bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The right to housing
Authors: Donnelly Dessie , Finnerty Joe , O’Connell Cathal
Published: January 2021

This chapter describes the human rights-based approach to housing and analyses it from a critical social policy perspective. The first section outlines the importance of housing as a human right, the second explores the distinctiveness of housing and a third section provides a case study of a community advocacy group, Participation and the Practice of Rights (PPR), using international human rights instruments such as the UN International Covenant for Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) to promote housing rights. Finally, the prospects and limits of a human rights-based approach to housing are discussed.
The rights of people with disabilities
Authors: O’Mahony Charles , Quinlivan Shivaun
Published: January 2021

This chapter assesses the role of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD) in driving law and policy reform globally relating to the rights of people with disabilities. By ratifying the CRPD states promise to adopt proactive equality norms and provide positive supports for persons with disabilities. They are also required to involve people with disabilities in the enforcement and implementation of the CRPD. It is thus a valuable tool for those advocating for the realisation of the rights of persons with disabilities that they be treated on an equal basis with others and fully included in society. The potential of the CRPD as a tool for social policy reforms is illustrated with reference to its use to impact EU policy to accelerate the de-institutionalisation and de-segregation of persons with disabilities across the EU.
Mental Health Services and Community Care
Authors: Cummins Ian
Published: January 2021

The volume presents a critical history of deinstitutionalisation and the subsequent policy of community care. It explores the development of the asylum regime, the challenges to it and finally the development of community care. It argues that the vision of community based mental health services has never been realized. The failings of community care in the 1990s and the media reporting of high-profile cases led to a backlash against the policy. Despite this, it has been adopted across the world and international perspectives are discussed. The links between deinstitutionalization and the expansion of the use of imprisonment are examined. The final chapters examine the landscape of contemporary mental health services.
The asylum and the community
Authors: Cummins Ian
Published: January 2021

This chapter will argue that the development of mental health policy was hugely influenced by conceptions of space and place. By the middle of the 20th century the asylum had become, in the public and sociological imagination a Gothic institution of seclusion and abuse. The chapter will explore the development of this representation of the asylum. The final representations of the asylum contrast dramatically with the original ones that saw the new institutions as a modern, progressive deinstitutionalisation was to present the community in binary opposition to the asylum. Community based services would, almost by reason of their location, lead to the creation of a new form of inclusive mental health provision. This is based on an idealised notion of community. As the pressures on mental health services grew, a range of social policies that were introduced that meant that urban communities, in particular, became exclusionary rather than inclusionary.
International perspectives
Authors: Cummins Ian
Published: January 2021

This chapter will examine deinstitutionalisation in Italy, the United States, and post-apartheid South Africa. In examining the different drivers and outcomes of policies in these areas, similar themes to the UK experience emerge. These include: the role of scandals in the pressure for change, the role of fiscal considerations in the development of policy, an initial period of optimism and the impact of scandals. In Italy, the work of the psychiatrist, Franco Basaglia was seen as a possible blueprint for wider reforms. Basaglia’s work became very influential amongst radicals and the anti-psychiatry movement. The USA was at the forefront of the deinstitutionalisation policy. The links between the closure of psychiatric facilities and the expansion of the use of imprisonment have been most closely examined in this context. Finally, the chapter examines the total policy failure that led to the deaths of one hundred and forty-four patients in Gauteng Province, South Africa in 2014
Introduction
Authors: Vincent Ben
Published: January 2021

The Introduction begins with a brief contextualisation of the significance of the topic of the book, and how recent cultural events (such as the social networking website Facebook introducing dozens of additional options for individuals’ gender identities aside from ‘male’ and ‘female’ in 2014) justifies exploration and recognition.
‘Not trans enough’: the relationship between non‑binary gender identities, uncertainty and legitimacy
Authors: Vincent Ben
Published: January 2021

Chapter three begins by outlining the project’s design, in order to ground the data in research practices, and introduce the participants and their demographics. The chapter then highlights a striking commonality amongst participants – insecurity in relation to gender. This could manifest as an internal uncertainty in being ‘trans enough’, or anxiety over not being seen as trans enough by other people. This chapter explores this phenomenon, whilst considering how hegemonic gendered expectations impact not only the ability to socially exert, but also the ability to internally formulate a non-binary gender identity.
Conclusion
Authors: Vincent Ben
Published: January 2021

