By Nopriyanto Suhanda, MSc Public Policy student & associate at Fiscal Policy Agency, Indonesian Finance Ministry.

The earthquake in Cianjur, West Java, in November which claimed more than 320 lives and demolished thousands of houses only reconfirms that Indonesia, sitting along the Ring of Fire, is highly exposed to risks of natural hazards.

Not only was the Cianjur quake the most tragic natural disaster by far in that region in the previous 12 months, it also shows the country’s weak disaster preparedness and resilience. (more…)

Sebnem Eroglu, University of Bristol

Many people migrate to another country to earn a decent income and to attain a better standard of living. But my recent research shows that across all destinations and generations studied, many migrants from Turkey to European countries are financially worse off than those who stayed at home. (more…)

By Beth Tarleton and Gillian MacIntyre

The lives of parents with learning disabilities have been given increasing attention by policy makers and practitioners in recent years and there has been a growing awareness of their particular support needs and the barriers they face in parenting their children. (more…)

Natasha Carver is a lecturer in International Criminology at the School for Policy Studies and a member of the specialist research institute Migration Mobilities Bristol. Carver wrote the 2012 report “The Right Man for Bristol?” Gender Representation and the Mayor of Bristol.

This article is part of Bristol Ideas’ Referendum 2022 debate which looks at all aspects of city governance as part of ongoing work on democracy and the forthcoming May 2022 referendum. (more…)

Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, illuminates a succession of horrific crimes committed by one man against his children and his wife. Its publication in the UK in 2003 coincided with the passage of the Child Rights Act in Nigeria. Reading Purple Hibiscus against this policy and legal backdrop raises numerous questions about child welfare policies and practices in Nigeria.  (more…)

Blog by Doug Cooley, winner of the Policy & Politics 2021 postgraduate prize to the student achieving the highest overall mark on the ‘Power, Politics and the Policy Process’ unit of the Masters in Public Policy at the School for Policy Studies.

Originally published on the Policy and Politics Blog.

I’m Doug Cooley, and have just finished a one-year Masters in Public Policy at the University of Bristol, home to the Policy & Politics journal. I hope to use this MPP as a basis to conduct future academic or practical policy work. During the year, I have focussed my research on various theoretical concepts, including policy transfer, and power structures in the policy process, applying these concepts to neoliberal mechanisms in the Global Financial System, and to the UK’s local governance structures. I am delighted to have won the Policy & Politics prize for achieving the highest overall mark on the unit ‘Power, Politics and the Policy Process’ as part of the MPP programme.

In this post, I highlight a piece of my work which explores the link between policy transfer, which I define as replication of policy instruments between polities, and institutional isomorphism, or the convergence of organisational structures and governance mechanisms. The relative lack of literature on the link is surprising, given how intuitively similar these ideas are, and the different normative connotations of the two concepts. Policy transfer emphasises the benefits of learning between polities, whereas institutional isomorphism is seen as a constraining influence on innovation. (more…)

This article was originally published by Women’s Aid in their Safe blog.

Tuesday 20th July 2021: Today, Women’s Aid and the University of Bristol publish new research, “Gendered experiences of justice and domestic abuse. Evidence for Policy and Practice”. Lizzie McCarthy (Knowledge Exchange Fellow – based in the Centre for Gender and Violence Research while undertaking this research) and Sarah Davidge explain why it is vital that we recognise the role sexism and misogyny play in setting the scene for domestic abuse.  (more…)

In his latest blog, Dr Oscar Berglund, Lecturer in International Public and Social Policy,  explores the unusual methods by which the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement seeks to effect policy change.
Extinction Rebellion (XR) have again been in the news recently. After occupying parts of central London over two weeks in April, their Summer Uprising in five UK cities in July, the last two weeks has seen the Autumn Uprising in London. All these protests involve disruption, breaking the law and activists seeking arrest.

Emotions are running high with many objecting to the disruption. At the same time, it has got people and the media talking about climate change. XR clearly represent something new and unusual that people get annoyed or enthused by. But what is the point of the disruption to daily life, law-breaking and voluntary arrests?

XR are accused of being anarchist in a report from the right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange. To actual anarchists, that is laughable. XR strictly adhere to non-violence, seek arrests and chant ‘We love you’ to the police. That contrasts starkly to anarchists’ antagonistic relationship to the state and its law enforcement. XR’s positive attitude to police is being tested by the police’s increasingly repressive way of dealing with the protests. This week the Metropolitan Police banned all XR protests in London, though this has been contested by the movement both in the courts and in the streets.

Another aspect setting XR apart from more anarchist social movements is their targets. For anarchists, direct action should be prefigurative, meaning to incorporate the aim in the means of protest. Making city centres car-free and blocking access to banks that finance fossil fuel companies are prefigurative protests. Intentionally getting arrested is not; and many experienced activists have been critical of this key tactic of XR.

The movement claims to practice civil disobedience but that is also a confusing label. Civil disobedience developed during the 20th century as a way of understanding and justifying law-breaking protests in liberal democracies. Much of this was in relation to the US civil rights movement. Liberal political thinkers like Hannah Arendt and John Rawls explored when and how disobedience was legitimate in a democracy.

In some ways XR fit with liberal civil disobedience. That disobedience should always be a last resort chimes well with XR’s claim that time is running out and traditional campaigning has proven unsuccessful. The voluntary arrests resonate with the liberal onus on open and conscientious law-breaking that accepts law enforcement. Indeed, the intentional arrests take this conscientious approach to a new level.

However, on two other crucial points, XR break with the liberal civil disobedience tradition. Firstly, civil disobedience is generally aimed at showing the majority of the public that specific laws are unjust. XR do not seem to focus on this majority-building. They do not engage in much discussion with climate change deniers. Their disruption antagonises people who do not share their fears and frustration with the inaction of governments. Instead, XR’s tactic is to get a significant but still small part of the population to participate in disruption. What is important is then to get 3.5% so incensed that they take to the streets. It is not to convince 51% that it is the right thing to do.

Secondly, liberal civil disobedience remains within a ‘fidelity to law’ overall. It is okay to break certain unjust laws as long as you respect the state’s laws generally. The aim is then to get the state to have better, more just, laws. But for XR, the social contract has already been broken. The state has failed to take necessary action on climate change, thereby putting its citizens at risk. Disruption and law-breaking are therefore justified.

XR’s tactics are not based on how social movements have achieved policy change in liberal democracies. It is based on how dictatorships have been toppled. It draws directly on Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan’s Why Civil Resistance Works, where they argue that non-violence is more effective than violence. The XR tactic is therefore based on how to achieve revolutions, not on how to get governments to respond to the will of the majority.

There are reasons to be skeptical about the relevance of this research for addressing climate change. The 3.5% limit applies to such a small number of historical cases that no conclusions can be based on it. More importantly perhaps, in most cases of regime change, not much else changes. Many climate change activists see saving the world as incompatible with capitalism as a system that depends on economic growth on a finite planet. Most cases of regime change have not resulted in abandoning capitalism, quite the opposite.

