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This article explores the impact of the 'hostile environment' on racialised migrant women's experiences of pregnancy and childbirth in England, arguing that the 'hostile environment' functions as a technology of 'stratified reproduction.' First coined by Shellee Colen, the concept of stratified reproduction describes the dynamic by which some individuals and groups may be supported in their reproductive activities, while others are disempowered and discouraged. This paper locates the stratified reproduction produced by the 'hostile environment' as intertwined with wider gendered and racialised discourses around British citizenship which have been 'designed to fail' racialised residents of the UK. Drawing on interviews with racialised migrant mothers in the north of England, this paper analyses how the proliferation and intensification of immigration controls interacts with gender, race, class, and other social regimes to differentially allocate the resources necessary for a safe and healthy pregnancy and childbirth, and how this is experienced materially by pregnant migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with learning disabilities are living longer. Older people with learning disabilities should be included in policies and plans that are for all older people. National plans and policies for older people often do not say anything about older people with learning disabilities, and it is hard to know whether older people with learning disabilities are benefiting. People who plan services locally often do not have good information on older people with learning disabilities. Using the Equalities Act 2010 could help people who plan services and write policy to think about older people with learning disabilities but this is not happening at the moment. People who work with older people with learning disabilities should be aware of policy for all older people, so that older people with learning disabilities do not miss out. This paper seeks to explore the opportunities and challenges generated by current policy, guidance and legislation in England relating to older people, in terms of the practical implications for older people with learning disabilities. Using the broad themes housing, employment, social inclusion and isolation, care and support, and promoting better health and well-being, this paper discusses potential practical opportunities and concerns for older people with learning disabilities arising from policy and legislation such as current initiatives regarding integration, personalisation and the dementia policy. Consideration is given to the implications of changing policy and practice for both current and future generations of people with a learning disability as they reach older age. This discussion paper concludes that whilst there is potential for older people with a learning disability to benefit from policy and practice aimed at improving the lives of older people generally, the tendency for policy to be targeted at specific groups without adequately considering the diversity of those groups often leaves those with a learning disability at the margins of being able to make the most of changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to update the core data set of self-neglect safeguarding adult reviews (SARs) and accompanying thematic analysis. It also explores whether lessons are being learned from the findings and recommendations of an increasing number of reviews on self-neglect cases. Design/methodology/approach: Further published reviews are added to the core data set, mainly drawn from the websites of safeguarding adults boards (SABs). Thematic analysis is updated using the domains used previously. The domains and the thematic analysis are grounded in the evidence-based model of good practice, reported in this journal previously. Findings: Familiar findings emerge from the thematic analysis and reinforce the evidence-base of good practice with individuals who self-neglect and for policies and procedures with which to support those practitioners working with such cases. Multiple exclusion homelessness and alcohol misuse are prominent. Some SABs are having to return to further cases of self-neglect to review, inviting scrutiny of what is (not) being learned from earlier findings and recommendations. Research limitations/implications: The national database of reviews commissioned by SABs remains incomplete. The Care Act 2014 does not require publication of reports but only a summary of findings and recommendations in SAB annual reports. National Health Service Digital annual data sets do not enable the identification of reviews by types of abuse and neglect. However, the first national analysis of SARs has found self-neglect to be the most prominent type of abuse and/or neglect reviewed. Drawing together the findings builds on what is known about the components of effective practice, and effective policy and organisational arrangements for practice. Practical implications: Answering the question "why" remains a significant challenge for SARs. The findings confirm the relevance of the evidence-base for effective practice but SARs are limited in their analysis of what enables and what obstructs the components of best practice. Greater explicit use of research and other published SARs might assist with answering the "why" question. Greater scrutiny is needed of the impact of the national legal, policy and financial context within which adult safeguarding is situated. Originality/value: The paper extends the thematic analysis of available reviews that focus on study with adults who self-neglect, further reinforcing the evidence base for practice. Propositions are explored, concerned with whether learning is being maximised from the process of case review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the four UK jurisdictions, there are distinct disparities in exclusion rates of school students. Northern Ireland, alongside Scotland and Wales, has demonstrated over time, lower rates of permanent exclusions and temporary exclusions compared with England. This paper examines these disparities from the perspectives of representatives from various system-level educational bodies and third sector organisations representing children and families who experienced the exclusion process. The paper will also present policy and legal frameworks associated with exclusion in Northern Ireland. We interviewed 9 stakeholders, associated with practices of school exclusion in Northern Ireland, from a range of system-level education bodies and advocacy