The conclusion considers what systemic improvements may be made to queer communities and medical provisions, to allow the heterogeneity of non-binary identifying people to feel legitimised in their identities, and have equal access and experience of services. One of the most fundamental recommendations for medical practice that can be made is inspired by those communities that non-binary people expressed affinity with, such as bisexual and kink communities. Such spaces were sensitive and reflexive to gender plurality, and tended to construct language and space to be more fully inclusive. Gendered assumptions rooted in cisnormativity should be challenged within medical practice. Practices in gendered medicine may be similarly adjusted at the administrative level to improve preventative health screening for trans individuals. Much of this may be attained initially through the provision of training to both medical students and existent medical staff and administrators. This is followed by a critical reflection on gender affirming medical services, whereby the impact of a shift to an informed-consent focused model is considered. In order to optimise such recommendations, the limitations of this study and future necessary directions of enquiry are then addressed. This includes final methodological reflections and intersectional factors – such as the limited classed and racial diversity of the participants.
The landscape of maternal imprisonment: caregiving and family life
Authors: Booth Natalie
Published: January 2021

This chapter provides an overview of maternal imprisonment. The prison population in England and Wales is twice as large as it was in 1993. On any one day, just under 4,000 women are detained in prisons serving England and Wales; meanwhile, 8,000 women entered prison in 2017. When applying a family-centred lens to analyse these trends, a critical concern is the significant repercussions that this brings to the whole family because as the female prisoner population grows, so does the number of children separated from their mothers requiring replacement caregivers. However, being in prison does not remove a mother's willingness to continue mothering or automatically strip her of her legal parental responsibility in England and Wales. Instead, it is by virtue of the detainment that being imprisoned significantly alters, if not compromises, many of the roles and practices that a mother had previously undertaken. Most notably, this includes the daily care of children. The chapter then looks at the reallocation of caregiving following maternal imprisonment.
Researching the caregiver’s lived experiences
Authors: Booth Natalie
Published: January 2021

This chapter outlines the methodology used in this book, including the theoretical framework and methods selected. The aim of the research presented throughout this book was to explore how maternal imprisonment was experienced from a family-centred perspective. The intention was to provide an in-depth analysis of the experiences and perceptions of relatives looking after children whose mothers were in prison. To explain how this was achieved, the chapter is divided into three sections: the first section provides a description of the theoretical framework; the second section is an overview of the research methods adopted; and the third section introduces the caregiving kin and their familial circumstances. While the third section veers away from conventional academic norms, it does enable the participants' lives and experiences to be foregrounded, to act as a point of reference, a reminder of the realities that they were negotiating.
Family constructions and caregiving practices
Authors: Booth Natalie
Published: January 2021

This chapter examines the nature and scope of caregiving practices within families to better understand how families can be constructed during maternal imprisonment. It discusses three distinct characteristics that were observed within families. First, the joint interviews and caregivers' descriptions show the meaning, nature, and value of collective caregiving practices within the families, facilitating nuanced insights into the families' shared responses to the mothers' imprisonments. Second, the findings indicate that during a mother's imprisonment, it is maternal kin who take on caregiving responsibilities. Third, one explanation for female relatives assuming the bulk of care may be the smaller uptake of care from the children's fathers. The chapter then considers the positionality of the children's fathers, as well as father–children relationships, from the perspectives of caregivers.
Navigating the criminal justice system
Authors: Booth Natalie
Published: January 2021

This chapter offers insights on how caregiving kin can maintain relationships during maternal imprisonment. These insights are especially pertinent in light of the current political and policy climate, which has advocated support for prisoners' family ties. Yet, contact with a person in prison is restricted and mediated by criminal justice policies and processes. The chapter then focuses on the caregivers' experiences of navigating the criminal justice system (CJS) as they followed the mother through court and into prison. There are four main sections: caregivers' experiences of court processes; caregivers' opportunities for re-establishing contact with the mother on the telephone and face to face in the first days and weeks of her sentence; caregivers' perceptions of maintaining contact with the mother; and caregivers' understandings and perceptions of Mother and Baby Units (MBUs) when a child in their family was housed in prison or awaiting confirmation of a place.
Social support, familial stigma and release
Authors: Booth Natalie
Published: January 2021