There are however good reasons for why XR’s radical tactics resonate with so many. People experiencing climate change through hot summers and other extreme weather increases the sense of urgency. More importantly perhaps, in an era of political polarisation, more extreme action becomes more likely. The legitimacy of the state and its politicians has eroded on both the left and right. In this country not least because of Brexit.

Law-breaking then becomes a more likely form of protest. One of XR’s spokespeople wrote in a bit of an understatement that ‘the chances of…succeeding are relatively slim’. But since many in XR foresee societal breakdown as a result of climate breakdown, the cost of getting a criminal record diminishes. And if you also make it a bit of a party, then chances are we’ll see more disruption even if it does alienate many others.

The recent protests in London will have gained XR both new supporters and new detractors. The less tolerant attitude of the police will certainly be a topic for discussion within the movement and tactics may very well have to change. It also remains to be seen how the court cases pan out, which will affect people’s willingness to be arrested. But climate change activism will not go away and XR have created a strong brand in that demand for policy change.

Using the United Kingdom and Japan as case studies, Professor Misa Izuhara, from The Centre for Urban and Public Policy Research explores the role of housing wealth on retirement and social differentiation in later life.

How do you decide when to retire in a society like Britain where the formal ‘retirement age’ no longer exists? Do you have a big enough pension and/or savings to retire early? Does your employer want you to continue working after you reach 60? Or, are you planning to sell your house to cover the cost of post-retirement life?

The process of retirement is becoming more complex and differentiated in terms of timing and financial resources. In many advanced economies, ‘active ageing policies’ encourage older workers to remain in the labour market longer. However, the reasons and opportunities to do so depend on both institutional systems (e.g. retirement age, social security, attitudes of employers) and individual capital (e.g. skills, pensions, savings, housing assets).

As part of a current ESRC funded project, we bring ‘housing’ more fully into the analysis of retirement inequality, which is absent from existing research.

This collaborative project ‘Social Differentiation in Later Life: Exploring the interaction between housing wealth and retirement in Japan and the UK’ brings together scholars and stakeholders with different disciplinary backgrounds of social policy, economics and management to examine the relationship between housing wealth, the level of education, and extending working life of ageing baby-boomers in the contrasting welfare systems of the UK and Japan.

The first workshop was held in Tokyo (Keio University) in July 2019 to facilitate knowledge exchange between the project members and non-academic stakeholders. Japan is the world most aged society. More than a quarter (27.7%) of the population are already aged 65 and over. Despite the formal retirement age, in practice, Japanese people work longer in line with an increase of pensionable age. Reform of the Act for Stabilization of Employment of Older Persons, which obliged companies to employ their workers up to pensionable age, supports this trend. Scheduled 20% reduction of pension benefit will also strengthen the trend in next decades.

Alongside pensions, home ownership is a major factor shaping household wealth and thus potentially influence people’s retirement decision. The volatile housing market, however, poses a significant barrier in post-growth Japan when considering equity release. As the net household saving rate is falling, future generations are expected to extend working life due to the decline in personal wealth.

As part of the workshop, leading policy makers and practitioners in related areas of employment, finance, housing and city planning presented current situations and emerging issues facing ‘super-aged’ Japanese society:

• Naoto Ohmi (Executive Deputy President, Japanese Trade Union Confederation (JTUC-RENGO) argued that securing employment opportunities up to age 70 was an important policy agenda in Japan. The majority of those in the late 60s who are still in employment mentioned financial reasons for extending their working life. Trade Unions continue to work towards raising mandatory retirement to age 65. It is urgent to close the gap between the retirement age and the pensionable age.
• Takeshi Sakai (Japan Housing Finance Agency) led the development of reverse mortgage products between 2014 and 2018. Reserve mortgage is not widely known or used among older homeowners in Japan, but it is gaining popularity, partly thanks to the promotion by housing developers. However, depreciation of house price remains a major barrier in post-growth Japan in order to further promote the use of housing assets in later life through this type of mortgage products. Equity release currently remains an option largely for the wealthy ‘propertied-class’ but has potential to support those on low incomes.
• Titled as ‘the utilisation of assets in later life’, Kazuhiro Sugaya (Senior Manager, Pension Consultation Division, Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation) located the Japanese social security system in the international context. The composition of household wealth has shifted over the years, but housing assets are the main component of household wealth in Japan. He argued the importance of ‘financial gerontology’, the system enabling to extend individuals’ own financial assets at the arrival of the ‘centennial life’.
• Ageing is a serious concern in Tama City. Yusai Takei (New Town Redevelopment Section Head, Tama City Government, Tokyo) discussed current strategies in order to revitalise the city’s ageing New Towns (developed in the 1970s) and its residents. Not only rebuilding old housing complexes but also the city is developing systems to facilitate residential moves of older households according to their life-course need. By attracting younger families, it is indeed important to achieve age mix in the neighbourhoods to sustain the healthy living environment.

For many participants, it was the first time they had had the opportunity to attend a knowledge exchange workshop. Many agreed it was ‘beneficial for policy makers to exchange knowledge and ideas with academics, practitioners and experts working in other fields.’ Participated stakeholders tend to focus on tasks in their own fields such as city planning or housing. For example, “presentations about employment were fresh and made me think the importance of creating employment for older workers in New Town” (Mr Takei). The UK experiences, presented by Professors Flynn and Izuhara, also provided food for thought. “Transition from work to retirement is a major issue for pensioners. The evidence from the UK contributed to our understanding” (Mr Ohmi). Another participant wanted to know the mechanism of the UK housing market and system to sustain housing prices as the key to facilitate the use of housing assets in later life in Japan.

For the next 8 months, the project team will work collaboratively to examine identified comparative themes such as opportunities and constraints of older workers in the contrasting institutional systems and housing/labour markets; and the impact of personal wealth on retirement trajectories between Japan and the UK using existing micro data.

This international project is funded by the UK Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) UK-Japan Connections Grant. The Principal Investigator is Professor Misa Izuhara, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, UK. For more information and to the team visit the project page.

Dr Wenjing Zhang and Dr Paul Willis from the Centre for Research in Health and Social Care, School for Policy Studies, write on the importance of equality and inclusion within care environments and the launch of the Care under the Rainbow digital resource.

17^th May 2019 marks IDAHOT Day – International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. This is a significant day for a number of reasons. For LGBT+ groups and organisations it’s about recognising and speaking out against the violence and discrimination experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and all other people who belong to sexual and gender minority groups around the world. 17^th May also marks the date when the World Health Organisation decided to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1990 (subsequently removed in 1992) – this was another successful challenge to institutional homophobia. The UK Government’s recent survey of over 108,000 LGBT+ respondents shows us that we still need IDAHOT day and other local and international campaigns against sexuality and gender-based violence and discrimination. The survey reports that 68% of respondents with a minority sexual orientation said they had avoided holding hands in public with a same-sex partner for fear of a negative response. 40% of respondents had experienced a hostile or violent incident in the 12 months before the survey because they were LGBT+.

In the UK, LGBT+ people who are over 60 years of age have lived through decades of criminalisation (until partial decriminalisation of sex between men in 1967), pathologisation (treatment of homosexual as a mental disorder and ‘unhealthy lifestyle’), and social and moral condemnation of same-sex relationships and desires across communities. For older lesbians, their existence has only been recently recognised in law with the implementation of equal rights law over the last 18 years. For trans individuals, the Gender Recognition Act in 2004 finally enabled people with a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria to change their legal gender and marked a shift in the State starting to protect the civil rights of trans individuals.

