Scaling up research on family justice using large-scale administrative data: an invitation to the socio-legal community

This article outlines the value of administrative data for family justice research. Although socio-legal scholars have extended their research beyond purely theoretical or doctrinal analyses, studies using large-scale digital datasets remain few in number. As new opportunities arise to link large-scale administrative datasets across health, education, welfare and justice, it is vital that the community of family justice researchers and analysts are supported to deliver research based on entire service or family court populations. In this context, this article provides a definition of administrative data, before outlining the potential of single, linked or blended administrative data sets for family justice research. The remaining sections of the article speak to questions that are pertinent to this particular academic community, including the distinctive contribution of the socio-legal scholar to interdisciplinary teams and the place of data providers in collaborative research. Drawing on the sociological concept of ‘publics’, the final section considers the multiple interest groups whose social licence must be secured, when personal records are used to understand the relationship between law and family life

A minimum income standard for Britain : What people think

A minimum income standard, based on what people said is needed to achieve an acceptable standard of living in Britain today. While politicians from all parties are committed to tackling relative poverty, the debates lack a robust definition of a minimum income standard (MIS), below which people’s incomes should not fall. This study devised a minimum income standard for Britain based on what members of the public said, and shows the cost of covering basic goods and services for different household types. The project blends the best elements of the two main methods that have been used to develop budget standards in Britain in recent years. It reconciles the views of experts with those of ordinary people, allowing budgets based on social consensus to be tested against expert knowledge and research. As such, the MIS represents a new and important tool for informing social policy in order to promote fairness and well-being in Britain

Maternal health, pregnancy and birth outcomes for women involved in care proceedings in Wales: a linked data study

Background: Under the Children Act 1989, local authorities in Wales, UK, can issue care proceedings if they are concerned about the welfare of a child, which can lead to removal of a child from parents. For mothers at risk of child removal, timely intervention during pregnancy may avert the need for this and improve maternal/fetal health; however, little is known about this specific population during the antenatal period. The study examined maternity characteristics of mothers whose infants were subject to care proceedings, with the aim of informing preventative interventions targeted at high risk mothers. Methods: Anonymised administrative data from Cafcass Cymru, who provide child-focused advice and support for family court proceedings in Wales, were linked to population-based maternity and health records held within the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Databank. Linked data were available for 1111 birth mothers of infants involved in care proceedings between 2015 and 2018. Findings were benchmarked with reference to an age-deprivation-matched comparison group (n = 23,414), not subject to care proceedings but accessing maternity services during this period. Demographic characteristics, maternal health, reproductive history, interaction with midwifery services, and pregnancy and birth outcomes were examined. Descriptive and statistical tests of independence were used. Results: Half of the women in the cohort (49.4%) resided in the most deprived areas. They were more likely to be younger at entry to motherhood (63.5% <21 years-of-age compared to 42.7% in the comparison group), to have mental health (28.6% compared to 8.2%) and substance use issues (10.4% compared to 0.6%) and to smoke (62.7% compared to 24.8%) during pregnancy. The majority first engaged with maternity services within their first trimester of pregnancy (63.5% compared to 84.4%). Babies were more likely to be born preterm (14.2% compared to 6.7%) and, for full-term babies, to have low birthweights (8.0% compared to 2.8%). Conclusion: This novel linkage study highlights multiple vulnerabilities experienced by pregnant mothers who have experienced care proceedings concerning an infant. Policy and practice colleagues require a clearer picture of women’s needs if child protection and health services are to offer effective services which prevent the need for family court proceedings and infant removal

How should performance in EBUS mediastinal staging in lung cancer be measured?

There has been a paradigm shift in mediastinal staging algorithms in non-small cell lung cancer over the last decade in the United Kingdom (UK). This has seen endoscopic nodal staging (predominantly endobronchial ultrasound, EBUS) almost replace surgical staging (predominantly mediastinoscopy) as the pathological staging procedure of first choic

Automated detection and monitoring of methane super-emitters using satellite data

A reduction in anthropogenic methane emissions is vital to limit near-term global warming. A small number of so-called super-emitters is responsible for a disproportionally large fraction of total methane emissions. Since late 2017, the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) has been in orbit, providing daily global coverage of methane mixing ratios at a resolution of up to 7×5.5 km2, enabling the detection of these super-emitters. However, TROPOMI produces millions of observations each day, which together with the complexity of the methane data, makes manual inspection infeasible. We have therefore designed a two-step machine learning approach using a convolutional neural network to detect plume-like structures in the methane data and subsequently apply a support vector classifier to distinguish the emission plumes from retrieval artifacts. The models are trained on pre-2021 data and subsequently applied to all 2021 observations. We detect 2974 plumes in 2021, with a mean estimated source rate of 44 t h−1 and 5–95th percentile range of 8–122 t h−1. These emissions originate from 94 persistent emission clusters and hundreds of transient sources. Based on bottom-up emission inventories, we find that most detected plumes are related to urban areas and/or landfills (35 %), followed by plumes from gas infrastructure (24 %), oil infrastructure (21 %), and coal mines (20 %). For 12 (clusters of) TROPOMI detections, we tip and cue the targeted observations and analysis of high-resolution satellite instruments to identify the exact sources responsible for these plumes. Using high-resolution observations from GHGSat, PRISMA, and Sentinel-2, we detect and analyze both persistent and transient facility-level emissions underlying the TROPOMI detections. We find emissions from landfills and fossil fuel exploitation facilities, and for the latter, we find up to 10 facilities contributing to one TROPOMI detection. Our automated TROPOMI-based monitoring system in combination with high-resolution satellite data allows for the detection, precise identification, and monitoring of these methane super-emitters, which is essential for mitigating their emissions.</p