This chapter assesses interactions with individuals and agencies external to the caregivers' own social and family networks. Research has shown that families and children experience stigma through their association with a prisoner. Relatedly, the narratives of the caregiving kin bring sharply into focus the lived realities of the discrimination and isolation that accompanied their experience of maternal imprisonment. Anxieties about social acceptance, legal guardianship, and gaining appropriate support underpinned the caregivers' accounts while they negotiated the prison sentence and looked to the mother's future return to the family. The chapter has three main sections, exploring: challenges facing primary kin caregivers without legal guardianship for the children, and their experiences of identifying and securing statutory support; caregivers' experiences, perceptions, and management of familial stigma in media reports, their local community, online, and at the prison; and caregivers' expectations of the mother's release.
Kin caregiving: occupying a disenfranchised status while serving the family sentence
Authors: Booth Natalie
Published: January 2021

This chapter highlights the key findings from the study and proposes some recommendations. Throughout this book, the lived experiences of relatives and friends (caregiving kin) looking after the children of female prisoners have been examined. Their honest accounts of their everyday lives during maternal imprisonment have contributed new insights which the chapter reviews. Importantly, listening to caregivers has developed a conceptual understanding of the ways in which the ‘family sentence’ is served from a ‘disenfranchised social status’. Ultimately, it is crucial to incorporate the perspectives of caregivers into policy and practice in order to facilitate a greater inclusion and response to the challenges they experience.
Tracing the development of anti-trafficking institutions
Authors: Dean Laura A.
Published: January 2021

This chapter builds on policy adoption, by tracing different anti-trafficking institutions created directly or indirectly as a result of that adoption. It analyzes and compares the establishment and development of five different anti-trafficking institutions: national coordinators, working groups, police units, shelters for victims, and victim certification processes. Although many of these institutions were developed as a result of policy adoption, they are not always codified and even some that are established, fail to work effectively and are only hollow Potemkinesque institutions. The chapter demonstrates that once anti-trafficking institutions are entrenched in countries and there are mechanisms to ensure the institutions’ survival, they have the potential to not only oversee implementation but also are effective actors in the policy subsystem working to develop better and more responsive policy in the future. A competent working group composed of civil society and government officials, which meets regularly, is the most effective anti-trafficking institution a country can possess. However, police units were the only institution that was effectively implemented demonstrating the institutional emphasis on criminalization across all three cases.
Linkages among actors in anti-trafficking networks
Authors: Dean Laura A.
Published: January 2021

This chapter discusses how anti-trafficking institutions work together to form anti-trafficking networks illustrating the connections and cooperation among the different institutions. A network analysis is used to examine implementation networks, focusing on how different actors in the human trafficking policy subsystem come together and the ties that bind them. The networks of anti-trafficking institutions in each country reveal a stark divide and disconnect between criminalization aspects of the policy with law enforcement and police and the social aspects with rehabilitation for victims mostly performed by NGOs and women’s advocacy networks. The analysis revealed the Russian network is the smallest and most fragmented but also the densest while the Latvian network is the most cohesive with the largest number of reciprocal ties facilitated by the working group. The network in Ukraine has the highest average of incoming and outgoing connections and the most efficient connection between actors in the network. There was also evidence of interest groups in Ukraine and Russia moving around impediments in the national government by creating their own networks and lobbying specific regional level entities who were more open to cooperation. The results show that the more effective the anti-trafficking institutions are in a country, the more cohesive the anti-trafficking network is at facilitating reciprocal relationships.
Empirical comparisons of human trafficking policy across Eurasia
Authors: Dean Laura A.
Published: January 2021

This chapter broadens the analysis back to whole region of Eurasia to analyze the determinants of policy adoption and implementation with original dataset, adapting variables for internal determinants and external pressure to the international policymaking environment. It examines the quantitative determinants of policy adoption and implementation across all fifteen counties in Eurasia in a similar time period as the case study analyses from 2003-2015 in a pooled time series. It presented a new and innovative Human Trafficking Policy Index which measures the scope of human trafficking policies in Eurasia and ranks it on a 15-point scale every year. The findings mirror the qualitative results and reveal that internal political conditions and monetary factors inside the country such as state commitment, policy entrepreneurs, bureaucracy, and state capacity determine how the countries adopted policy while policy entrepreneurs, bureaucracy, and police effectiveness influence policy implementation. The mixed method comparison demonstrates that state commitment and policy entrepreneurs had a positive influence on human trafficking policy adoption while bureaucratic impediments inhibited policy adoption. The results were less cohesive with policy implementation model but revealed the influence of internal determinants such as street-level bureaucrats, bureaucratic impediments, and conflicting policing results.
Conclusion: The implications of human trafficking policies
Authors: Dean Laura A.
Published: January 2021