Living in a hostile and oppressive climate across one’s lifetime can lead to deep mistrust and low confidence in legal bodies, institutions and helping professionals, such as mental health professionals, GPs, social care workers and housing officers. We know from Stonewall research conducted in 2011 that older LGB adults (55+) report lower confidence in health and social care professionals compared to heterosexual older adults – in turn this may prevent older LGBT+ individuals from seeking health and care support from service providers when they need it later life. In care and nursing homes older LGBT+ people are often invisible, and their personal lives, histories and relationships can be hidden behind a double-layered curtain of ageist and heterosexist/ cisgenderist assumptions. Organisations such as Age UK and Opening Doors London are working hard to challenge these assumptions and to create safer, more equal environments for older LGBT+ people across services, including care and nursing homes.  We’ve sought to make our own contribution to creating inclusive care environments for older LGBT+ people with the creation and launch of our new online learning resource titled ‘Care Under the Rainbow’.

On Friday 17th May 2019 the University of Bristol and The Diversity Trust jointly hosted the ‘Care Under the Rainbow Launch Event’. This launch showcased a new online resource for care home staff and managers for making care homes more inclusive for older people who identify as LGBT+. The aim of this new resource is to provide managers and staff teams with tools for leading discussions and educational sessions about the importance of promoting equality between residents in care homes and of valuing diversity amongst staff and residents.

This new resource includes four short films on the inclusion of LGBT+ residents (Care home staff talking, Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual inclusion, Creating Trans inclusion and Werner and Alan’s Story), case studies for use in staff training and development, top tips and things you can do for making care homes more inclusive, and legal timeline highlighting key changes in equality law and policy in England and Wales. The learning materials and films are free and hosted on the Diversity Trust website: Care under the Rainbow. This resource has been co-produced by LGBT+ individuals with the involvement and advice of older LGBT+ individuals and the work has been supported by a wide range of organisations, including Skills for Care and Stonewall Cymru.

Here are some ways in which care home managers and staff might use the learning materials:

• Staff team meeting – watch 1-2 of the films together and/or discuss 1-2 of the case studies to raise discussion about the importance of respect of equality and diversity among residents.
• Recruitment exercise – use one of the case studies in interviews with new staff members as a way of assessing applicants’ attitudes and values.
• Induction – request new staff to view the films and read the documents online and then discuss 1-2 of the case studies together to gauge how new staff members would respond to residents from similar backgrounds.
• Continuous professional development – organise a half-day training session for all staff. Start with watching the films together, test participants knowledge of the law with the legal timeline (e.g. quick quiz) and finish with discussion of the case studies in pairs or small groups of 3-4 participants.

In addition to the showcase of these learning materials, the launch event included the following talks: Paul Willis (Senior Lecturer, University of Bristol) presented messages from recent research on health and social care, ageing and LGBT+ people in later life; Berkeley Wilde (Director and Founder, The Diversity Trust) talked through the project story and showed the audience how to access this learning material; and Alice Wallace (Director, Opening Doors London) introduced the ‘Pride in Care’ project being led by Opening Doors London.

A panel discussion was also held on making care homes more inclusive. The panel included Paul Willis, Berkeley Wider, Alice Wallace, Ian Boulton (South Gloucestershire Councillor for Staple Hill Ward), Stuart Wright (Dementia Care Lead, Brunelcare) and Jenny-Anne Bishop OBE (Chairperson & Outreach and Training coordinator for The Unique Transgender Network North Wales and TransForum Manchester).

We were delighted that a very diverse audience came along to participate in the launch event including care home staff and managers and members of the LGBT+ community. Following the launch, we will be disseminating the learning resource to a wider audience, including care and nursing homes across South West England and South Wales, and would like to explore future research and practice-focused collaborations.

If you would like to find out more information about the launch event and project story, please search our twitter hashtag #careunderrainbow or visit the project website, hosted by the Diversity Trust.

We’d love to hear your feedback on the learning resource, email: paul.willis@bristol.ac.uk

Dr Geetanjali Gangoli, Senior Leturer and researcher in the Centre for Gender Violence Research recommends further action to eliminate gender violence within UK Universities.

The elimination of gender-based violence (GBV) is a human rights priority both internationally and domestically. The new prominence of movements such as #MeToo, #TimesUp, and #MeTooPhD brought to the forefront of public consciousness the prevalence of GBV and the scale of the impact on women’s everyday lives in education, the home, and the workplace. The World Health Organisation found those experiencing GBV were more than two times as likely to experience mental health issues and thus declared it “a global health problem of epidemic proportions”.

The limited existing evidence on sexual and domestic abuse at UK universities

No study has investigated domestic abuse specifically at UK universities, but there are indicators that it occurs amongst students and staff. For instance, the Office of National Statistics indicate that young adults aged 18 to 24 tend to be at higher risk for domestic abuse. Indicators for university staff can be drawn from wider studies (e.g. Hester et al., 2017; Walby and Allen, 2004), showing that approximately 20% of women and 4% of men experience domestic abuse during their lifetime.

Several studies of varying quality have assessed students’ experiences of sexual violence. Findings from these studies suggested that: for female students, 70% experienced sexual violence, and 5% rape; and for male students, 12% experienced sexual assault. The most recent study by Brook (2019) found that 56% of both male and female students surveyed experienced unwanted advances and assault.

One study on sexual violence and university staff queried students about staffs’ use of sexual violence towards them, with 41% of female and male students reporting they experienced staff sexual misconduct. Only 6-8% of students who experienced sexual violence reported to the police or university, compared to an estimated 17% of victims of sexual violence in the general population.

A multi-site study of the sexual violence impacts experienced by students at English campus universities found that 100% of those who had experienced sexual violence reported a negative psychological, emotional or physical health based impact. Out of these, 27% contemplated suicide or self-harm, 15% developed an eating disorder, 15% abused alcohol or drugs and 12% reported becoming more prone to, and frequent absence from university due to, illness. Additionally, 50% of those who reported being sexually assaulted indicated having experienced a negative impact on their academic performance, and 11% indicated that the progress of their studies was delayed. The Revolt Sexual Assault and Student Room (2018) study found 25% of victim-survivors changed, dropped modules, missed lectures and/or tutorials, and 16% suspended or dropped out of their degree programme.

There are no direct indicators of university staffs’ experiences and impacts of sexual violence, but inferences can be drawn from wider studies. Conducted with general samples in the UK, some studies suggest the prevalence for women may range from 20% experiencing assault or rape in their lifetime to 52% experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace since the age of 16. There is also limited information on men’s experiences. What evidence is available suggests that prevalence for men may range from 4% experiencing assault or rape in their lifetime to 9% experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace since the age of 16.

UK university responses: Ad hoc

Universities function within national and international legal frameworks. However, there are no specific legislative duties on UK universities in terms of data collection, prevention, and response akin to those under USA law, such as; Title IX 1972; the Clery Act 1990/1998; VAWA Act 1994/2013; and Campus SaVE Act 2013.