groups. Findings include positive strategies perceived to keep exclusion levels low, types of obstacles or resistance to anti-exclusion policy, participants' perspectives on unofficial exclusion practice, and perspectives on official exclusion data. What emerges from interviews is a series of tensions between implementing a child-centred approach and diminishing support services and resources. We conclude that those working within the Northern Ireland education system, are committed to an inclusive approach. However, the development and implementation of effective supporting frameworks take time and consultation, and there is evidence of tension between the perceptions of those working at a system-level and those working in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a succession of policy documents related to active travel published by the British government since the implementation of a National Cycle Network (NCN) in 1995. However, as the latest National Travel Survey (NTS) reveals, the number of journeys made by bike in the UK has remained steadfastly around only 2% (Department for Transport [DfT], 2018a). By using documentary analysis of the available official policy documents and statements, the aim of this paper is to make sense of the policies that have been published concerning active travel (AT) in England. This is done from a figurational sociological perspective. Three key themes emerge from the analysis: (1) the rhetorical, advisory level of the vast majority of the policies; (2) the reliance on a wide network of local authorities to implement AT policy; and (3) the focus placed on individuals to change their behaviour. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that despite a large number of policy publications from a range of government departments claiming to promote AT, little has actually changed in this time period in terms of a national agenda. Despite the successive policies, it seems there is little appetite on behalf of recent governments to make widespread infrastructural changes, where instead the focus has largely been on persuading the individual to seek more active modes of travel, increasingly for their own, individual 'health' gains. Highlights •The paper is based on documentary analysis of available official policy documents from UK government on active travel since 1996 • The findings reveal the largely rhetorical, advisory level of the vast majority of the policies, which contributes to a lack of overall success in promoting active travel • The lack of success is compounded further by a reliance on a wide network of local authorities to implement active travel policy, when most local authorities appear more concerned with transport issues related to motorised vehicles • The findings reveal that active travel policy has becoming increasingly focussed on health gains that might be made from increasing the number of trips made by bicycle • The overwhelming focus of the policy documents analysed, however, is on encouraging individuals to change their behaviour, a process regarded as 'healthism', and one most sociologists of health suggest is likely to fail as a result • We conclude by suggesting that if the government is serious about wanting to see a 'step change' in the way in which people travel, particularly over shorter distances, then there is a need to have a more forceful approach to implementing policy within local authorities at the same time as making more substantial infrastructure changes to encourage cycling [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses conflicts associated with policies to protect the built heritage. Such conflicts relate to a host of tensions between private and public concerns and specifically between pro-development and pro-conservation approaches. To examine these cleavages, the paper operationalises private and public concerns over heritage by asking if there is a recognisable set of justifications that policy-makers use for supporting a pro-conservation or alternatively a pro-development approach? To do this, the paper looks at appeals decided by Her Majesty’s Planning Inspectors in London. The findings show that although they are not dichotomous, public and private interests in heritage development can be factually recognised in the setting of appeals. Moreover, the paper finds that Planning Inspectors often channel conflicts through the prism of certain public interests, namely, protecting architectural and physical attributes of the building and its surroundings. Although inspectors are instructed to actively weigh in other (potentially overriding) considerations in heritage appeals, such as socio-economic and proprietary issues, these considerations do not appear to have the same standing within the decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This TACTYC funded research highlights the role that Maintained Nursery Schools (MNS) play in supporting families within areas of extreme social deprivation in the UK. Data collected through survey and interview demonstrated the positive impact that these schools have upon disadvantaged children and their families, providing a breadth and depth of ongoing care, against a backdrop of ongoing fiscal cuts and uncertainty. Often this provision was in lieu of the reported minimisation of other social services support for struggling families. We argue in this paper that the loss of these state institutions could be highly detrimental to the families that they currently support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that direct control of the early years literacy curriculum recently exercised by politicians in England has made the boundaries between research, policy and practice increasingly fragile. It describes how policy came to focus most effort on the use of synthetic phonics programmes in the early years. It examines why the Clackmannanshire phonics intervention became the study most frequently cited to justify government policy and suggests a phonics research agenda that could more usefully inform teaching. It argues that, whilst academics cannot control how their research is eventually used by policy-makers, learned societies can strengthen their ethics policies to set out clearer ground rules for academic researchers working across knowledge domains and with policy-makers. A stronger framework to guide the ethical interpretation of research evidence in complex education investigations would allow more meaningful conversations to take place within and across research communities, and with research users. The paper suggests some features for such a framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British Government announced large-scale reforms of England's planning policy in May 2010. The resultant National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) was released in March 2012. Despite assurances from the Government that the principles governing the management of the historic environment through the planning system would remain largely intact, the policy reform process caused considerable concern and upheaval for historic environment interest groups, and prompted a great deal of activity to assure its interest. This paper sets the context for the historic environment sector's political engagement in England, with insights applicable to the place of heritage advocacy within the power webs of wider agencies of government. The paper examines the campaign led by the heritage charity, the National Trust, and contrasts its strategy with that practised by other bodies in the sector to evaluate the (in)effectiveness of advocacy strategies in the current political climate. The power dynamics and the intricacies of policy processes, as well as the strategies of historic environment agencies engaging with them, are considered. The study concludes that, although the NPPF release was eventually received as a reasonably positive outcome for the interests of the sector, it illustrates the lengths to which political advocates must now go in order to effect change and, conversely, shows how vulnerable we may be if we are not alert to the changing public policy environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Competition Commission's analysis in 2007 of entry and exit conditions among small stores across more than one thousand British high streets provided a landmark piece of research on a topic in which debate and policy recommendations had moved significantly, and arguably dangerously, ahead of the available evidence base. Within a general context of a continuing long-term decline of specialist small stores in British town centres and high streets, it cast considerable doubt on the popularly held view that a broad-based decline of the independent convenience store sector was taking place across the UK, or that Britain's high streets were experiencing an accelerating decline in their small and specialist stores. Additionally, and even more controversially, the Commission's analysis was able to demonstrate that competitive entry by larger format corporate food retailing was not inevitably and uniformly associated with negative impacts on the small store sector. It is known that the Commission's research was paralleled by an identical analysis conducted on behalf of one of the main parties to the Groceries Market Inquiry by the University of Southampton. The first component of the Southampton analysis, which both corroborated and extended the Commission's findings, is available in the public domain. This paper now presents the second component of the Southampton analysis, which similarly both corroborates but also extends the vitally important `conditional entry' dimension of the Commission's research-focusing directly on the extent to which entry into the small store sector during the early to mid 2000s might have been constrained by, and exit from the sector accelerated by, the competitive impacts of larger format foodstore openings by the major corporate retailers. The paper shows: (a) that there is an important missing regional dimension within the Commission's analysis, and (b) that entry and exit into the small store sector in the UK during 2000-06 was constrained and/or accelerated by the competitive impacts of supermarket opening in a different fashion within `London and prospering southern England' than elsewhere in the country. That is to say, in the region of the UK in which arguments about the threat of corporate retail to the diversity of the small store sector had often proved particularly heated, the Southampton analysis shows small shops in town centres and high streets to have been more robust to the competitive opening of larger format corporate foodstores than elsewhere in the UK. In that context, the paper suggests that the findings represent an `inconvenient truth' which deserves consideration both in policy debate and in future processes of planning regulation reform. Discussion of the relevance of the findings in respect of the proposed changes to Planning Policy Statement 6 released for consultation by the Department for Communities and Local Government in July 2008 is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act, local education authorities (LEAs) lost control of further education in England. Now, after spending almost two decades out in the cold, from 2010, local authorities are set to become re-involved in the further education system. Given this, this paper takes the opportunity to look back on the end of LEA control and reflect upon why further education colleges were removed from local authorities in the first place. It is acknowledged that the ideological stance of government was clearly an important factor in ending LEA control, and that the perceived need to make cost savings in the early 1990s also contributed to both the form and haste with which colleges were 'incorporated'. However, arguably the end of LEA control was as much a process as a single event. This paper traces the path that, it is argued, made up that long goodbye. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As spaces of complex layering of multiple relations, each with their own space-time dynamics and reach, policies of urban governance and their tangible outcomes can be materially experienced as conjunctions of multiple meshworks of assemblages with different scopes and different systems of values. This paper investigates a case example of a Private Finance Initiative for the construction of Throckley Middle School in Newcastle upon Tyne. Completed in 2003, Throckley school closed in 2005. A Deleuzean-inspired tracing of several Throckley assemblages is presented and the paper concludes by discussing the challenges of adopting a Deleuzean perspective for analysis of urban governance and infrastructure development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports findings from part of an evaluation study of the Communication Aids Project (CAP), a government-funded project in England which provided communication aids to school-aged children. The paper focuses on parents' views of the CAP process and the impact of the aid. Fourteen parents were interviewed twice over the telephone: once before or just as their children received communication aids and again six to eight