The conclusion explores the limitations and effectiveness of human trafficking policy in combatting the phenomenon of human trafficking. It discusses if legislated solutions for a wicked problem such as human trafficking are impossible to obtain and if policies can only attempt to alleviate the problem. Most policy advocates argued that human trafficking policies help, but aspects of supply and demand are the main causes of human trafficking. These concepts such as poverty, abuse, gender inequality, and immigration that get to the underlying causes of push and pull factors of trafficking, are not covered in most human trafficking policies and are difficult to legislate across countries in an increasingly globalized world. The existing laws and policies were imperfect with implementation problems, but the policies were effective in many respects and better than an absence of policy. The chapter also analyzes how progress in anti-trafficking adoption and implementation was affected by the different political developments in masculinized political environments. The crime of human trafficking is always changing, and policy should be encompassing and resilient to withstand changing trends and political developments.
Minimum Essential Standards of Living research in Ireland
Authors: Mahon Bernadette Mac , Thornton Robert
Published: January 2021

This chapter focuses on the history and development of budget standards research in Ireland, from the Low Cost but Acceptable approach that was used to assess adequacy to the more recent adoptions of the Minimum Income Standards methodology. It talks about the Minimum Essential Standards of Living (MESL), which is rooted in social consensus about the goods and services that everyone in Ireland should be able to afford. It also discusses the United Nations' definition of a “minimum acceptable standard of living.” The chapter analyzes the most recent MESL results that are discussed in the context of social welfare adequacy. It also points out how the MESL research has had an impact in policy debates around adequacy in Ireland.
A South African pilot of the Minimum Income Standards approach
Authors: Wright Gemma , Padley Matt , Zembe-Mkabile Wanga
Published: January 2021

This chapter reports the pilot work with the “Minimum Income Standards” (MIS) methodology in South Africa. It talks about the studies in South Africa that present some challenges relating to cultural factors, such as the different connotations of the term “minimum” and “decent standard of living.” It also describes the difficulties of bringing together people with different backgrounds, ethnicities, and languages for reference budget research in the “Rainbow Nation.” The chapter also emphasizes other ethical challenges involved in the study, such as bringing together very wealthy people and very poor people to discuss minimum standards in a highly unequal country context. It reviews important lessons taken from forward budget research in diverse settings where there are often major challenges to overcome.
Reference budgets as tools for everyday life, evaluation and policy making in Finland
Authors: Lehtinen Anna-Riitta , Aalto Kristiina
Published: January 2021

This chapter tackles Anna-Riitta Lehtinen and Kristiina Aalto's work on reference budget methods in Finland in order to establish the decent minimum reference budgets. It illustrates some attempts that were made to establish a programme of reference budget research in the 1990s. It also mentions how reference budget research was revived by Lehtinen and Aalto's work on consensual budgets in 2010 and then in 2018. The chapter examines how the Finnish reference budgets combine focus group discussions with members of the public in order to help improve the reliability and validity of the resulting standards. It reveals the inadequacy of the Finnish social protection system, in which only pensioner incomes reached the reference budget standard while other cash transfers and benefits were about 70 percent of the reference budgets.
Minimum budgets for Danish families
Authors: Bonke Jens , Christensen Anders Eiler Wiese
Published: January 2021

This chapter reports on minimum reference budgets for Danish families. It discusses the first versions of the Danish minimum reference budgets that were produced in the 1990s and followed the Low Cost but Acceptable (LCA) approach. It also explains the Danish reference budgets that represent consumption expenditures associated with a modest but still healthy and basic social life for different families and households. The chapter looks into the deliberations of expert groups in order to define the necessary requirements for living a modest but still healthy life, and reference budgets that cover ten different family or household groups. It compares the Danish reference budgets against the Norwegian reference budgets as both follow similar expert-led procedures.
The steep and winding road to comparable reference budgets in Europe
Authors: Goedemé Tim
Published: January 2021

This chapter discusses Tim Goedemé's cross-national research work in order to establish reference budgets for EU member states and facilitate the European Commission's (EC) task of monitoring income adequacy in Europe. It focuses on the “Improving Poverty Reduction in Europe” (ImPRovE) project that worked closely with six country teams based in Antwerp, Athens, Barcelona, Budapest, Helsinki and Milan. It also looks into the development of more comprehensive reference budgets that span all expenditures needs in both food and non-food. The chapter reflects on the key lessons and contributions from the ImPRovE project and discusses some of the issues on establishing a common language and “standardized” approach. It suggests how approaches on reference budgets strengthen EU social protection systems and social indicators and provide new sociological insights into European societies and public attitudes.
Adequate income in Portugal: a comparison of two estimation methods
Authors: Pereirinha José A. , Pereira Elvira , Branco Francisco , Costa Dália , Amaro Maria Inês
Published: January 2021