Universities have potential obligations under the Equality Act 2010 and Human Rights Act 1998, but only to respond appropriately when victim-survivors disclose, not to prevent the violence in the first place. Guidance has been issued by UUK for investigating “student misconduct which may also constitute a criminal offence” but this fails to recognise the complex reality of sexual violence cases and is not mandatory. UUK (2016) issued eighteen recommendations, followed by a further twelve recommendations in 2018; but again none are mandatory.

After the UUK Taskforce: Changing the Culture recommendations in October 2016 there was a flurry of ad hoc university activity stimulated by HEFCE’s (now Office for Students) Catalyst funding pilot projects, including bystander training, reporting systems, and awareness campaigns. UUK (2018) has since reported to Ministers that there were variations in developments across the sector, and there is a need for senior leadership to commit to long term planning and resourcing of interventions, as well as data collection. University responses remain patchy with the Women and Equalities Select Committee concluding that the current voluntary approach is not working. The final evaluations of the Catalyst projects are due this spring, including the findings of a survey to establish what progress has been made against the Changing the Culture recommendations.

Moving towards more consistent university responses in the UK

In March 2019, the Government Strategy Refresh ‘Ending Violence against Women and Girls’ was published and included a recommendation to generate regular data on the nature and prevalence of sexual harassment. We currently await the government response.

Speaking at a conference in March 2019, Jessica Trahar, Head of Student Welfare and Safeguarding at the Office for Students, talked of linking safeguarding around sexual violence and mental health into university Access and Participation Plans, and making funding dependent on adequate provision for victim-survivors in universities.

The Women and Equalities Committee report on sexual harassment of women and girls in public places (2018) took this further, stating “The government should put in place legal obligations that mirror provisions in the US to link state funding with a requirement to prohibit sex discrimination and sexual harassment, and to collect and publish data on the effectiveness of institutional policies”.

While the above mentioned studies begin to shed light on the problem of gender-based violence in universities, and we support these most recent proposals, there remains overarching, fundamental gaps:

1. Existing studies should be supplemented with a national study that: a) uses the most robust methodology, including random sampling, b) includes both staff and student victimisation, and c) incorporates domestic as well as sexual abuse.
2. University prevention and response ‘plans’ remain ad hoc and piecemeal, primarily because universities remain relatively unaffected if they do not respond. This must be addressed at a structural level either as a statutory or mandatory
3. At an institutional level, Universities must be guided to develop strategic responses to GBV based on evidence.
4. An evidence based framework should be constructed for the specific context of UK universities, enabling such a comprehensive and cohesive strategic responses

Addressing the above will help to prevent the proliferation of studies that are of insufficient quality, and the development of responses with no strategic vision or little evidence base.

The Office of Students and the Home Office need to work together with Universities UK, universities, students’ unions, victim-survivors’ services, victim-survivors themselves, the criminal justice system, and academics with expertise in the field, to develop robust evidence-based responses to gender-based violence at university.

This blog was first published on the University of Bath IPR blog on 2nd May 2019 and was written with Dr Tina Skinner, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath. Dr Cassandra Jones,Postdoctorate Research Fellow in Law at the University of Exeter. Dr Rachel Fenton, Senior Lecturer in the Law School at the University of Exeter. Dr Olivia Smith, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Anglia Ruskin University and Janet Keliher, a PhD Candidate at the University of Exeter. 

Dr Demi Patsios, Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Research in Health and Social Care, discusses findings from a recent Nuffield Foundation project that examines the importance of using multidimensional indicators to improve the measurement of living standards.

Living standards in the United Kingdom are typically measured using household income or expenditure. Past research focuses on how they have changed over time, the extent to which there are in inequalities within different groups, and the impact of the recession on living standards Subjective indicators such as the personal evaluation of life circumstances, have however often been neglected or dismissed in social policy research as unreliable.

There has been little research that combines monetary and non-monetary indicators to inform living standards in the UK, both objectively and subjectively measured, for different household compositions and family types. Combining information on material and social living standards with how people feel about different aspects of their lives provide both a fuller picture on how different family types are faring in society and a broader picture of well-being, which can be used by policymakers to improve welfare and redress inequalities.

Our project The distribution and dynamics of economic and social well-being in the UK used data from three UK national surveys

• Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey (PSE) 2012
• Family Resources Survey (FRS) 2006/7 – 2016/16
• UK Household Longitudinal Study – “Understanding Society” (USoc) 2009-11 – 14-16

In our research, living standards are defined as the total of individual/family welfare using both objective and subjective indicators of individual/family welfare, which fall under three broad domains: ‘What We Have’, ‘What We Do’ and ‘Where We Live’. This conceptual framework was originally applied to the 2012 Poverty and Social Exclusion survey (PSE2012) data

What We Have

1. Economic resources
2. Material good
3. Financial situation
4. Personal and social resources
5. Physical and mental health

What We Do

1. Paid and unpaid work
2. Social and political participation
3. Social relations and integration

Where We Live

1. Housing and accommodation
2. Local area/neighbourhood
3. Local services

Key project findings

• The research confirms previous research that certain family life-course types, e.g. single adults of working age and single parents, had been affected most (monetarily and non-monetarily) by the economic downturn and subsequent recovery.
• The same family life-course type differences and trends across the recessionary period are found in both objective and subjective indicators of resources (e.g. income, financial situation and mental health).
• The analysis showed the importance of the nature of the measures and indicators used when trying to establish changes in trends in both objective and subjective indicators and the relationship between them over time.
• The associations between objective and subjective indicators of economic resources are most closely aligned when individual measures or indicators of living standards are highly congruent in both measurement and operationalisation.
• The findings also confirmed the importance of income as a key resource in living standards and the scientific validity of material deprivation items used in PSE, FRS and USoc surveys.
• Satisfaction with income, satisfaction with financial situation, and satisfaction with life can be used as valid and reliable subjective indicators of living standards and how they change over time.

So why use subjective indicators of living standards?

Our research shows that a small set of subjective indicators (satisfaction with income, satisfaction with financial situation, and satisfaction with life) can be used to monitor changes in living standards over time and between different household and family types.

Subjective indicators can corroborate objective indicators such as income and material deprivation, which are not collected consistently across surveys or over time. These could be useful for smaller charitable and voluntary organisations working with individuals and families who do not have the capacity to collect in-depth survey data on income/resources.

Subjective indicators can help track changes in living standards across time and across family life-course types because their variation is explained mostly by what people have rather than who they are, where they live and what they do. By going beyond objective indicators of resources, we can capture a fuller and more nuanced picture of living standards in the in order to identify groups (specifically, single adults of working age and single parents) that require further policy attention (monetary and non-monetary), particularly during periods of economic downturn.

Find out more about the project.

Dr Emma Williamson discusses the current political and societal landscape regarding gender equality and how the Centre for Gender Violence Research continues to fight for justice for the victims of domestic violence.

The last year has been a mixed one for women’s rights.  The consequence of the Trump election has seen many of the hard-fought rights for women being reversed in the US, from challenges to women’s reproductive rights – access to contraception and abortion – to changes to the definitions of domestic and sexual violence.  These latter changes make it difficult for victims of psychological abuse and manipulative coercive control to get justice and support.

