youth justice or in the field of child protection, and consequently often have priorities in line with either one of the two systems. On the one hand, FGCs are a restorative justice tool to address offending behavior and hold young perpetrators to account, while giving victims the possibility of contributing to the justice process. On the other hand, FGCs address safeguarding concerns and are used to plan for child safety and protection. In cases where a young person has sexually harmed another young person, that is, has perpetrated harmful sexual behavior (HSB), all young people involved will have both justice and welfare needs. FGCs are emerging as promising mechanisms in such cases, not only because of their ability to deal with both sets of needs for both young people but also because of their potential to address more holistic needs. However, HSB cases are often complex and sensitive, and are not without risk. Drawing on their experiences in research and practice, the authors explore how the holistic needs of both the harmed and harming individual can be balanced within a risk managed HSB-FGC framework.