The Scottish perspective: a pathway to progress?

This chapter provides a historical overview of the development of care and aftercare practices in Scotland. It highlights significant developments in legislation and social policy and offers a critical analysis that draws on the author's experience as a practitioner.     

Toward a critical politics of precarity

In recent years, the term precarity has proliferated in the social sciences at the risk of losing its analytical purchase. This review considers the value and limitations of precarity in the various ways it has operated as both a theoretical and political concept. It first traces the historical development of the term in sociology and cognate fields, ultimately arguing for a relational approach to the concept rooted in the analysis of specific labor conditions. It then examines emergent critiques of the (often hidden) political work that the concept of precarity performs. That is, the denunciatory discourse of precarity, ironically, has the potential to uphold normative forms of work and life, including the ideal of full‐time wage labor. Instead, a critical politics of precarity leaves open the question of how precarious labor relates to precarious life and attends to ruptures that offer alternatives to the valorization of waged work.     

Promoting supervisory practice change in public child welfare: lessons from university/agency collaborative research in four states

This article describes qualitative findings regarding lessons learned from research and demonstration projects in four states focused on the implementation of clinical supervision within their public child welfare agencies. This was part of a larger mixed methods study of the effectiveness of these new clinical supervision models on practice, organizational, and client outcomes. Themes from 15 focus groups with frontline supervisors participating in the projects are provided; they focused on the challenges experienced while participating and working to use clinical supervision techniques, recommendations regarding implementing such projects in the public child welfare environment, and those aspects of the implementation that were most effective in supporting their work. These themes provide direction for states and localities wishing to shift frontline supervision to a more clinical model within the public child welfare setting.     

Detection of deception in familiar and unfamiliar persons: The effects of information restriction

The present paper investigated the effects of the familiarity between the detector and deceiver and the amount of information available on the detection of deception. It was hypothesized that limiting the amount of information available to the lie detector would increase detection accuracy when the deceiver was familiar and, alternatively, would decrease accuracy when the deceiver was unfamiliar. In Study 1, participants attempted to detect the deceptions of familiar and unfamiliar persons with and without visual cues. The results supported the hypothesis. The deceptions of familiar persons were more likely to be detected when visual cues were withheld and the deceptions of strangers were more likely to be detected when visual cues were not withheld. In Study 2 procedures similar to Study 1 were used. However, in Study 2 the presence or absence of auditory cues was manipulated instead of manipulating the presence or absence of visual cues. The results of Study 2 replicated those of Study 1.     

Lone mothers and paid work: the ‘family-work project’

When a mother starts work, her daily life changes in various ways: time, money, relationships, quality of life, and well-being are all subject to modification and potentially greater uncertainty. This is also true for her children, who must adapt to changed circumstances and perhaps play a different role within the family as a consequence. Sustaining work and care over time means that the situation of being a working family must become part of the everyday and regular practice of the family, and this actively involves all family members. This article explores this concept of a ‘family-work project’ through a qualitative longitudinal study of British lone mothers and their children, starting as the mothers took up work and following the families for four to five years. The research captured the experiences of the families as they negotiated the demands of sustaining employment while living on a low, but complex, income.