Globally, political and social shifts to the right through nationalist political parties also mean that women’s rights have been challenged from Hungary, where women’s studies centres have been closed, to the decriminalisation of domestic violence in Russia.

Alongside these challenges we have also seen the development of the #MeToo movement which has changed the social landscape of how we talk about abuse, and how we respond.  This movement is not a magic bullet however, we need to both prevent abuse happening as well as responding appropriately when people disclose it.  We still have a long way to go on both fronts.

Closer to home, many of the research projects from the Centre for Gender and Violence Research have come to fruition.  The Justice project ended officially in May last year and we continue to disseminate the findings through our partnerships.  Several academic papers are in press looking at faith-based responses to abuse, police responses, issues with protection orders, child sexual abuse, sex with third parties, as well as methods papers and one looking at the secondary trauma impact of this type of work on researchers.  We have a London based event in May to further disseminate this work, and we are working with Research in Practice to offer training to social care practitioners across England and Wales over coming months.  This training is based on the findings from the Justice and DRIVE projects.

This year saw the publication of the second annual report from DRIVE.  This project has been evaluating an innovative approach to disrupting the behaviour of high-risk domestic abuse perpetrators using multi-agency intervention.  The findings so far are positive and show that using this approach (enshrined in the Istanbul Convention) has had positive outcomes for the safety of victims/survivors, ensuring a robust response from the criminal justice system.

In December we held the final event for our Global Challenges Research fund project looking at gender and displacement in the UK and Iraqi Kurdistan.  We welcomed colleagues from Kurdistan, but the visa process was itself enlightening.  Twelve colleagues intended to travel to Bristol but five had their travel visas denied and as a result six decided not to apply (the process is extremely costly).  Most disturbing was the fact that unmarried women were deemed not to have strong enough social ties in their home country to mitigate their flight risk.  This was ironic given that our project was looking at the ways in which gender impacts on experiences of displacement!

Most recently Professor Marianne Hester with Professor Evan Stark (a previous Benjamin Meaker Fellow at the Centre) provided expert testimony to the successful Sally Challen appeal case.  This landmark appeal brings coercive control into focus as a potential mitigating factor in cases of murder/manslaughter where diminished responsibility is at stake.  That case will go to re-trial and we anticipate our work in this area featuring in that new trial.

Finally, the only non-Brexit item in the government legislative package this year has been the new Domestic Violence Bill.  We engaged with a wide range of activities relating to that consultation, including presenting to four Westminster events, and meeting directly with the Home Office to discuss the findings from the Justice Project – the most up to date data on protection orders and Criminal Justice System responses.  With the political uncertainty in Westminster at present we do not know when that Bill will be taken forward but whatever happens, the process of being able to share our findings with service providers and policy makers has been extremely rewarding, both to us and to those who took part in the research.

What all of this work shows us is that victims and survivors are still seeking justice for their experiences of gender based violence.  Having spent much of the last year immersed in survivors’ testimonies, we know how crucial victim’s rights (predominately women) are in protecting them and their families from abuse, but so too is the way that society and communities within society respond.  Victims and survivors want recognition, they want to be heard, and they want the perpetrator to be held to account.  These are simple messages which we can apply to our own individual, institutional, and social interactions when addressing issues of abuse.  They are also clear messages we can take forward, in the year which marks the centenary of some women’s suffrage, challenging both the individual and structural barriers which exist to prevent women from achieving their human rights.

Dr Lis Bates, Research Fellow within the Centre for Gender and Violence Research, responds to recommendations from the recent independent inquiry into harassment and bullying within Westminster.

In a blog post in April reflecting on the Newsnight exposure of a culture of bullying and harassment in the House of Commons, I asked:

“How can there be confidence in the system if those who are widely known to have transgressed are still allowed to get away scot-free? There needs to be proper investigation and justice for those who have already suffered. Recent criminal investigations have shown that, even in historic cases, perpetrators can and should be held to account for their actions. Should Parliament and the political parties not now do the same?”

The publication this week of Dame Laura Cox QC’s independent inquiry into Westminster culture has decisively answered: Yes, they should!

The recently-introduced Complaints and Grievance Scheme for parliament must be amended, she says, to allow complaints about ‘historical’ allegations. This would remove the arbitrary cut-off point of June 2017, before which allegations cannot currently be investigated because (the Commons leadership argued), to do so would be to judge Members under a different standards scheme to that in place at the time.

Not true, says Dame Laura: the standard was the same. That the complaints scheme governing that behaviour was deficient (as is widely agreed), does not mean that the minimum standard of behaviour was lower:

“There may not have been written policies in place expressly prohibiting such conduct, but it is obviously not the case that such conduct was acceptable among the Parliamentary Community in the past and will now be rendered unacceptable by the new Scheme.”

She goes further. Examining these older cases is vital to achieving culture change in Westminster and moving forward:

“some, at least, are extremely serious cases. Consigning them to oblivion is not at all consistent with restoring confidence, rebuilding trust and changing the culture. An important part of that culture change for the future should be examining, acknowledging and learning from the failures of the past.”

As well as this unequivocal recommendation that historic allegations be looked at, Cox calls for the establishment of a fully independent process to investigate and rule on claims of harassment and bullying.

Establishing independent oversight – and removing adjudication from the parliamentary Standards Committee, made up of MPs – is, she says, the only way to move beyond the perception and the reality that MPs are still ‘marking their own homework’.

She also is excoriating about the current parliamentary leadership, going so far as to say that she has doubts that change can happen while the current senior management are in post: “I find it difficult to envisage how the necessary changes can be successfully delivered, and the confidence of the staff restored, under the current senior House administration”.

In April’s post, I wrote that what victims of bullying, harassment and abuse want in terms of justice is: to be listened to, the perpetrator to be held accountable, and to be given voice and choice in what happens.

I know this to be true both from personal conversations in the last year with a number of friends and former colleagues in the House, but also from the research we do here in the Centre for Gender and Violence Research with victims/survivors of sexual and domestic abuse.

The Cox report underlines again how crucial these aspects are in achieving justice. The 200 individuals (70% of them serving employees) who spoke to the inquiry told her that the most important elements were “being listened to and taken seriously, having choice and a voice in the decision-making about their case”.

So often we hear of victims/survivors of abuse, harassment and bullying being blamed, discredited and undermined – Christine Blasey Ford just being the latest in a long line.

Dame Laura has changed this narrative. She has done more than just allow them to speak – she has explicitly weighed and vindicated their accounts. Bringing to bear her many years’ experience in forensic examination, she explicitly finds those who came forward to be credible, consistent and considered:

“Throughout this inquiry I have been struck by the professionalism, care and thoughtfulness of those who contributed. These were not people set on revenge or out to malign either individuals or the reputation of the House itself. Those present or former members of staff who came forward care very deeply that the place regarded as the heart of our democracy is failing to live up to the standards to be expected of any 21st century workplace.”

Through this inquiry, Cox has raised these voices up – listened with respect and taken them seriously. Those who spoke with her can feel that their accounts and their voices meaningfully have been heard. Let’s hope that parliament can now do the same.

Lis Bates is an ESRC Research Fellow in the School for Policy Studies, and a former clerk in the House of Commons.

