Children's Social Care: A Preliminary Evaluation of Two Judge-led pre-Proceedings Protocols

In April 2013, a team of researchers at the University of the West of England, Bristol was asked to monitor a pre-proceedings protocol that was about to be introduced in the field of Children’s Social Care by the Designated Family Judge for Bristol. Shortly afterwards, the team was asked to appraise a pre-proceedings protocol that had already been introduced by the Designated Family Judge for Cheshire & Merseyside. The pre-proceedings protocols were similar to each other but not identical. The intention behind them both, however, was to bring about a change in the approach of local authorities and courts to chronic and multi-issue cases. The researchers undertook a quantitative and qualitative exploratory study in Bristol and Chester between December 2013 and December 2014. They set out to understand the procedural changes that were made following the introduction of the pre-proceedings protocols and to consider whether the protocols had reduced the time taken to conclude care proceedings and led to improvements for families and children. The researchers analysed raw data and spoke to parents, judges and professionals working within the family justice system. The article discusses the study and offers a preliminary evaluation of the impact and effectiveness of the two pre-proceedings protocols

The importance of ethnicity as a segmentation criterion: the case of the Pakistani consumers' attitude towards direct mail compared with the indigenous population

The UK is a multicultural society consisting of a multitude of ethnicities. The Pakistani community in the UK represents nearly 500,000 people and is the second largest ethnic group. There is no evidence of any previous published research investigating the Pakistani community's attitude towards direct mail. Marketing practitioners, it appears, are reticent about engaging in research into attitudes of different ethnic groups fearful, perhaps, of being labelled racist. The authors feel that since segmentation is frequently based on sex, age, weight etc., ethnicity, too, should be open to the same usage. An empirical approach to the research was employed utilising a mail questionnaire, a subset of Evans et al. (1998) research, with 88 Pakistani respondents. A great many statistically significant differences between Evans et al.'s model and the authors' model were discovered. The research concludes by confirming that attitudes towards direct mail, vary considerably between the indigenous and the Pakistani communities. Marketers are advised not only to consider ethnic groups as a viable segmentation opportunity but also because, on the evidence of this research, the Pakistani group wish to be targeted according to their ethnicity

Towards a typology of debt attitudes among contemporary young UK undergraduates

As the UK sits on the verge of a major change in the financing of both universities and students, this study seeks to capture and analyse the attitudes to money, borrowing and debt among contemporary young undergraduates. It reports findings from a qualitative study of 62 individuals in the second term of their first year at university, these being representatively sampled from volunteers across gender, social class, ethnicity and subject discipline. The semi-structured interview data was subjected to thematic analysis and this was used to derive a tentative typology of debt attitudes ranging from ‘debt-positive’ to ‘debt-angry’.The findings of this study suggest that student attitudes are more complex than assumed in some previous research and journalistic commentary, especially with respect to social class. Counterintuitively, many students from lower social class backgrounds show a positivity about debt as a means of enabling them to access higher level careers; this is consistent with admissions data following the 2006 increase in tuition fees and student indebtedness. More generally, the mainstream of student attitudes appears to fall between the ‘debt-savvy’ and ‘debt-resigned’ types, with students being relatively well-informed about repayment terms and accepting large-scale indebtedness as ‘normal’ with most students being ‘in the same boat’. The implications of these findings, the limitations of the study and future opportunities for research are discussed

Children's social care: Interim briefing report

This confidential report was submitted to the President of the Family Division, HHJ De Haas QC and HHJ Wildblood QC on 14th March 2014. It contained an analysis of the data that had been collected in the first three months of a UWE funded research project into "Children's Social Care: an evaluation of two pre-proceedings protocols" together with a series of findings and recommendations

Children's social care: An evaluation of two pre-proceedings protocols

In April 2013, a team of researchers at the University of the West of England, Bristol was asked to monitor a pre-proceedings protocol that was about to be introduced in the field of Children’s Social Care by the Designated Family Judge for Bristol. Shortly afterwards, the team was asked to appraise a pre-proceedings protocol that had already been introduced by the Designated Family Judge for Cheshire & Merseyside. The pre-proceedings protocols were similar to each other but not identical. The intention behind them both, however, was to bring about a change in the approach of local authorities and courts to chronic and multi-issue cases.The researchers undertook a quantitative and qualitative exploratory study in Bristol and Chester between December 2013 and December 2014. They set out to understand the procedural changes that were made following the introduction of the pre-proceedings protocols and to consider whether the protocols had reduced the time taken to conclude care proceedings and led to improvements for families and children. The researchers analysed raw data and spoke to parents, judges and professionals working within the family justice system.The article discusses the study and offers a preliminary evaluation of the impact and effectiveness of the two pre-proceedings protocols

Overactive, overwrought or overdrawn? the role of personality in undergraduate financial knowledge, decision-making and debt

The financial situation of undergraduate students remains a high-profile issue within the UK higher education sector, not least due to its perceived relationship with retention, well-being and success. This article probes this question from a new direction, using concepts and approaches from the field of applied psychology to examine how students use various forms of credit and whether personality impacts on borrowing behaviour. The sample in this study comprised 604 undergraduate students at a large UK university. Data were collected by online questionnaire on demographic background, borrowing history, borrowing intentions, financial literacy, personality type and attitudes to money. Using a series of regression analyses, it was found that a tendency towards extraversion was particularly associated with the use of overdrafts and borrowing from family members and that this led to higher anticipated debts on graduation. Neuroticism was found not to have any significant relationship to borrowing behaviour, but it was a significant predictor for student anxiety about money management. The article also reports related findings concerning students' learned borrowing behaviour; the acceleration of student use of commercial borrowing during their course of studies; and the construction and implications of financial literacy. © 2011 UCU