This chapter examines the adequate income in Portugal by comparing “Improving Poverty Reduction in Europe” (ImPRovE) and Minimum Income Standards (MIS). It discusses how the MIS approach places great emphasis on the results of the focus group discussions for establishing a consensual income standard for society, while the ImPRovE method puts experts in the driving seat and focus groups are largely confirmatory. It also provides a comparison of MIS and ImPRovE's food budget results. The chapter looks into the cost of the food basket for both a man and a woman, and a couple, that is found to be higher when using the ImPRovE methodology compared to MIS approach. It covers findings that highlight some of the main differences of MIS and ImPRovE in terms of food basket composition or quantities of different groups of food.
Basic needs budgets in policy and practice
Authors: Fisher Gordon M.
Published: January 2021

This chapter takes up the history and development of standard “basic needs” budgets in the US. It explains in detail why the focus remains only on basic survival needs in the US context. It also points out how basic needs budgets are largely left to state governments and their agencies in order to develop family budget standards for their state in the absence of national action by the federal government. The chapter illustrates the overwhelming lack of economic security and social protection in the US, which caused many households to struggle in coping with incomes below the most basic of living standards. It mentions a new poverty line that comprises of an allowance for food, clothing, and shelter, which would be updated annually based on changes in the consumption of necessities by a reference group of families in the general population.
Housing Shock
Authors: Hearne Rory
Published: January 2021

The unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis in Ireland is having profound impacts on Generation Rent, the wellbeing of children, worsening wider inequality and threatening the economy. Housing Shock contextualises the Irish housing crisis within the broader global housing situation by examining the origins of the crisis in terms of austerity, marketisation and the new era of financialisation, where global investors are making housing unaffordable and turning homes into assets for the wealthy. The COVID-19 pandemic has also shown the central importance of secure, affordable, decent standard homes and housing and this book details the structural problems and inequalities that COVID has exposed. It also brings to the fore the perspectives of those most affected by the crisis, new housing activists and protesters whilst providing innovative global solutions for a new vision for affordable, sustainable homes for all including “a green new deal for housing that provides affordable sustainable homes and communities for all”, a new form of public housing and putting the right to adequate, affordable, secure housing in the constitution and law. And it points to hopeful aspects in the new civil society housing protest movements in Ireland. It also details the contribution that academics and policy makers can make in social change in housing. This book shows how housing is fundamental to our wellbeing and a housing system that ensures everyone has an affordable secure home is beneficial for all and that achieving this is a political and societal choice.
Generation Rent
Authors: Hearne Rory
Published: January 2021

This chapter details how the younger generations and lower-income households are most affected by the housing and homelessness crisis. It shows how huge aspects of their lives have become precarious and insecure, as a result of insecure, low-paid and often part-time jobs, and insecure and unaffordable housing. Generation Rent is the new housing precariat, living with precarious housing, precarious work contracts and an inability to access mortgage credit, alongside unaffordable house prices and rent. It details the structural shift in Ireland’s housing system: decline in home-ownership rates and rise in private rental sector. Generation Rent now extends to the middle-aged and older generations as shown in the increase in the number of people renting in their 40s and 50s. It looks at increasing housing cost overburden rates where young people on low incomes are most severely affected by the issue of housing affordability than young people on higher incomes. Generation Rent also includes Generation Stuck at Home - those forced to live at home with theirparents as they cannot afford to move out into the rental sector, orbecause they have been evicted, unable to meet mortgages, cannot access social housing, or are trying to savefor a deposit.
Inequality and financialisation
Authors: Hearne Rory
Published: January 2021

This chapter details the dramatic increase in investor flows into real estate in Ireland and how global investors view the ‘build-to-rent’ sector as a key area for investment. It shows that the non-household sector significantly increased its role in buying residential property in Ireland from 2013 onwards. It sets out how global equity, institutional investors and real estate funds are moving into student accommodation making it less affordable. It looks at how new planning laws promote micro-apartments and how such build-to-rent co-living spaces fail to provide an acceptable living environment. It explores the downsides of global investment and hyperfinancialisation and is adding significantly to demand, thus inflating property prices and rents and how corporate landlords are becoming a real force and have the power to set new (higher) market rents in certain areas embedding a embeds a permanent unaffordability into the housing market. It shows how Ireland is facilitating the global financialisation of housing through its tax and regulatory regime for REITs, global real estate investors and vultures which is of international significance as it is both facilitates, and increases the profitability in, equity investment in residential property.It finishes by detailing the new forms of inequality resulting from financialisation of housing - the winners and losers in the Irish housing system.
The right to an affordable, secure and decent home for all
Authors: Hearne Rory
Published: January 2021