Atlas Torbati explores what sexual assault means in Iranian society and how discursive practices influence individuals’ perceptions and definitions towards sexual assault.

“Every time I go to the bazar I’m concerned about my outfit. I make sure that I wear something loose and conservative and not to wear too much make up”. Said Bahareh, 25, a student inTehran.

Sexual assault is a hidden phenomenon in Iran. There is hardly any academic research or official data or report on the number of victims and conviction rates. Media tries to avoid publishing reports and cases of sexual assault due to the strict censorship existed in Iranian society. Research into the prevalence of sexual assault is difficult for various reasons. Firstly, people avoid reporting such incidents to the police since they fear it jeopardises the honour and reputation of the family. Secondly, some forms of sexual assaults such as verbal abuse have become socially accepted to the extent that some women turn the blind eye towards it, resulting in an increase its acceptance and its frequency. Thirdly, in order to protect public morality, the government does not publish reports on sexual assault cases. Therefore, there are no official statistics on the number of reported incidents or related conviction rates.

On the other hand, the media and government try to relate sexual assault to women’s own behaviour and lack of observing cultural and religious norms and practices. In Iran, women are expected to conform with cultural and social norms such as wearing manteau – the medium-length light jacket and scarf,and are expected to be modest in order to protect the family honour. Therefore those who become the victims of sexual assault are blamed for lack of observance of these norms. Culturally any form of sexual assault, harm, or abuse to a woman’s reputation is considered disgraceful and shameful. This is due to the deep-rooted cultural and religious concept of honour and its related ethical values embedded in society.

Discourses such as shame and honour play a key role in the subservience of victims of violence. These discourses are entrenched in individuals’ everyday lives and preclude the victims of violence to talk about or report sexual assault since it is considered as a private matter and must be kept at home. The existence of such norms and practices results in ignoring the abuse and the creation of silence among the witnesses and the victims.

The term sexual assault does not exist in the Islamic Penal Law in Iran. The closest definitions to sexual assault are adultery (1) or physical assault (2). However, none of these definitions include sexual harassment or sexual verbal abuse. Also the notion of consent is missing in the later definition. The absence of a legal definition and the related guidelines have resulted in increasing the power of judges to use their personal view and their attitudes towards victims in determining the seriousness of sexual assault cases. The absence of a definition also has resulted in acts such as sexual groping, touching and sexual verbal abuse not being recognised as a form of sexual assault. The consequence of this inconsistency is that many women might be unsure whether the definitions would lead them to be qualified as a victim or not although it is against the public morality For instance, some women who participated in this study did not categorise themselves as victims and perceived groping, sexual touching and sexual verbal abuse as normal behaviours. The Islamic Penal Law does not therefore provide any protection for the victims of sexual assault. The paradoxical approach to sexual assault has resulted in repetition and hence normalisation of this form of violence.

Recently, sexual assault has been the focus of social workers, woman activists and Iranian filmmakers. Movies such as, ‘I am a mother’ and ‘Hush! Girls don’t scream’ have broken the taboo in Iranian film industry and showed the sensitivity and consequences of the subject. These movies that were produced and funded by the private sectors, mainly focused on issue of rape and the second one directed was about a girl who was continuously sexually assaulted by the security man in their residential building during her childhood. Therefore, more attention still needs to be paid to this issue through educating families and children, publishing the reports and cases in news papers and magazines, creating space in the media to break the stigma associated with sexual assault and holding public discussion where the victims can freely come and talk about their experience. Policy makers must provide high quality provision of counselling and advocacy and commit themselves to design the policies that promote gender equality and addressing shortfalls in criminal justice system. They must attempt to design a rigorous law that clearly defines what sexual assault is. The law must not only sanction discrimination by gender, but also must protect women instead of accusing them and define specific punishment for the perpetrators.

Atlas Torbati is currently studying for a PhD in Social Work at the School for Policy Studies.

[1] Adultery or ‘zena be onf va ekrah ‘ is defined as forcible male penile insertion into the female’s vagina or anus. If someone has sexual intercourse with a woman without her consent and when she is drowsy, unconscious or drunk he is convicted of adultery and death penalty (Islamic Penal Law 2000)

[2] Verbal assault is defined as any verbal offence or indecent language towards women and children in public and a person who commits verbal assault in public is punished by three to six months of imprisonment or 74 lashes (Act 608, Islamic Penal Law 2000).

Professor Alex Marsh, a leading academic in Housing Studies and Professor of Public Policy at the School for Policy Studies examines the impact of the Overall Benefit Cap (OBC) and what it means for the future of affordable housing in the UK.

We are about to see one of the welfare policies of the late, only occasionally lamented Coalition government bear particularly ugly fruit. Next Monday the process of lowering the Overall Benefit Cap (OBC) from £26,000 per year begins. Over the coming months the policy will be rolled out across the country, with the cap being reduced to £20,000 outside London and £23,000 in London.

Likely policy impacts
The change to the level of the cap is likely to have a dramatic effect. The initial cap at £26,000 affected a relatively small number of households, mostly large families and those in particularly high cost properties. However, the Chartered Institute of Housing has estimated
that lowering the cap will affect 116,000 households including over 300,000 children. Other analysts have argued that this is an under-estimate and the change will affect closer to 500,000 children. Lowering the cap means that some households will be left with next to no
assistance from the government with their housing costs. Their weekly entitlement to housing benefit will drop sharply: as a consequence there is a risk of rent arrears accumulating rapidly. Given these are households who are already entitled to social security benefits they will struggle to make up the shortfall in rent from elsewhere. Hence there is a serious concern that arrears will be followed swiftly by eviction and homelessness.

It is likely that many of these households will turn to their local authority for help under the homelessness duties. The net result could therefore be that they end up in temporary accommodation which is both poorer quality and more expensive than the property from which they’ve been evicted. So the public purse will end up paying more for less.

The standard response to these arguments from Government is that households can exempt themselves from the OBC by moving in to employment. Indeed, one of the key characteristics of the policy, from the Government’s perspective, was that it incentivised households to seek employment.

However, there is limited evidence that the initial cap at £26,000 had such an effect. The likelihood that the lower cap will have such an effect is equally questionable, in large part because most of the households affected are not deemed to be unemployed and able to actively seek work.

Challenging the principle
Most informed commentators are expecting the change to the OBC to have some significant negative impacts on the living standards of low income households and the homelessness statistics over the next year. But it also brings a broader point of principle into sharp relief.

The introduction of the Overall Benefit Cap via the 2012 Welfare Reform Act was viewed as one of the Coalition’s more popular reforms. Placing a limit on the maximum amount of benefit a household could receive was claimed to restore ‘fairness’ to the social security system by ensuring that no household reliant on social security received more than the equivalent of median household income. Many social policy commentators argued that this claim to greater ‘fairness’ was highly dubious, for a variety of reasons.

Nonetheless, it was a claim and a policy that seemed to meet with considerable approval among voters, as measured by opinion polls at least. So much so that the Labour opposition shows no inclination to repeal the OBC.

However, the OBC represents a fundamental change in the nature of our social security system. It breaks with the principle that assistance should be based upon need and that the government has obligations to ensure that households secure a minimum standard of living.

