Children taken into care and custody and the ‘troubled families’ agenda in England

Children taken into care and custody are arguably the most vulnerable and problematic groups within the wider debate and responses developing to the ‘troubled families’ agenda in England. They represent what the state most wants to avoid when it intervenes in the life of a family. This paper is based on an analysis of the service involvement and needs of the 196 children taken into care or custody over a 3‐year period (2008–2011) in one city local authority in England. The research was undertaken to inform the response to prevention of entry into care and custody which was the original focus of the most intensive part of the troubled families programme in the city. Interviews with 10 senior professionals from a range of agencies involved in setting up this local programme, explored the way the emerging troubled families agenda was shaping ideas about the understanding of and response to the needs of these children and their families. Key findings of the study illustrate the range and complexity of need as well as the sequence and amount of agency involvement. Professionals were often critical of the thinking behind the troubled families agenda, but were positive and creative about new ways of working with these families.     

Realism and Contingency

This paper constitutes an extended response to Athanasia Chalari's paper The Causal Impact of Resistance, which suggests that one may derive from internal conversations a causal explanation of resistance. In the context of our engagements with critical realism and digital research into social movements, we review Chalari's main argument, before applying it to a concrete case: the student protests in London, 2010. Whilst our account is sympathetic to Chalari's focus on interiority, we critique the individualism that is implicit in her argument, arguing that it emerges because of an underlying neglect of the relational aspects of resistance. Instead, we offer a relational realist analysis that treats resistance as process within an ontologically stratified account of reality that is mindful of the contingency of political acts. Taking this route, we establish resistance as an emergent relation, generative of distinctive “relational goods” in the context of collective action, which we locate at different levels of reality, as we move from an analysis of individual to collective reflexivity. In doing so we offer a sympathetic critique of Chalari, building on the thought provoking arguments contained within it, whilst also making a contribution to the theorisation of social movements and the “relational turn” within realist social theory (Archer, 2010, 2012).     

基于伙伴教育的“学长制”探索与实践

基于伙伴教育的学长制,是在教育教学活动中充分发挥学生的主体作用,发挥学有专长的学生的示范作用,使高年级学生和低年级学生、毕业生和在校生教学相长。文章以齐齐哈尔工程学院为例,阐述近年来对学长制的实践性研究。     

“一村一名大学生计划”人才培养模式的探索与实践——以华中农业大学为例

"一村一名大学生计划"旨在为广大农村培养"留得住、用得上、懂技术、善经营"的复合型、应用型人才,有效挖掘和利用农村人力资源,助推社会主义新农村建设。华中农业大学自2008年参与此项目以来,针对当前农村社会经济发展和学员自身实际,培养目标设定上注重与农业人才要求的吻合性,课程体系设置上注重与农业生产特点的针对性,教学过程安排上注重与农业生产过程的适应性,实践教学落实上注重与农业生产周期的同步性,在构建"一村一名大学生计划"人才培养模式方面作了有益的探索与实践,取得了明显成效。     

小组社会工作在大学生情绪管理中的应用与实施

当前,我国的教育理念和体制一直强调加强智育,而对情感教育尚缺乏足够的重视,尤其是高校大学生情感教育正面临着严峻的考验。大学生情绪管理小组旨在运用专业的小组工作方法,协助大学生提升情绪管理能力,实现我国高校情绪管理教育渠道的多元化。     

浅议我国高等教育评估中介组织的公正性

高等教育评估中介组织只有以客观性和公正性为本,站在客观公正的第三方立场上去独立自主地进行价值判断,避免由于权利与风险的不对应而出现的＂廉价投票权＂问题,才能赢得政府、高等学校和社会的最终理解和支持,才会具有可持续发展的能力,才能真正保证自己的独立生存权。否则,它将面临合法性的危机。     

The Higher Education White Paper: The Good,the Bad,the Unspeakable – and the Next White Paper1

This article argues that reforms of higher education finance for undergraduates in England introduced by the Blair government in 2006 provided a progressive strategy for achieving the central objectives of higher education of quality (better), access (wider) and size (larger). Reforms in 2012 are a not a strategy but a collection of ad hoc arrangements. They include the good (a higher fees cap, a higher interest rate on student loans, better information and improved support for part‐time study), the bad (abolishing most taxpayer support for teaching in the arts and humanities and the social sciences, and raising excessively the threshold at which loan repayments start) and the unspeakable (abolishing Education Maintenance Allowances and AimHigher). The reforms are fiscally costly and hence perpetuate the central problem of capped student numbers, and will not stand the test of time. The concluding section outlines the next White Paper.     

多维度下高校学生工作研究综述

社会转型下高校学生工作备受关注。研究综述发现:历史维度下高校学生工作从工具性向价值性转型;现实维度下"高级保姆"式方式存在诸多问题;跨文化维度下的专业性与服务性为我国学生工作发展提供了借鉴意义。构建乡土视野下的高校学生工作需要实现社会工作的理念、方法及角色介入。     

‘Doing it right?’– accessing the narratives of identity of newly qualified social workers through the lens of resilience: ‘I am,I have,I can’

Using narrative enquiry, this paper accesses the construct of identity through exploring resilience in newly qualified social workers based in statutory children's services. In seeking to avoid deficit‐based models of this role, this paper aims to present inductively the ‘voice’ of three social workers in a semi‐rural authority, storying the positive ways in which resilience has developed during their first year. Using the Grotberg resilience framework (1995) –‘I am, I have, I can’– as an analytical tool at the interface of personal, professional and organizational identities, we conclude that ‘I am’ and ‘I have’ are more important than the skills dimension of ‘I can’. Positive role models, trust, ‘managed’ optimism, flexibility of support in and beyond induction, and, crucially, self‐efficacy and space for reflexivity, are more prominent as sources of resilience and strong identity. The reflexivity, inspired by the process of narrative enquiry, is an important contributor to self‐efficacy. We propose that a positive view of growth and identity is preferable to deficit models in the context of the transition between the two ‘communities of practice’ and of the challenges of the workplace. Organizational approaches based on this view will be more likely to promote a sustainable workforce.     

Conceptualising the politics of social protection expansion in low income countries: The intersection of transnational ideas and domestic politics

The growing literature on social protection in low income developing countries has tended to focus on definitional debates, policy design and impact evaluations, with relatively little consideration of the ways in which politics shape policy. This article argues that politics needs to be at the centre of efforts to understand social protection and outlines a new conceptual framework for investigating this, with a particular focus on explaining the variation in progress made by low income countries in adopting and implementing social protection. We propose that an adapted ‘political settlements’ framework that incorporates insights from the literatures on welfare state development – notably ‘power constellations’ theory, discursive institutionalism and global policy networks – can help frame political commitment to social protection as flowing from the interaction of domestic political economy and transnational ideas. Importantly, this approach situates social protection within a broader political and policy context, and highlights the influence of underlying power relations at multiple levels.