Writing a Book Review for JFSW

ABSTRACT

For children in foster care, continued contact with biological parents may have significant implications. This article seeks to synthesize literature examining attachment theory and visitation between children in foster care and their parents. The results of the research synthesis indicate that although the exploration of attachment theory began over 40 years ago, the questions regarding the implications of foster care visitation and attachment continuation surprisingly remain unanswered.     

Towards the Disintegration of Child Welfare Services

This paper examines market issues in the provision of children's services in the light of the changing role and practice of local authorities contracting for welfare services. In adult services, where there has been a legal requirement to reorganize on market lines, the services have had to modify some of their earlier contracting practices to take account of the complex requirements of health and welfare services and it is argued that relational contracting offers a more appropriate paradigm for these. Following the implementation of the Children Act 1989, although not a requirement of the Act, many of the organizational systems in relation to markets, originally developed for adult services, have been adopted for children's services. Two areas of services for children, day care and fostering services, are discussed in order to demonstrate that these contracting systems are inappropriate and often dysfunctional for the children concerned. It is argued that there is a widening gap between contracting systems in adult and children's services which needs to be addressed. In general, it is concluded that the philosophies of the market place are flawed when applied to children's services.     

Conceptualising Child and Family Support: The Contribution of Honneth's Critical Theory of Recognition

The role of social support in child welfare policy and practice continues to engender widespread debate. Yet the moral and philosophical underpinnings of this topical area have received less attention in the literature. This is of concern, not least because academic debates on the ‘politics of identity’ have a significant contribution to make to our understanding of self‐development and social justice. In this article the authors show how Axel Honneth's account of the ‘struggle for recognition’ can be adapted to invigorate theories of social support. The result is a conceptual framework for reflective practice that can illuminate, and interrogate, the moral and operational dimensions of preventative work with children and families.     

Asteroid Risk Assessment: A Probabilistic Approach

Following the 2013 Chelyabinsk event, the risks posed by asteroids attracted renewed interest, from both the scientific and policy‐making communities. It reminded the world that impacts from near‐Earth objects (NEOs), while rare, have the potential to cause great damage to cities and populations. Point estimates of the risk (such as mean numbers of casualties) have been proposed, but because of the low‐probability, high‐consequence nature of asteroid impacts, these averages provide limited actionable information. While more work is needed to further refine its input distributions (e.g., NEO diameters), the probabilistic model presented in this article allows a more complete evaluation of the risk of NEO impacts because the results are distributions that cover the range of potential casualties. This model is based on a modularized simulation that uses probabilistic inputs to estimate probabilistic risk metrics, including those of rare asteroid impacts. Illustrative results of this analysis are presented for a period of 100 years. As part of this demonstration, we assess the effectiveness of civil defense measures in mitigating the risk of human casualties. We find that they are likely to be beneficial but not a panacea. We also compute the probability—but not the consequences—of an impact with global effects (“cataclysm”). We conclude that there is a continued need for NEO observation, and for analyses of the feasibility and risk‐reduction effectiveness of space missions designed to deflect or destroy asteroids that threaten the Earth.     

Safeguarding disabled children in residential settings: what we know and what we don't know

Research in America, Canada, Australia and Britain has revealed that disabled children are particularly vulnerable to abuse. Their likelihood of attending residential institutions, their dependency on others for personal care and the lack of opportunities for them to alert others to maltreatment or comprehend the nature of abusive acts all increase levels of risk. Over the last decade, there has been increasing public and professional concern about the abuse of children in residential establishments, resulting in a number of inquiries. However, the abuse of disabled children in residential settings has received little attention. Despite residential schools, care homes and respite care being widely used by disabled children, there is a paucity of knowledge regarding the standards of child protection in these establishments. This article explores the research literature revealing the vulnerability of disabled children to abuse when living away from home, what measures can be taken to help protect them and the limitations of available data as a basis for planning child protection measures. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Separation anxiety,attachment and agoraphobia

Within a framework of attachment, developed by John Bowlby, the anxiety disorder of agoraphobia (fear of leaving familiar surroundings, especially when alone) is conceived as a condition of anxious attachment, related to fear of separation from those with whom one has formed affectional bonds. Bowlby attributes this anxiety to earlier separation or loss experiences or threat of separation. Uncertain about his/her attachment figures, the person is prone to separation anxiety and clinging behavior and lacks confidence for exploring the world and dealing with stressful situations. Psychotherapy offers a temporary attachment relationship, a secure base from which to explore and understand the effects of these experiences in order to develop more self reliance in relationships with others.     

Standards,Regulation and Development of School-age Day Care and ‘Open Door’ Services1

The subject is play and day-care services for school-age children. The paper draws on research carried out by the author and colleagues at Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU). It reports a survey of 120 services, randomly sampled, from 20 local authorities in England and Wales. This provides data about the standards to be found in such services when they became subject to registration and inspection under the Children Act 1989, and identifies shortcomings with regard to material resources and practice. The paper then draws on two case studies, and reports and discusses the problems met by local authorities in carrying out their new duties under the Act. These included their inexperience of services for over fives, the lack of resources available to improve services and the transient nature of holiday play schemes. It covers ways in which registration personnel used the Act to raise standards, eg ‘counselling out’, making requirements and conditions, and advising and resourcing service providers. The concluding discussion points to the need for further policy development in this area.     

Reinstituting the Economic Process: (Re)embedding the Economy in Society and Nature

Polanyi argued that the project of creating a fully self-regulating market was utopian, in the sense of impossible. However, movement towards this utopia, the ever greater but never completed process of disembedding the economy from both society and nature, creates growing dislocations and tensions which call forth a counter movement. This double movement may be thought of as successive changes in the way in which the economic process is instituted. The focus of the paper is on the meaning of embeddedness, the ways in which the economy was reinstituted during the Great Transformation and the subsequent counter movements, and alternative approaches to further reinstituting the economy in ways that disembed it further or (re)embed it more firmly in society and nature. It is argued that prior to the creation of the capitalist market the economy was organically embedded in society and nature. However, the creation of separate economic institutions, the institution of the economic process as a distinct system with its own laws of motion, severed these organic links and the economy came to dominate both society and nature. Here, however, the symmetry between society and nature ends. Society has the capacity for conscious, purposeful action; nature does not. For the economy to be reinstituted in ways that create a sustainable organic relationship with nature, it must first be reinstituted in ways that bring it under social control.