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IntroductionDuring military service, many household costs for both married and single service personnel are subsidised, and transition can leave veterans unprepared for the financial demands of civilian life. Armed Forces organisations such as Sailor, Soldier, Air Force Association (SSAFA) play a central role in understanding the financial challenges that UK veterans face and provide an insight into the financial hardship experienced by veterans. The aim of this study was to use SSAFA beneficiary data as a proxy to identify the nature of financial benefit, the spatial distribution of financial hardship in the Scottish SSAFA beneficiary community and explore factors that might predict where those recipients are located.MethodsUsing an anonymised data set of Scottish SSAFA financial beneficiaries between 2014 and 2019, this study used a geographical methodology to identify the geospatial distribution of SSAFA benefit recipients and exploratory regression analysis to explore factors to explain where SSAFA beneficiaries are located.ResultsOver half of benefit applicants (n=10 735) were concentrated in only 50 postcode districts, showing evidence of a clustered pattern, and modelling demonstrates association with area-level deprivation. The findings highlight strong association between older injured veterans and need for SSAFA beneficiary assistance.ConclusionThe findings demonstrate that beneficiaries were statistically clustered into areas of high deprivation, experiencing similar challenges to that of the wider population in these areas. Military service injury or disability was strongly associated with areas of high SSAFA benefit use and in those areas high unemployment was also a significant factor to consider.

Traumatic deaths of military personnel can have tragic consequences for the lives and health of bereaved significant others. To mitigate the effects, the UK Armed Forces enhanced the support for bereaved military families. However, little is known about whether the support has been satisfactory. The present research applied mixed methods to explore the experiences of bereaved UK military families (N = 264) with different types of support and how it historically changed over time. The findings suggest that although support has improved, further improvements are required in the provision of financial information, administrative support, and access to psychological support for all bereaved family members.

Holiday provision is a grassroots response to support low-income families during the school holidays with the provision of free food and activities. This qualitative study investigates the views of senior stakeholders (N = 15) who are responsible for facilitating or implementing programmes of holiday provision to determine the need for holiday provision, examples of best practice for delivering programmes of holiday provision and barriers for effective delivery. The findings identified a need for holiday provision as a result of cuts to welfare provision and local authority services which have increased pressures on household budgets. Senior stakeholders advocated a collaborative and flexible model of holiday provision and identified the need to utilize and develop existing community assets to deliver this provision, Yet, senior stakeholders acknowledged multiple barriers of delivery related to cost, sustainability and organizational capacity and, in the absence of a strategic response and sustained funding by national, regional and local governments, there are questions of whether this type of approach truly addresses and targets all of the most vulnerable in society.

While school food initiatives across England sup­port children’s nutritional intake during school term time, there is no universal state provision dur­ing the school holidays to reduce the risk of chil­dren experiencing food insecurity. In the absence of a national program of holiday provision, com­munity organizations in disadvantaged com­muni­ties have established holiday clubs offering free food and activities to children. This paper exam­ines how these holiday clubs source food and the challenges of procuring food and delivering healthy meals that adhere to UK School Food Standards. Results indicate that holiday clubs adopt a variety of procurement strategies including rely­ing upon donated food. While club leaders have sought opportunities to source food cost-effectively, the findings suggest significant chal­lenges for these clubs to achieve their aim of delivering healthy meals. Findings point to needs for sustainable funding and the developing healthy food procure­ment policies and processes that align with a wider food strategy.

The coronavirus crisis has shone a light on pre-existing social, economic and health inequalities. This article examines what has been done to support children who rely on free school meals and holiday clubs to access healthy, nutritious food

Approximately half of child sexual abuse (CSA) victims report sexual revictimization later in life; however, there is limited rigorous evidence concerning factors contributing to sexual and nonsexual forms of revictimization. This article investigates the relationships between CSA and a range of revictimization experiences. It also examines the role of other individual-level factors (demographics, CSA characteristics, psychiatric disorders) in the risk of revictimization. The study compares data from a prospective-longitudinal study of 2,759 Australian children (

We conducted a systematic review to examine the substance use and recidivism outcomes of prison-based substance use interventions. We searched public health, criminology, and psychology databases, and conducted forward and backward snowballing methods to identify additional studies. Studies were included if they were published between January 1, 2000 and June 30, 2017; were published in English; and reported substance use and/or recidivism outcomes of prison-based substance use interventions. Studies were reviewed for methodological rigor using the Effective Public Health Practice Project's Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies. Our search returned 49 studies: 6 were methodologically strong, 20 were moderate, and 23 were weak. Results suggest therapeutic communities are effective in reducing recidivism and, to a lesser extent substance use after release. There is also evidence to suggest that opioid maintenance treatment is effective in reducing the risk of drug use after release from prison for opioid users. Furthermore, care after release from prison appears to enhance treatment effects for both types of interventions. Results provide evidence that policymakers can use to make informed decisions on best-practice approaches when addressing prisoner substance dependence and improving long-term outcomes. This comprehensive review highlights the difficulties of conducting quality research in the prison setting and suggests innovative study design for future research.

