Law and Justice: Scott v. Canada and the History of the Social Covenant with Canadian Veterans

In October 2012, supported by veteran advocacy group Equitas, Canadian Forces veterans of the Afghanistan campaign filed a class action lawsuit against the Federal Government. The case, Scott v. Canada, is named after lead Plaintiff Daniel Scott. In Scott, the Plaintiffs allege that under the recently enacted Canadian Forces Members and Veterans Re-establishment and Compensation Act, commonly known as the New Veterans Charter (NVC), many veterans receive less support than under the previous Pension Act. Further, they allege that the New Veterans Charter is a contravention of the ‘social covenant’ between Canadian citizens, the Canadian government, and past and present Canadian military members and their families. While the limited scope of this paper cannot determine if a legally binding social contract in fact exists, it will engage with the surrounding literature and suggest that there is a well-documented history of veterans enjoying a special relationship with the federal government and Canadian people in the form of legal and social entitlements. This paper will track the many reiterations of Prime Minister Robert Borden’s speech leading up to the creation of the NVC, while illuminating a historic tension between the influences of political, economic, and social policy trends and the upholding of a unique obligation towards those who have served this country militarily. The covenant has always been contextualised by the morality of the times. But it is not just moral; it has legal aspects as well. The reason that veterans are due special treatment is intimately tied to their legal status as a member of the military with exposure to unlimited liability and regulation under the military justice system

Interprofessional Research on the Inclusion of Young Children with Developmental Disabilities as they Transition from Preschool to Elementary School

This paper is submitted in response to the call for papers on inclusion. Despite recognition of the importance of parent and interprofessional collaboration to enable meaningful inclusion outcomes for young children with developmental disabilities in education contexts, limited research has investigated  how parents, educators and healthcare providers actually collaborate to support inclusion goals. Moreover, research has not examined inclusion from the diverse perspectives of stakeholders across early childhood, healthcare, and education sectors. This paper describes the work of HELPS Inc, a Canadian research project describing Health, Education, and Learning Partnerships Promoting Social Inclusion of young children with developmental disabilities

The Brief Family Distress Scale: A Measure of Crisis in Caregivers of Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

DOI 10.1007/s10826-010-9419-yParents of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often experience stressors associated with caring for their child. These stressors can cause considerable distress for families, which at times can develop into full blown crisis, and it is important that professionals be able to quickly identify when families are approaching or are in crisis to respond appropriately. The current study presents an initial attempt to measure the subjective experience of crisis in 164 caregivers of people with ASD through a single item instrument, the Brief Family Distress Scale. The BFDS was negatively correlated with helpful coping mechanisms (family hardiness, and parent empowerment), and positive adjustment (caregiver quality of life and positive parenting experiences), and positively correlated with known stressors (severity of aggressive behavior, negative life events) and problematic coping and outcomes (caregiver burden, worry, mental health problems). As expected, caregivers at Marked levels of distress (approaching or in crisis) were significantly different from caregivers at lower levels of distress in nearly all of the dependent variables. Having a quick way of measuring where families are in terms of distress and crisis can be helpful for researchers and clinicians alike.Ontario Mental Health Foundatio

Family hardiness, social support, and self-efficacy in mothers of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Family hardiness is an important construct to understand coping in parents of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), who are often at risk for considerable distress in the face of multiple stressors. The current study examined family hardiness, perceived social support and parent self-efficacy as predictors of family distress in 138 mothers of individuals with ASD, 4–41 years of age. Using a multiple mediation analysis, we demonstrated that perceived self-efficacy and social support mediated the link between the pile-up of stressors and family hardiness, and that hardiness was a partial mediator in explaining how stressors were associated with family distress. Researchers and clinicians should consider the role that perceived social support and parent self-efficacy play in explaining family hardiness, and how the perception of such hardiness is associated with less distress