Assistance on the basis of needs
Under the social security system as it operated prior to the introduction of the OBC it was true that some households ended up receiving substantial sums of money from the state. But that was not accidental or arbitrary. It was a product of their household characteristics –
most typically the presence in the household of several children – and/or their high housing costs. There is little robust evidence that either of these policy drivers are a function of the social security system itself.

Yet, it is clear that policy has played a role in driving up the welfare bill. For example, 30 years of housing policy – including the Coalition’s own ‘affordable’ rent policy – drove up social housing rents in the belief that the right model was to limit rent subsidies and let housing benefit ‘take the strain’. At the same time, a failure of new housing supply to keep pace with demand and the financialisation of the private housing market mean that housing costs have moved – seemingly inexorably – upwards.

These changes are of no real benefit to the households living in these more expensive properties. Indeed, there are good arguments that greater reliance on housing benefit has negative consequences for households. But engineering higher rents is a good mechanism for transferring money from taxpayers to landlords or lenders.

Breaking the link?
Yet, as government has sought to exercise control over the welfare budget using crude measures like the OBC it is households – not landlords or lenders – that will face the most acute negative consequences.

It could be argued that the OBC decisively breaks the link between household characteristics/housing costs and the amount of money a household is deemed eligible to receive. Under the new cap, for example, in the most extreme cases some larger families will find that they are now only eligible for 50p a week in assistance with housing costs. Effectively the Government is saying that for certain families it no longer accepts the obligation to assist in securing accommodation appropriate to the household’s needs.

Reducing the minimum
If that feels like too emphatic a position to take, we could argue instead that the OBC policy seeks to re-calibrate where the minimum standard might be and precisely the extent of the obligations upon the state to assist.

For example, before the arrival of the Coalition’s welfare reform agenda there was limited debate about the ‘where’ of government assistance. If I lived in Bristol, Bath or some other relatively expensive area and found that I needed assistance from social security to pay my rent then assistance would be made available. Of course, there were restrictions on the extent of that assistance, which meant that there were parts of the rented housing stock that I couldn’t afford. But, broadly speaking, the social security system would step in to help me maintain my current location.

There are good reasons for this. For example, if I have children in school then if social security helps me to stay in my current accommodation then it means current family and social support networks, access to services and amenities, and my children’s educational
progress are not unduly disrupted.

The current system in effect rejects the idea that you have a right to stay in your current area once you become dependent on social security. There is no longer any certainty that the government will provide sufficient assistance to allow you to afford appropriate accommodation locally – including your current accommodation – if you are subject to the OBC.

The OBC policy has already triggered mobility in London where the initial £26,000 cap rendered much of inner London unaffordable. Lowering the cap is now going to trigger another wave of mobility as more households in more parts of the country are affected and have to seek cheaper accommodation. Moving to accommodation in a cheaper area can result in housing quality being maintained, but other key contributors to quality of life –such as social and family networks – being lost. The alternative strategy, adopted by some households in the face of more limited assistance, is trading down locally. This means that location – hence social and family networks – is maintained but housing quality deteriorates. This can result in an increase in sharing, overcrowding and more informal housing arrangements.

Delayed danger
When it was originally proposed the danger with the overall benefit cap was never that it would have a widespread negative impact upon poor households straight away. Because the initial benchmark was median household income, relatively few households were affected. That presumably made it more palatable to politicians of different persuasions. The real danger was that having conceded the principle that a cap was an appropriate mechanism it allowed subsequent governments to tighten the cap as much as they wanted to.

We are about to see the cap lowered to a level that will cause a substantial number of households significant difficulty. And it is a moot point whether it will save any money overall as costs are shunted from one budget to another.

But there is nothing to say that that is the end of the matter. This may be only the first such tightening of the cap. It is not implausible to imagine a future government – perhaps a government facing sharply declining tax revenues as a result of a major economic shock –
arguing that in the interests of the country’s overall fiscal position the cap needs to be lowered further.

Avoiding an even harsher future
Perhaps the best way to minimise the risk of that happening is both to press the arguments for the importance of the principle of guaranteeing minimum incomes and to assemble and communicate effectively the evidence on the negative consequences of policy that is
already in train.

All we would need then is a government that, on the one hand, feels constrained to recognise rights-based arguments for ensuring standards of living and, on the other, is amenable to being influenced by evidence. If we had one of those then we could be well placed to ensure that the lives of the poorest are not unnecessarily made that much harsher.

Dr Clare England, Senior Research Associate and Specialist Diabetes Dietitian, in the Centre for Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences and the NIHR Biomedical Research Unit in Nutrition, Diet and Lifestyle, discusses the challenges of providing individualised dietary advice for people with Type 2 diabetes and introduces a new, validated assessment tool, that may offer a solution.

Diabetes UK estimates that over 3 million people in the UK are living with Type 2 diabetes, and a further 5 million are at high risk. Complications (for example, increased cardiovascular disease, kidney failure, blindness, foot ulcers and amputations) caused by poorly controlled Type 2 diabetes, costs the NHS an estimated at £7.0 billion.

There is an increasing choice of medication available for Type 2 diabetes which can help to reduce blood glucose, cholesterol and blood pressure, but a healthy diet, regular physical activity and good weight management underpin successful control.

There is strong evidence that regular dietary advice, provided by dietitians improves blood glucose control by improving diet. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommends that all people with Type 2 diabetes should receive individualised, on-going dietary advice from a health professional with expertise in nutrition, but many people aren’t getting this. Unfortunately, there are not enough specialist diabetes dietitians employed to provide this level of service, and there is considerable variation in provision. For example, the community dietetic service for people living in the north, inner city and east of Bristol is run by a different provider, on a different model, from that provided for people in South and West Bristol.

In the current environment the majority of people with Type 2 diabetes get their routine dietary advice from their GPs, practice nurses or community pharmacists. Some of these health professionals do an excellent job in providing good quality dietary advice but many say that feel they do not have the expertise to assess diets and give individualised advice. I have often heard people with Type 2 diabetes saying that the dietary advice they receive from their general practice is generic, and they struggle to see how to apply the advice they are given to make specific, beneficial changes to their own dietary habits.

With this in mind, clinicians and academics at the Centre for Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences and School of Clinical Sciences felt there was a need for a brief dietary assessment tool that helps people assess their diets, and enables them to set dietary goals based on this assessment.

Over the last three years we have worked with dietitians, nurses, GPs and people with Type 2 diabetes to develop a brief dietary questionnaire to rapidly assess the dietary habits thought to be of most importance for people with Type 2 diabetes. The resulting questionnaire, the UK Diabetes and Diet Questionnaire (UKDDQ), asks about consumption of higher energy foods and drinks, fruit, vegetables, oily fish, common higher fibre cereal foods and meal patterns. It takes roughly 10 minutes to complete and can be self-scored. We have just published the validation paper, which showed it to be reliable and compares as well with food diaries as other short dietary questionnaires. The UKDDQ is publically available for download and is equally applicable to people with a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes, those at risk of Type 2 diabetes and the general population interested in healthy eating. Since the initial development, we have also worked with other researchers from the School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Science at the University of Birmingham, to check that the questionnaire is relevant to South Asian people (and made a few small changes to wording) and the UKDDQ was adopted by Birmingham South and Central Clinical Commissioning Group as the tool used for dietary assessment in the initial phase of the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme.

