Children's care monitor 2010

This report gives the views of 1,155 children and young people who filled in our monitoring survey online in 2010, plus 17 disabled children and young people who answered some of the questions using Widget symbol language. The 1,155 children who took part in the survey were receiving services from 111 different social care services across England which in 2008 or 2009 had accepted our invitation to take part in the survey for the next three years

Local Voices: Citizen Conversations on Civil Liberties and Secure Communities

The informed and active involvement of citizens in government at all levels has long been a goal of the League of Women Voters. The League has also been highly attentive to issues of civil rights and civil liberties throughout its history. As a result, the League of Women Voters Education Fund, the citizen education and research arm of the League, initiated a multi-faceted approach to enhancing both public and policymaker understanding of the issues involved in the complex interaction of civil liberties and homeland security.In 2005, with generous funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Education Fund launched a project entitled Local Voices: Citizen Conversations on Civil Liberties and Secure Communities. The project has three main components.One component involved facilitating ten public deliberations in communities across the country in June 2005. The League asked the Study Circles Resource Center (SCRC), a national organization that works to advance deliberative democracy, to be a partner in this project. In collaboration with the League, SCRC developed a discussion guide, provided advice to local Leagues as they prepared for the public deliberations, and trained local discussion facilitators at the ten sites. The hosts were the Leagues in: Baltimore, Maryland; Black Hawk-Bremer counties, Iowa; Brookhaven, New York; Columbia, Missouri; Dallas, Texas; Lexington, Kentucky; Los Angeles, California; Miami, Florida; North Pinellas County, Florida; and Seattle, Washington. Each site hosted between 50 and 100 community members for four to six hours of conversation. Insights from these forums were collected in two forms: observations recorded by trained note takers in break-out discussions (approximately six to ten participants in each) at every site and a post-deliberation individual participant survey. Questionnaires, developed by Lake Snell Perry Mermin/Decision Research (LSPM/DR), were completed by more than 650 participants. The results areiincluded in the report. (See Appendix A for more information.)The other two components of the project involved qualitative and quantitative public opinion research to explore attitudes and values toward homeland security and civil liberties. The League hired LSPM/DR to conduct six focus groups in three cities: Bakersfield, California; Dallas, Texas; and Richmond, Virginia. In addition, LSPM/DR conducted an analysis of national polling data that provide reflections of Americans' opinions toward homeland security and civil liberties.The findings from all components of the Local Voices project are chronicled in this report. Neither this report nor the ultimate Congressional action on the USA PATRIOT Act by any means signals the end of the issue or the need for conversation on this important topic.The issues -- and the decisions -- involved in the intersection between civil liberties and homeland security will continue to evolve and manifest themselves in various ways. The consequences of the decisions this country makes will have lasting effects on every American, in their lives and communities, and on the nation as a whole.This report presents a number of findings and insights gleaned from the range of public input obtained during the Local Voices project. These findings are identified and then described at length in the following pages. Some are focused on specific topics within the current debate, and some are more general and far-ranging.At the conclusion of this report, the League presents a series of recommendations. These relate to the ways government at all levels, as well as community institutions, the media, and the public itself, can work to strengthen public understanding, public involvement and public confidence in the conversations, decisions and trade-offs that have been and will continue to be made about homeland security and civil liberties

Legal Arguments in the Opinions of Montana Territorial Chief Justice Decius S. Wade

Decius Spear Wade was the longest serving member of the Montana Territorial Supreme Court, holding the Chief Justiceship between 1871 and 1887, more than sixteen years. Wade authored an impressive 192 majority opinions, along with fourteen concurrences and dissents, of the total of 637 reported majority opinions issued by that court. By productivity and length of service alone, Wade stands out on the Montana court and among territorial judges generally. Unlike many territorial judges, including some of his brethren on the Montana court, Wade was well-regarded by his contemporaries. Subsequent observers have also ranked Wade among the best of the judges of the territorial courts generally. In addition to his long tenure on the Territorial Supreme Court, Wade played an important role in other aspects of nineteenth century Montana. He wrote the chapters on law and the courts for a popular nineteenth century history of Montana, authored a novel with a legal theme that was read (and apparently well thought of) in Montana Territory, and wrote an article on selfgovernment in the territories. In addition to his writings, Wade served on the 1889-1895 Code Commission and delivered two crucial speeches on the common law8 and codification9 in the 1890s that helped pave the way for Montana\u27s adoption of Civil, Political, Penal, and Civil Procedure codes originally drafted by David Dudley Field for New York. Yet we must be careful not to overestimate Wade\u27s influence. Wade is far from the judicial stalwart portrayed in the brief summaries of Montana\u27s judicial history present in general historical works. He was a thorough and careful (if overly wordy) writer, as discussed below, but he was also surprisingly sloppy about attributing his lengthy quotes from others\u27 works in at least some of his published writings. He was an able common law judge, but enthusiastically threw himself into an attempt to dismantle the common law system in the 1890s. He played an important role in ensuring the common law\u27s stability, yet disparaged that stability in his public pronouncements. Paradoxically it is the role that Wade seems to have been least concerned with, that of common law judge, rather than his more grandiose attempts at a legacy of legal reform, that form his most significant contribution to Montana jurisprudence. The combination of Wade\u27s prominence, prolific opinion-writing, other legal writings, and reputation make him a fitting subject of study today. In Wade\u27s writings we see the combination of what Gordon Bakken termed the habitual modes and forms of official thought and action and the innovations produced by the frontier. In section II below, I give a brief biographical overview of Wade. I outline the methodology I used to extract data from Wade\u27s opinions in section III. I present the results of this analysis, along with a more traditional legal analysis in section IV. A brief note is in order on what this article is not. It is not a legal history of Montana Territory, something that has yet to be written. It is also not an examination of the federal-territorial relationship, an important area for territorial judges who were under the supervision of the federal attorney general. The focus is on Wade and his writings, which means it is also not a full fledged analysis of the national or regional territorial bench or legal systems as a whole, something that has already been written and written well, by several authors. 16 Rather the goal is to examine how Wade dealt with the legal challenges posed by Montana Territory\u27s rapid growth