weeks later. Parents expressed satisfaction with the impact of the aid on their children's lives and showed they had realistic expectations concerning potential short- and long-term benefits. They raised two main concerns regarding the provision of aids, namely the timescale involved and access to accurate information and advice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims Regulation of electronic cigarettes has moved to the top of the addiction policy agenda, as demonstrated by the recent focus across the United Kingdom on introducing age-of-sale restrictions. However, the views of those affected by such regulation remain largely unexplored. This paper presents the first detailed qualitative exploration of adolescents' perceptions of existing, and opinions about potential e-cigarette regulation. Methods Sixteen focus groups, including a total of 83 teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17 years, were conducted in deprived, mixed and affluent urban areas in Scotland and England between November 2014 and February 2015. Transcripts were imported into Nivivo 10, coded thematically and analysed. Results Participants critically considered existing evidence and competing interests in regulatory debates and demonstrated sophisticated understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of regulation. They overwhelmingly supported strong e-cigarette regulation and endorsed restrictions on sales to minors, marketing and e-cigarette use in public places. Concern about potential health harms of e-cigarette use and marketing increasing the acceptability of vaping and smoking led these adolescents to support regulation. Conclusions In focus group discussions, a sample of UK adolescents exposed to particular communications about e-cigarettes supported strict regulation of e-cigarettes, including banning sales to minors and use in indoor public areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the decision of the House of Lords in Re F in [1990] clarified somewhat the law concerning the treatment of the mentally incapacitated adult, many uncertainties remained. This paper explores proposals discussed in a recent government green paper for reform of the law in an area involving many difficult ethical dilemmas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since coming to power in 2010, the UK Coalition government in power has implemented a range of reforms in relation to assessment at all stages of education in England. This paper focuses on two assessment reforms relating to children aged five and six years old, and considers their evolution from manifesto commitments to practice in classrooms. These reforms are the introduction of the Phonics Screening Check at age six, and the revised Early Years Foundation Stage Profile at age five. The main focus is on the coherence of these policies, both over time and as part of an overall government strategy on assessment in early years and primary education. It is argued that, despite claims of reducing bureaucracy, these assessment policies are driven by an agenda of increasing accountability in the first years of primary school. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: In the light of the UK Government''s call for efficiency savings across all departments, including the Criminal Justice System, this paper attempts to shed some light on how cost savings can best be secured in the running of Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) in England and Wales. It does this by identifying ‘best practice’ YOIs using recently-developed Data Envelopment Analysis that caters for both good and undesirable outputs (such as assaults and testing positive for illicit drugs by inmates), thereby allowing policymakers to deliver cost savings through the spread of management techniques adopted by benchmark YOIs. The study also analyses the size-efficiency relationship for YOIs in England and Wales and finds that, although the smallest institutions are typically the most efficient, the size-efficiency relationship is quite complex. This calls into question the Government''s wisdom of building ‘titan’ prisons in England and Wales which, perversely, might decrease the efficiency of rehabilitating young offenders. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In 2004, the first citizenship ceremony was conducted in the London Borough of Brent. These compulsory ceremonies for those who have been granted British citizenship had been proposed in the government white paper and then in the 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act. They were designed to celebrate the moment of achieving citizenships and were one response to a perceived ‘crisis of citizenship’ in Britain. This study examines the texts of the ‘local welcome’ which is given by a local dignitary at every ceremony as a moment of invention of tradition and of narrating citizenship and thereby narrating the nation-state. The study explores how and what the speeches tell us about understandings of citizenship and its relationship to diversity. It explores how history is also represented within the speeches. Finally, the study interrogates the texts' telling of a multi-cultural story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As subjects of the parental right to choose (DES, 1988), parents are called upon to fulfil certain duties and responsibilities when choosing a secondary school for their child, with the expectation that they might navigate the school system ‘successfully’ and become ‘better informed consumers’ (DCSF, 2008). To comply with these rules of citizenship parents are encouraged to make use of a variety of information on schools as part of a realistic and informed choice, one that is consummate with their role as consumer-citizens. Such ‘cognitive mapping’ is evident in school brochures and websites where choice is assembled on the basis of visual iconography and narrative terrains. This leads to a consideration of how choice is visually mediated and communicated through the circulation of symbols and the structure of narratives. To explain these phenomena, I analyse and compare the ways in which two all-girls faith secondary schools attempt to (further) define themselves, culturally, historically and pedagogically, in a crowded field of choice. I conclude the paper with a discussion of the benefits and insights generated through a visually orientated approach to the study of school choice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the wide usage and popular appeal of the concept of sustainability in UK policy, it does not appear to have challenged the