Ending Child Poverty: What is happening in the UK?

A report from the Center for Impact Research's U.S./UK Welfare Reform Working Group

Fathering practices in twenty-six intact families and the implications for child contact

The nature of the contribution that fathers make to families is the subject of intense debate by both academics and policymakers. Contact between non-resident fathers and their children has been promoted by government and the courts, but remains difficult to achieve. This paper reports on interview data collected from fathers, mothers and their adolescent children in intact families on the perceptions of fathering practices and the factors that influence them. In addition, the nature and extent of fathers’ involvement with their children is explored in relation to the problem of ‘boundary setting’. While the traditional, rather distant, breadwinning father has disappeared, there is no evidence from this study of a shift towards the kind of father who takes equal day-to-day responsibility for his children. Rather, the changes in the nature of fathers’ involvement with their children are more subtle, relying to a large extent on an appreciation of the importance of ‘passive care’ and of mediation by mothers. We suggest that these findings have important implications for what might be expected by and of fathers when relationships break-up, and for the development of policies to encourage father involvement

Journalists\u27 Views of the Environment: Issues and Challenges

In advocating the use of an environmental handbook for journalists, the authors report on a survey of reporters and editors regarding salient environmental issues in different regions of the United States and e emphasis placed on environmental reporting in newsrooms

Optimizing condition numbers

In this paper we study the problem of minimizing condition numbers over a compact convex subset of the cone of symmetric positive semidefinite $n\times n$ matrices. We show that the condition number is a Clarke regular strongly pseudoconvex function. We prove that a global solution of the problem can be approximated by an exact or an inexact solution of a nonsmooth convex program. This asymptotic analysis provides a valuable tool for designing an implementable algorithm for solving the problem of minimizing condition numbers

Women, welfare and the state: some notes on feminist concepts

Es werden feministische Positionen zur Sozialpolitik und zu sozialstaatlichen Leistungen für Frauen kritisch hinterfragt. Am Beispiel der alleinerziehenden Frauen wird die Entwicklung der Sozialpolitik in den USA und Großbritannien in bezug auf die Frauen untersucht. Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts wurden solche Frauen von der Politik nur als Arbeiterinnen behandelt. Mitte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts wurden die alleinerziehenden Frauen als Mütter behandelt und ihnen für die Kindererziehung Leistungen gewährt. Für die Gegenwart wird festgestellt, daß das Pendel wieder zurückschwingt und die Frauen von der Politik nur noch als potentielle Arbeiterinnen gesehen werden, die durch mangelnde soziale Leistungen gezwungen werden, ihre Kinder in Tagesstätten zu geben und zu arbeiten. Einigen feministischen Analysen wird vorgeworfen, daß sie die Verschiebung der Abhängigkeiten der Frauen nicht sehen. Die Abhängigkeit von den Männern erscheint als Abhängigkeit vom Arbeitsmarkt und von Staat. (GF

NHS White Paper: the shift away from competition should not be confused with a reduced role for the private sector

COVID-19 has shown the importance of extensive collaboration. At the same time, it has also highlighted the difficulties of achieving this when provision is largely privatised and fragmented. Jane Lewis discusses whether the new NHS White paper has the potential to solve this problem