This chapter outlines the centrality of housing as a home for human dignity and wellbeing, using a social justice, human rights and psychological approach to housing. It details the impact of homelessness and housing insecurity on child and family wellbeing. It explains how and why housing is a human right in international law, including the UN definition of adequate housing, and the right to housing in European law and European countries. It details the new housing movement, The Shift and housing strategies based on human rights, key principles of a human rights-based housing strategy. It then outlines the status of right to housing in Ireland, its absence in law, and recent debates around its inclusion in the Constitution. It details the case for why the Right to Housing should be included in Irish law and the Constitution.
Introduction
Authors: Diaz Clive
Published: January 2021

This chapter sets the context for the book, examining the increase in numbers of children in care and subject to a child protection plan in England and Wales, outcomes for children in care and an overview of the child protection system in England. This chapter reviews the literature available on this subject as I explore the background of the care and child protection systems in England and Wales.
It will further examine how the outcomes for children in care can be related to education, employment, mental health, early parenthood, and the criminal justice system. Chapter 1 will also discuss the methodology used during this research, as well as ethical considerations and the familiarity problem that needed to be considered when carrying out this research.
Young people’s perspectives
Authors: Diaz Clive
Published: January 2021

This chapter details the views of 35 young people in care about their experiences of social workers, independent reviewing officers (IROs), the care system and the extent to which they felt their voice was being heard both in review meetings and in day to day practice. They reported finding Child-in-Care reviews frustrating and stressful, often due in part to poor relationships with social workers. Young people also reported scepticism about the value of the review process. The importance of the role of independent review officers, who generally stay longer in their role than social workers and therefore offer consistent relationships with young people in care, is stressed. Young people discussed how at times they were not invited to meetings as the social worker and IROs priority was ensuring the meeting took place within certain timescales. Overall young people reported that they did not feel that children in care reviews enabled them to meaningfully participate. One ray of light is the developing practice of children chairing their own reviews and this chapter ends with a call for this to be developed alongside other creative methods of allowing young people to play a meaningful part in meetings that affect them.
Young people’s participation: views from social workers and independent reviewing officers
Authors: Diaz Clive
Published: January 2021

In this chapter social workers’ and independent reviewing officers’ views on the work they carry out with children in care are presented. Pressures on professionals were a recurrent concern. It was also noted that social workers’ understanding of the concept of participation was limited and the examples provided illustrated that children’s and young people’s participation was largely tokenistic. There appeared to be a disconnect/dissonance between professionals’ views of how important participation is and their actual practice with families. Social workers and IROs both stated that children’s participation was very important to them but then went onto explain that generally children played no role in deciding where the review took place, when it took place, who was invited and what was on the agenda. Social workers and IROs also stated that reviews took place without children to meet statutory timescales and that on occasions CIC reviews would take place just after Personal Education Planning meetings leading to very long meetings. Despite legislation giving children rights to have a say in their care and their wishes taken into consideration, there remains a lack of commitment to this from professionals, high caseloads, systemic pressures and a focus on completing paperwork rather than engaging meaningfully with children seems to be the reason for this. This appears to resonate with Forrester’s (2016) idea of ‘zombie social work’, and appears clear evidence of ‘doing things right instead of doing the right thing’ (Munro 2012).
Senior managers’ perspectives
Authors: Diaz Clive
Published: January 2021

This chapter considers the views of senior managers, which are presented alongside a discussion of the rise in managerialism in social work. There was a contrast between the views of senior managers and the perspectives of the other participants interviewed for this study, particularly in relation to workload challenges that social workers and independent review officers faced. Senior managers appeared to blame individual social workers when things went wrong. Despite some social workers in this local authority having a caseload of 40 children, senior managers did not see this as an issue. Senior managers also displayed limited understanding of meaningful participation, were unsure what opportunities children had to participate or how they could support this. They reported that little seemed to have changed with children’s participation in their reviews over the last twenty-five years. Young people had a better understanding of the pressures faced by social workers than social managers.
In the face of social injustice: a panel
Authors: Krumer-Nevo Michal
Published: January 2021