Evaluating models of care closer to home for children and young people who are ill: executive summary

Providing care for children who are ill, as close to home as possible, is an objective of health care providers and policy makers nationally and internationally. The existing evidence base to support development of care closer to home (CCTH) is weak in relation to clinical effectiveness, approaches and models, potential costs and benefits to families and the health service, impact on those who use CCTH, and how CCTH is best delivered and organised. This project took a mixed methods approach to address these questions, including a systematic review, a national survey of services and case studies

Evaluating models of care closer to home for children and young people who are ill

Standard six of the National Service Framework (NSF) for Children, Young People and Maternity Services recommends that care for ill children should be delivered as close to home as possible. This research aimed to find evidence about delivering care closer to home (CCTH) for ill children, particularly in relation to: the range and extent of provision, the implications of CCTH for those who plan, deliver, and use such services, and cost effectiveness

Aerosol trends as a potential driver of regional climate in the central United States: evidence from observations

In situ surface observations show that downward surface solar radiation (SWdn) over the central and southeastern United States (US) has increased by 0.58–1.0 Wm−2 a−1 over the 2000–2014 time frame, simultaneously with reductions in US aerosol optical depth (AOD) of 3.3–5.0  ×  10−3 a−1. Establishing a link between these two trends, however, is challenging due to complex interactions between aerosols, clouds, and radiation. Here we investigate the clear-sky aerosol–radiation effects of decreasing US aerosols on SWdn and other surface variables by applying a one-dimensional radiative transfer to 2000–2014 measurements of AOD at two Surface Radiation Budget Network (SURFRAD) sites in the central and southeastern United States. Observations characterized as clear-sky may in fact include the effects of thin cirrus clouds, and we consider these effects by imposing satellite data from the Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) into the radiative transfer model. The model predicts that 2000–2014 trends in aerosols may have driven clear-sky SWdn trends of +1.35 Wm−2 a−1 at Goodwin Creek, MS, and +0.93 Wm−2 a−1 at Bondville, IL. While these results are consistent in sign with observed trends, a cross-validated multivariate regression analysis shows that AOD reproduces 20–26 % of the seasonal (June–September, JJAS) variability in clear-sky direct and diffuse SWdn at Bondville, IL, but none of the JJAS variability at Goodwin Creek, MS. Using in situ soil and surface flux measurements from the Ameriflux network and Illinois Climate Network (ICN) together with assimilated meteorology from the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS), we find that sunnier summers tend to coincide with increased surface air temperature and soil moisture deficits in the central US. The 1990–2015 trends in the NLDAS SWdn over the central US are also of a similar magnitude to our modeled 2000–2014 clear-sky trends. Taken together, these results suggest that climate and regional hydrology in the central US are sensitive to the recent reductions in aerosol concentrations. Our work has implications for severely polluted regions outside the US, where improvements in air quality due to reductions in the aerosol burden could inadvertently pose an enhanced climate risk

Mind-Mindedness in Parents of Looked After Children

The studies reported here aimed to test the proposal that mind-mindedness is a quality of personal relationships by assessing mind-mindedness in caregiver–child dyads in which the relationship has not spanned the child’s life or in which the relationship has been judged dysfunctional. Studies 1 and 2 investigated differences in mind-mindedness between adoptive parents (ns = 89, 36) and biological parents from the general population (ns = 54, 114). Both studies found lower mind-mindedness in adoptive compared with biological parents. The results of Study 2 showed that this group difference was independent of parental mental health and could not fully be explained in terms of children’s behavioral difficulties. Study 3 investigated differences in mind-mindedness in foster carers (n = 122), parents whose children had been the subject of a child protection plan (n = 172), and a community sample of biological parents (n = 128). The level of mind-mindedness in foster carers and parents who were involved with child protection services was identical and lower than that in the community sample; children’s behavioral difficulties could not account for the difference between the 2 groups of biological parents. In all 3 studies, nonbiological carers’ tendency to describe their children with reference to preadoption or placement experiences was negatively related to mind-mindedness. These findings are in line with mind-mindedness being a relational construct