The Importance of Unions in Contemporary Times

This article examines the importance of unions in contemporary times. Our research focuses on United Auto Workers Local 72, a union representing workers at a factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during several plant closings. Using qualitative data collected over a span of more than 20 years, we examine the role of the local union in helping the workers respond to the plant closing in ways that would produce the most beneficial results for them. We trace stories of the workers’ and union’s resistance, cooperation, and pride in their work. The workers’ continued commitment to quality and their strong work ethic seemed to be key factors in persuading the company to keep some work on the site and, later, to add more. These tactics were successful through several changes in ownership and economic cycles until the Great Recession of 2008, at which point the work destined for the plant in Kenosha was finally sent to Mexico, yet most of the workers affected by the original plant closing in 1988 were eventually able to come back to work and to retire with full pensions from the company. Our evidence suggests the roles that unions may continue to play in this age of globalization

Support Foster Care: developing a short-break service for children in need

Under section 20 of the Children Act 1989, local authorities can provide short breaks for children with foster or other families. The majority of such placements are used to support the families of disabled children, but they may also be used in other circumstances. Support foster care schemes aim to work with families who are experiencing difficulties or stress by providing short breaks for children and support for parents. Such schemes have been slow to develop, and the Department of Health commissioned the Thomas Coram Research Unit to carry out a small-scale study to find out more about the barriers, legal and otherwise, that might be deterring local authorities from establishing support care schemes, and how such barriers might be overcome. This report summarises the findings

Evaluation of a project giving boarding school places to young people living in difficult situations: A summary of findings for young people

In November 2006 the government began a project in 10 local areas in England to see if boarding school might be a possible option for children and young people who could no longer stay all the time with their parents or carers or who were facing difficulties such as not attending school and not getting on with their families. The evaluation took place to find out more about: - The things that worked well about the project; - In what ways some young people could benefit from going to boarding school; - The things that could make the project work better. The evaluation also aimed to help the government decide whether to extend the project to other parts of England

Health of children and young people in secure settings

This small-scale descriptive study was commissioned by the Children and Young People's Public Health team within the Department of Health, in partnership with Offender Health, in order to inform preparation and implementation of an Offender Health Strategy document for children and young people. The overall aim was to review what is currently known about healthcare for children and young people in the secure estate, covering all three types of settings (Young Offender Institution, Secure Training Centre and Secure Children's Home) and all aspects of health, but with a particular focus on physical health since more is already known about mental health and substance misuse among young people in secure settings

The tasks and roles of social workers: a focused overview of research evidence

Options for Excellence is a joint DfES and DH-funded review of the social care workforce. Four task groups have been set up, each dealing with different aspects of social care. Task Group 3 is considering the roles and tasks of social workers. In order to inform the work of this group, the Thomas Coram Research Unit was asked to provide an overview of relevant research and data in three main areas: the effective deployment of social worker time and tasks, improving cross-professional working, and attitudes to take-up of post-qualifying qualifications

Normative commitments, causal structure, and policy disagreement

Recently, there has been a large amount of support for the idea that causal claims can be sensitive to normative considerations. Previous work has focused on the concept of actual causation, defending the claim that whether or not some token event c is a cause of another token event e is influenced by both statistical and prescriptive norms. I focus on the policy debate surrounding alternative energies, and use the causal modelling framework to show that in this context, people's normative commitments don't just affect the causal claims they are willing to endorse, but also their understanding of the causal structure. In the context of the alternative energy debate, normative considerations affect our (implicit) understanding of the causal structure by influencing our judgements about which variables should be held �fixed,and therefore which variables should be relegated to the background of a causal model. In cases of extreme disagreement, normative commitments can also affect which causal structure we think should be instantiated. Thus, focusing on a new context has revealed a previously unexplored sense in which normative factors are incorporated into causal reasoning