The fourth chapter of Part Three brings to life the voices of activists, students, and social workers as they were heard in a panel discussion that took place at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2015. The chapter is a transcription of the discussion, which reveals the participants’ personal experiences with active excercising of rights, their attitudes toward it, the characteristics needed for this kind of practice, and the pros and cons of it.
When Douby looked for a home: ‘standing by’ within the establishment
Authors: Krumer-Nevo Michal
Published: January 2021

This is the first chapter of Part Four of the book, which is titled “Solidarity”. Solidarity is an ethical principle that dictates the positioning of the social worker vis-à-vis service users. The chapter tells the story of a woman who was evicted from the apartment that she had occupied for 12 years and the struggle of her social worker to change the eviction order. The chapter addresses the tension between practice based on solidarity and mainstream social work practice in local social services.
Childhoods from postcolonial perspectives
Authors: Liebel Manfred
Published: January 2021

This chapter follows some of the debates conducted in social childhood studies, such as the question of whether a ‘global childhood’ has developed during the processes of globalization and discusses the scope and limitations of Eurocentric childhood patterns. It explains what postcolonial constellations and postcolonial childhoods mean and illustrates these concepts with some empirical data. Finally, the chapter looks at the manifestations of children’s agency in the Global South and how agency can be conceptualized.
Colonialism and the colonization of childhoods
Authors: Liebel Manfred
Published: January 2021

In order to gain a concept of childhoods in the Global South, it is necessary to understand the connections between colonialization and childhood. This chapter conceptualizes childhood as a form of being and engages in a discourse on the same. It shows how the history of childhood is closely intertwined with changes in the modes of production and reproduction of societies. Particularly with the development of the capitalist mode of production in the modern European era and the rise of the bourgeoisie to the ruling class. In the first part, this chapter discusses the mental connections between the emergence of the European bourgeois childhood pattern and the colonialization of foreign continents. In this context, it traces the dialectic of education or literacy and power in the colonial and postcolonial relations. In the second part, this chapter explains how, in the 1960s and 70s, the discourse on the colonization of childhood arose and finally was linked with post- and decolonial theories. In conclusion it sheds light on some ambivalences of European-bourgeois childhood constructions with regard to colonialization and decolonization.
Postcolonial theories from the Global South
Authors: Liebel Manfred
Published: January 2021

This chapter outlines the basic ideas of postcolonial theory and presents some of the most important contributions from Africa and Latin America. It introduces different currents of postcolonial theory known as Subaltern Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Southern Theory, Philosophy of Liberation, Ethnophilosophy, Coloniality of Power, Coloniality of Knowledge, De-Coloniality/Decolonization, Epistemology of the South or Ubuntu, and discusses their significance for the analysis of childhoods in the Global South. Although postcolonial thought has not taken children and childhoods into consideration, the chapter takes it up in order to acquire a better understanding of children in their respective living contexts and their potentials for action, by which childhoods are placed more precisely in their historical and geopolitical contexts.
State violence against children in British Empire and former settler colonies
Authors: Liebel Manfred
Published: January 2021

Generally, a national State is considered the guarantor of protection and safety of the people living within its borders or who are subjected to its sovereignty. Yet history is full of examples in which State authorities not only neglect their responsibility toward at-risk people, but also actively contribute to threatening and endangering the lives of the latter. This is especially manifest within State policies referring to people considered ‘foreign’, or whose benefit towards society is questioned. This chapter reviews some historical examples, in which poor and indigenous children have been affected by such violent, exclusionary and discriminatory policies with racist connotations, of which consequences can still be felt today. Particularly, it reconstructs cases from the British Empire and from States emerging from settler colonies, namely United States of America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Racist civilization of children in Latin America
Authors: Liebel Manfred
Published: January 2021

The colonization of the subcontinent, now called Latin America, was at first a severe form of exploitation of land and people. Over the massive immigration of European migrants and the recruitment of slaves from Africa, the colonies in the subcontinent have gradually changed to settler colonies. The conquest of the Southern subcontinent went hand in hand with an extensive biological intermarriage between the colonists on the one hand and the indigenous and African descendent populations, predominantly their women, on the other. This mixing continued after the formation of independent Latin American republics starting in the beginning of the 19th century, but without alteration of the supremacy the descendants of the white conquerors have had. This chapter presents different practices, which can be traced back to similar causes. First, the racist violence against so-called illegitimate children, secondly, the treatment of children of indigenous and African descendent populations in order to ‘civilize’ them. These practices are based in part on the racist convictions of the colonial potentates and continue to take place today in Latin American societies.
Pitfalls of postcolonial education and child policies in Africa
Authors: Liebel Manfred
Published: January 2021