The association between child sexual abuse (CSA) and risk for re-victimization is well-documented; however, less is known about the temporal progression of re-victimization experiences over the early life-course among CSA survivors, and whether this differs from that of those without known sexual abuse histories. This study investigated whether there are distinct temporal pathways of interpersonal re-victimization between the ages of 10-25 years among medically confirmed CSA cases, and considered whether abuse variables, re-victimization variables, and the presence of other adverse outcomes, were associated with heterogeneity in re-victimization pathways. The data were collected as part of a large-scale data-linkage study in which the medical records of 2759 cases of contact-CSA between 1964 and 1995 were linked, between 13 and 44 years following abuse, to police and public psychiatric databases; cases were compared to a matched community sample (n=2677). Using a subsample of 510 (401 victims; 109 comparisons) individuals with an interpersonal (re)victimization history, we examined the aggregate 'age-(re)victimization' curves for CSA victims and comparisons, respectively. Further, we applied longitudinal latent class analysis to explore heterogeneity in re-victimization trajectories among abuse survivors across their early life-course. Four latent pathways were identified, labeled: Normative; Childhood-Limited; Emerging-Adulthood; and Chronic re-victimization trajectories. Older age at abuse, a criminal history, and mental health problems were uniquely predictive of membership to the more problematic and persistent re-victimization trajectories. Findings indicate that individuals exposed to CSA during adolescence may be particularly vulnerable to poorer re-victimization trajectories, characterized by multiple risk indices, and thus may warrant increased service provision.

Research on childhood deprivation highlights the unfavourable impacts of household poverty on physical health, school achievement, cognitive ability, emotions and behaviours (Brooks-Gunn and Duncan 1997; Brooks-Gunn, Duncan and Aber 1997; Duncan, Yeung, Brooks-Gunn and Smith 1998). Importantly, within the childhood deprivation research, food is often mentioned as a critical link between poverty and wellbeing (Golley et al. 2010; Jaime and Lock 2009). In the United Kingdom (UK) policy makers have recognized that various social policies are needed to help children who are unable to access sufficient amounts of nutritious food (Caplan 2016). For instance, across the UK local education authorities (LEAs) deliver free school breakfast and lunch to children who reside in low-income households. Although efforts to feed children are pervasive, a significant number of children still face food shortages when schools are closed for breaks and holidays (Evans and Harper 2009, p. 91; for updates see Long et al. 2016). This problem is increasingly referred to as “holiday hunger” in the academic and popular press (Butler 2014; Children’s Society 2014; Graham et al. 2016). And, despite emerging concerns over holiday hunger there is still a dearth of knowledge about the issue. This chapter begins with an overview of the social, educational and health related problems associated with food insecurity in children, highlighting a need for year-round preventative measures to reduce food insecurity amongst families. The development of UK holiday clubs is then discussed, reflecting on research to date that has examined the impacts of holiday club participation for children and families. The chapter concludes with directions for future research, emphasising the importance of accurate definition and measurement of holiday hunger.

In response to the problem of holiday hunger, hundreds of local “holiday clubs” have recently been established across the UK. This research examines the spatial relationship between income, childhood deprivation, ethnicity and holiday clubs across 32,844 Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England to determine if these clubs are currently operating in an inclusive fashion. Data on the location of holiday clubs comes from a national survey. Binary logistic regression results suggest that holiday clubs are likely to operate in economically disadvantaged areas. At the same time, clubs are not distributed equally by ethnicity. That is, holiday clubs operated by voluntary organisations are more likely to be situated in LSOAs that are disproportionately white and English\British and less likely to be situated in LSOAs that are disproportionately ethnic minority. This finding has important implications for the pursuit of holiday clubs as a policy mechanism for addressing access to food in light of the state’s failure to adequately feed all of the country’s children.

In the early 1700s, a series of publications based on European sources provided English-speaking audiences with images of the fortifications that had been built and fought over in West Africa. They include Willem Bosman’s New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (1705), William Smith’s Thirty Different Drafts of Guinea (1729) and Jean Barbot’s Description of the Coasts of North and South-Guinea (1732). The topographical views and plans have become valuable historical sources, commonly used as evidence of the shape and scale of European military and economic intervention in this part of the Atlantic world at a crucial stage in its formation. This chapter examines the creation and consumption of these images, and reappraises the nature of the pictorial evidence they provide.

In the seventeenth century London was a walled city, as it had been since the Romans fortified it around 200 AD. The gates erected by the Romans on the most important routes in and out of the city were rebuilt on their ancient foundations in the medieval period, when posterns (smaller passageways) were added in the wall and a huge ditch was dug around the outside. By the seventeenth century, there were seven principal gates in the old wall: from east to west starting from the Tower, they were Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate. On the bridge across the River Thames – the only point of entry to the City from the south – there were two more gates. The ditch, as John Stow recorded in his Survey of London (first published in 1598), was ‘of late neglected and forced either to a very narrow, and the same a filthy channel, or altogether stopped up for gardens planted, and houses builded thereon’. This treatment of the ditch points to how the urban fabric had long since pushed through the gates and beyond the old walls; this area ‘without’, but still under the City’s jurisdiction, was known as the Liberties. In Hollar’s map of London in the later seventeenth century (Fig. 1), the walls and gates are a clearly visible feature defining the core of the City, which none the less spreads beyond them, in particular to the west. The limits of the Liberties were marked on main roads by ‘bars’, usually consisting of posts and chains, as at Holborn (to the north) or Whitechapel (to the east). Temple Bar, however, situated on Fleet Street to the west of Ludgate, had been made a gateway by the mid-fourteenth century, a reflection of its importance as the main point of transition between the Cities of London and Westminster. As such Temple Bar was considered one of the City gates; it was the eighth gate in the engraved plate that accompanied John Strype’s version of Stow’s Survey, published in 1720 (Fig. 2).