status quo in urban regeneration because policy is not leading in its conceptualisation and therefore implementation. This paper investigates how sustainability has been conceptualised in a case-based research study of the regeneration of Eastside in Birmingham, UK, through policy and other documents, and finds that conceptualisations of sustainability are fundamentally limited. The conceptualisation of sustainability operating within urban regeneration schemes should powerfully shape how they make manifest (or do not) the principles of sustainable development. Documents guide, but people implement regeneration— and the disparate conceptualisations of stakeholders demonstrate even less coherence than policy. The actions towards achieving sustainability have become a policy ‘fix’ in Eastside: a necessary feature of urban policy discourse that is limited to solutions within market-based constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper draws upon basic distinctions made in Mary Douglas' cultural theory and some of the analytic concepts proposed by Michael Freeden to map and unpack the ideological dimension of recent developments in English third sector policy and politics. It is suggested that the mainstreaming of the third sector into policy debates and discourses in recent years can partly be understood as an attempt to decontest the idea that fatalism, neo-liberalism, plenipotentiary statism and autarky should all be ruled out as bases for engaging with the third sector; and that fostering a healthy civil society involves finding an ideational terrain which seeks to avoid these extremes. However, it is also suggested that developing third sector policy has also involved contesting the content of the shared ideational space thus ruled in. Competing ideational tendencies within the previous (New Labour) government-quasi-market consumerism, civil order renewal and democratic life revival-are identified, compared and contrasted, and the likely direction of travel in the years ahead under a Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition is briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the U.K. there is a housing crisis: this paper presents a new research study taking place at the University of Salford dedicated to the systemic seamless delivery of sustainable housing: 'G-Tech'. There has been much research in this area but with very little uptake of outcomes from industry, which is what this study aims to counter. The study considers all the relevant drivers such as government policy, an ageing population, demand, regional growth, sustainability and global warming with the intention to provide a systemic multi-level, multi actor innovation framework providing a full 'service' from the concept of need through to demolition and reuse. One of the studies main objectives is to alter stakeholder mindsets, remove the barriers and encourage greater adoption of the sustainable dwelling. The study will align sustainable homes to meet all the requirements set out by the triple bottom line of sustainability encompassing social, economical and environmental issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kent was one of the first social services departments to develop a specific adult protection policy in 1987. This paper charts the development of policy and references key landmarks on this journey from the perspective of the policy manager's role. Opportunities are also taken to identify the key learning from this experience and the main challenges for the newly emerging safeguarding agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of a strategic response to local economic change has been of crucial importance to local authorities in Great Britain throughout the 1980s. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the processes of strategy formulation and implementation in the city of Norwich, England, and thereby to raise a range of issues with regard to the potential effects of cooperation between the public and private sectors at the strategic level. It will be seen that the adoption of economic development as a strategic policy area has brought into question a number of relationships both within and between local public authorities, and is of fundamental importance to the character of public/private relations.

This contribution explores changes in the way that educational researchers engage with policy-makers in England. The traditional relationship between research and policy was linear, with funders supporting the efforts of researchers, who carried out research and then disseminated it to those responsible for shaping and implementing policy. This model of 'knowledge transfer' is fast being supplemented and sometimes replaced by one of 'knowledge exchange' as policy-makers participate in new forms of research. 'Knowledge exchange' consists of collaborative problem-solving between researchers and decision-makers that happens through linkage and exchange. This contribution uses one large-scale English study to illustrate the new relationship between research and policy. The Effective Pre-school and Primary Education (EPPE) project is a longitudinal study of the effects of pre- and primary school on the academic and social development of more than 3,000 children in England. The study's findings have been used as part of the 'evidence base' for UK policy on universal pre-school provision as well as targeted services in disadvantaged communities, for example, Sure Start and Children's Centres. From the earliest days of the study researchers worked in partnership with policy-makers. Although the overall design was agreed at contract-stage, major modifications to sampling, assessments, and analyses were made as the study progressed. The researcher/policy-maker engagement continued throughout the study and consisted of sustained interaction, shared decision-making and mutual respect. Supportive organisational structures allowed two-way exchange and decision-making. Although the researchers were responsible for scientific integrity in all phases, there was shared ownership of the findings with regular and collaborative review and amendment to suit emerging policy needs. The EPPE project was one of the first in the UK to work interactively with Government partners in the shaping of both 'research' and 'policy' outputs. This partnership enabled the research to have a significant impact on UK policy. The contribution concludes with discussion of how the Furlong and Oancea 'quality assessment framework' can be applied to research based on policy partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]