Using concurrent planning to establish permanency for looked after young children

Many looked after children spend lengthy periods in impermanent care, and their frequent moves probably contribute to subsequent disturbed behaviour. Concurrent planning aims to reduce the number of moves and the length of time before placement in a permanent family. In this study 24 young children in three concurrent planning (CP) projects and 44 from two ‘traditional’ adoption teams were followed for 12–15 months. Records were obtained of the number of moves between households and the dates of key events before the child's permanent family placement was confirmed by the courts. The CP children moved into permanent families significantly faster and with significantly fewer previous moves than the two comparison groups. Unexpectedly, the CP children were significantly younger than the children following ‘traditional’ adoption programmes, making direct comparison impossible. Among those birth parents who were interviewed, the majority saw advantages in the CP approach. Concurrent planning carers reported high levels of personal anxiety but positive views of the advantages for the children. We conclude that CP can be used to achieve earlier permanence and fewer moves between carers for young children from selected birth families. The success of a CP team is dependent on the support of other professionals involved in determining permanent placements, based on a shared acknowledgement of the damaging effects of delay for the looked after child.     

WHO'S NOT PAYING THEIR FAIR SHARE: PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF THE AUSTRALIAN TAX SYSTEM

Data from the Community Hopes, Fears and Actions Survey are used to examine how pervasive the view is that the more privileged in society are failing to pay their fair share of tax, to understand the beliefs that underpin such perceptions, and the reforms that are needed to open dialogue with the Australian public about the issue. Support is found for five hypotheses. Economic self‐interest provides a partial explanation for perceptions of vertical inequity, but more important are disillusionment with the Australian democracy and perceptions of insufficient procedural justice from the tax office. Values about how Australian society should develop also play a part. Those looking for a more equal, caring and compassionate Australia perceive there to be a high level of vertical inequity. Such perceptions are not shared by those aspiring to an Australia that pursues competitive advantage either economically or politically. Tax authorities are brokers for social order and harmony in democracies. They can not determine the policies that are supposed to deliver these goals, nor the rules by which individuals are expected to contribute to the government coffers. But they carry responsibility for making it all happen — collecting taxes and providing government with revenue. As such, their integrity is pivotal to smooth democratic functioning. Integrity for a tax authority involves having purposeful and sound goals, appropriate and ethical procedures for pursuing such goals, and processes allowing reflection and evolution of their operation in response to the democratic will (Braithwaite 2003). This paper is a contribution to the process of reflection on how the tax system is working for its citizens. Its purpose is to investigate the extent to which the Australian community believes that their tax authority is pursuing one of its goals, collecting revenue, in a sound and purposeful way. Three questions are addressed: (a) Are different social groups in our society paying their fair share of tax? (b) What are the experiences and aspirations lying behind public perceptions that some groups do not pay their fair share? and (c) Do perceptions of fairness shape the direction in which Australians want to see tax reform progress?     

Quality of life in South Africa: Towards an instrument for the assessment of quality of life and basic needs

Conducting comparative quality of life research in a socio-economically and socio-politically divided society such as South Africa is methodologically challenging and worthwhile in that it provides a means for evaluating subtle social changes taking place. This is demonstrated on the basis of a study of perceptions of well-being involving white, Indian and black residents of Durban, South Africa. Survey findings generally reflected the differential social circumstances of the three groups represented in the sample, in particular it highlighted the materially underprivileged situation of Blacks in comparison to the other groups. Drawing upon the experience gained in the study, the rationale is given for developing a research instrument for measuring comparative qualities of life at the national level.     

Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Shame: Three Key Variables in Reducing School Bullying

This study examined the relationships between forgiveness, reconciliation, shame and school bullying. The sample consisted of 1,875 Bangladeshi adolescents (60% girls) in grades 7 to 10 ( M = 8.28). In a structural equation model, both forgiveness and reconciliation directly predicted less bullying. In addition to the direct effect, an indirect pathway showed reconciliation reduced bullying via adaptive shame management. Shame acknowledgment predicted less bullying whereas shame displacement predicted more in accord with the shame management theory. An alternative model was also tested, which demonstrated that parental forgiveness eroded when children displaced their shame. The nature of the intersection between these two theoretically viable psychological models has implications for both restorative justice theory and practice.     

Ultimate Extinction of the Promiscuous Bisexual Galton—Watson Metapopulation

A variant of a sexual Gallon–Watson process is considered. At each generation the population is partitioned among n‘hosts’ (population patches) and individual members mate at random only with others within the same host. This is appropriate for many macroparasite systems, and at low parasite loads it gives rise to a depressed rate of reproduction relative to an asexual system, due to the possibility that females are unmated. It is shown that stochasticity mitigates against this effect, so that for small initial populations the probability of ultimate extinction (the complement of an ‘epidemic’) displays a tradeoff as a function of n between the strength of fluctuations which overcome this ‘mating’ probability, and the probability of the subpopulation in one host being ‘rescued’ by that in another. Complementary approximations are developed for the extinction probability: an asymptotically exact approximation at large n, and for small n a short‐time probability that is exact in the limit where the mean number of offspring per parent is large.     

Bringing Back Community: Family Support From the Bottom Up

This paper presents findings of an evaluation of a one‐off, small scale, pilot project. Picking up where Sure Start, the government programme for families of newborns to threes, leaves off, ‘Families in Focus’ works with children aged four to 16 on a disadvantaged council estate in London. Through this route, the programme also reaches out to the families, providing a high level of on the spot local support. Feeding into the government's social exclusion agenda, the impact of the project has been significant, not least in restoring a strong sense of community to a previously alienated problem estate.     

A digital pedagogy pivot: re-thinking higher education practice from an HRD perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper has a provocative purpose. From both HRD and academic practice perspectives, it considers the digital pedagogy pivot made necessary by the Covid-19 pandemic. Universities have traditionally resisted substantial change in learning and teaching processes. This paper addresses the challenge they face of achieving the equivalent of a ten-year digital learning strategy in mere months. From a position that HE pedagogy constitutes a site of HRD practice, the paper considers the characteristics of a meaningful, digitally enabled pedagogy in Higher Education (HE) and their alignment with established HRD theories and concepts. It considers the pedagogic opportunities arising from the ‘digital pivot’ and the HRD processes appropriate to facilitate game-changing approaches to academic practice in Higher Education. The paper advances debate about the relationship between HRD and HE academic practice and contributes proposals for HRD processes to support rapid pedagogic change. It further contributes an original categorization of the way in which HRD concepts and theories are aligned with principles of HE pedagogy and a digital pedagogy pivot model.