With 70 per cent of people under the age of 30, more than 450 million children and adolescents under the age of 18, including approximately 150 million children under the age of 5, Africa is the ‘youngest’ continent. Research on children and childhoods in Africa has rarely addressed post- and decolonial issues. Contrasting the common picture of Africa as backward, disaster ridden continent, this chapter outlines how the situation of children and the characteristics of childhood in Africa are influenced by postcolonial power and childhood policies. It concentrates on three aspects. On the one hand, it discusses the changes that follow the establishment of schools according to Western patterns. Secondly, the debate on the appropriateness and implementation of children's rights, especially with regard to particularly marginalized groups of children in precarious living conditions. Thirdly, the relationship between children and adults and their limitations and opportunities to play an equal and participatory role in their societies is considered.
Childhoods and children’s rights beyond postcolonial paternalism
Authors: Liebel Manfred
Published: January 2021

The epilogue summarizes the manifestations of postcolonial paternalism towards children and a particular use of children's rights. It shows how an anti-paternalist child rights policy can contribute to overcoming this paternalism and illustrates this with the example of a local group of the African Movement of Working Children and Youth in Senegal.
Social work in 1970
Authors: Bilton Keith
Published: January 2021

The chapter summarises the development of the idea of social work as a profession and describes the negotiations leading to the formation in 1970 of the British Association of Social Workers. It examines the considerations which led the Government to establish the Seebohm Committee on the personal social services, outlines the bold ambitions of the Committee's Report, published in 1968, and describes the only partially successful campaigns of the various associations of social workers, acting mainly through the Standing Conference of Organisations of Social Workers (SCOSW) and through the Seebohm Implementation Action Group, for their implementation in the Local Authority Social Services Act of 1970. The Act also established the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work, and the disagreements within SCOSW about whether the council should be accountable to Ministers are also considered.
From clients as fellow citizens to service users as co-producers of social work
Authors: Beresford Peter , Croft Suzy
Published: January 2021

Social work training remained the required pattern for probation officers for the first half of the last fifty years. With the abandonment of that link probation has gradually shifted its focus from ‘advise assist and befriend’ to surveillance and risk assessment. With that shift has come incoherence in management and organisation culminating in the disaster of Transforming Rehabilitation, the flagship reform introducing the private sector and payment by results. The policy on adult offenders is contrasted with the relative success of the Youth justice Board.Despite the absence of relationships from probation service publicity material, social work skills are required to engage with the issues of housing, employment and income security which blight lives of offenders after discharge.
Afterword
Authors: Bamford Terry , Bilton Keith
Published: January 2021

The overall picture emerging from the preceding chapters is one of social work survival in a cold climate. The halcyon days of the early 1970s with double-digit growth rates have never been repeated. Even when the Blair/Brown government was investing heavily in the NHS during years of plenty, social care was the poor relation. (And in the British system social work is regarded as being subsumed within social care.) It was not before about 2010 that government came to realise that the effects on the NHS of a failing social care system will be disastrous....
Brexit: Views from Europe
Authors: Ryder Andrew
Published: January 2021

This chapter describes the views of European policy actors, where Brexiteers’ notions of reclaiming national power and self-interest were often pitted against and contrasted with the ethical and idealistic sentiments of those who wanted to preserve the European project and or those committed to the maintenance of a technocratic status quo. These debates and discussions took place within and were shaped by a profound paradigm shift provoked by an economic and cultural crisis in which competing philosophies were set against each other. Cosmopolitanism versus nationalism presented one clash of paradigms – a discourse in which international cooperation, integration and cultural diversity are juxtaposed against narrow national self-interests and monocultural and reactive forms of identity, creating frames (interpretations and perspectives) that can mobilise and galvanise populations and political elites. Alongside identity discourse there was a socio-economic cleavage which revolved around the tensions between neoliberalism and conceptions of the state centred on statism and welfare where social justice rather than profit was the central governing force. Both discourses were accentuated and inflamed by the financial crisis of 2008 and a populist backlash against globalisation, with some propounding a theory of ‘European disintegration’ leading to the unravelling of the democratic capitalist compact within which European integration has been so firmly entwined through the European project. The chapter gives some insight into how the EU sought to protect the integrity of the single market and customs union and perceived Brexit as a direct challenge to the European social model