We believe that using the UKDDQ in clinical practice would promote dietary change in people with, or at high risk of, Type 2 diabetes more effectively than the existing generic advice that people are currently hearing. We are planning further work to demonstrate this and would welcome interest from health professionals or people with Type 2 diabetes who would like to be involved in the project.

UKDDQ Project contact details:
Dr Clare England, clare.england@bristol.ac.uk
Centre for Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences / Bristol Nutrition BRU

Dr Emma Williamson, Senior Research Fellow in The Centre for Gender and Violence Research, School for Policy Studies, discusses how the current storyline in The Archers raises the question of what justice means when it comes to abuse?

Social media has once again been a-twitter with discussion about The Archers.

I wrote back in April about the domestic violence and coercive control storyline and how the producers had managed to shine a light on the often hidden aspects of abuse. As the story moves this week into the Courts, the media is once again gripped by the drama, with people posting their pictures of solidari-tea with the central character, Helen. The Mail Online even ran a story with Barristers discussing the fictional case .

As with the issue of coercive control more generally, the programme makers are tackling an important aspect of the experience of abuse, namely what is justice when it comes to abuse? This links directly to our current ESRC funded research which is looking at Justice, Inequalities, and Gender Based Violence. This research includes looking at police case files to examine the trajectory of different cases in relation to inequalities and different types of abuse. In addition, we are currently recruiting victims/survivors to speak to us about their experiences of different types of gendered abuse and justice. This includes adult men and women who may have experienced forced marriage, sexual violence, sexual abuse, ‘honor-based’ crimes, and domestic violence and abuse. This project looks beyond the narrow focus of justice in terms of the police and courts, although this is not excluded, and includes people who, for a range of reasons, haven’t reported to the police or have used alternative forms of justice.

This project, like the current Archers storyline, is intended to illustrate what justice and injustice look like, and how formal and informal responses to abuse can highlight the wider responsibilities of society to address the issue and take a stand.

Whatever the outcome in The Archers, the everyday reality for many victims/survivors is that the very idea of ‘justice’ is more complex than a court outcome. Domestic abuse doesn’t just impact on the victims/survivors, but the perpetrators themselves (research shows they have higher rates of depression and anxiety), friends and family members, as well as wider communities. This is all too real for those who have themselves or know someone who has experienced abuse.

The Archers storyline sheds a light on the wider impacts of abuse as the manipulation of the perpetrator affects a whole raft of relationships within families and communities. Irrespective of whether Helen gets ‘formal’ justice in the coming weeks, the damage to those relationships will continue for many years to come. Some would question therefore whether we can ever get ‘justice’ when so many harms go unanswered.

We look forward to following the fictional court case as well as the on-going struggles which the main characters and the Ambridge community as a whole face as they come to terms with the impact of abuse. We once again commend the writers for staying true to the victim’s story and not turning away.

Anyone interested in taking part in our justice research can register an interest, or contact us to discuss in more detail, at:

Website: http://tinyurl.com/hj5oda5
Email: sps-justiceproject@bristol.ac.uk
Telephone: 07807 799967.

Dr Sue Porter, Research Fellow at the Norah Fry  Centre for Disability Studies, School for Policy Studies, reflects on the horrific mass attack on Disabled people in Japan on the 26th July and what a Disability Studies lens can bring to our understanding of such hate crimes.

Those attacked in Sagamihara were living in a 150 bed unit for people with learning disabilities, and as such we must assume that the majority of residents were removed from their families and geographical communities. We know that a key factor that encourages hate crime is the “othering” of disabled people, which is reinforced by this sort of segregation. In the UK the Disability rights movement was born out of a desire to resist this sort of institutionalization of disabled people and campaigned to provide the means for disabled people to live within our chosen communities, whether independently or interdependently.

Since the 1980s this has been at the heart of UK government policy, informing personalisation‐related legislation and more recently the Care Act. Even at a time when many question whether austerity‐related cuts in funding to local authorities and changes in welfare benefits are undermining the practicality of independent living for growing numbers of disabled people in the UK, the importance of independent living is acknowledged as key to disabled people being active members of society. However, amongst people with learning disabilities and a label of challenging behaviour or mental health need, there are still over 2.5k living in institutional settings ‐ Assessment and Treatment Units ‐ at a distance from their home communities, for extended periods and without discharge plans. There is little provision in the community for these individuals and a growing number of mini‐institutions (18 or 20 bed) are either in operation or currently being built. So the ‘othering’ and segregation of this particular group of disabled people goes on in spite of the rhetoric, the policy and the promises made after the Winterbourne View abuse scandal.

At the same time cultural references such as the recent Hollywood film ‘Me Before You‘ continue to promote the message that it is better to be dead than disabled. For some it seems hard to imagine that a life lived with impairment or chronic illness is a life worth living. On 11 September 2015, MPs voted overwhelmingly against legalising assisted suicide, but some media coverage would have you believe that the large numbers of the UK population believe it’s a humane choice to legalise assisted suicide for terminally ill or disabled people. Opposition to assisted suicide is not confined to the medical profession and religious groups. Many disabled people, including the very people whom would be most affected by any change in legislation oppose the idea – it’s worth noting that no organization of or for disabled people has campaigned for assisted suicide (including those representing people with Multiple Sclerosis and Motor Neurone disease most often cited as likely to ‘benefit’ from such changes), and that disabled‐led groups like Not Dead Yet UK* continue to raise the issue, most recently protesting at the London premier of ‘Me before
You’.

At the time of writing the state of mind of the perpetrator of the attack in Sagamihara is unclear, what is apparent however is the culpability of the media in perpetrating and endorsing negative narratives of disability, potentially feeding the thinking and actions of some individuals.

The Sagamihara attack was a hate crime undertaken by an individual who denied the value of the lives he took, the 26‐year‐old former employee of the facility was quoted as saying. “It is better that disabled people disappear”. Hate crimes are defined as any crimes that are targeted at a person because of hostility or prejudice towards that person’s: disability, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation or transgender identity (UK Equality and Human Rights Commission). The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission report that there has been significant progress in the reporting and recording of disability hate crime since it was first included in national policy in 2008 . Police records show an increase from 800 in the first year to 2,508 in 2015/16. The number of prosecutions for hate crimes against Disabled people in the UK last year was up by 41.3% compared to 2014/15. In 2015‐16 there were 941 prosecutions for disability hate crimes. (Action Against Hate, The UK Government’s plan for tackling hate crime. July 2016). Disability hate crime represented 5% of police recorded hate crimes in 2014/15, but this is in contrast to the Crime Survey for England and Wales where disability hate crimes represented one‐third of hate crimes. The under‐reporting of disability hate crime demonstrates the importance of more victims
feeling able to come forward, and the prevailing attitudes and cultural references surrounding us in society risk some Disabled people internalising the negative perceptions of the value of their lives.

Regardless of its form and intention, prejudice always has the potential to cause harm because it reduces the value, status or importance attached to people from ‘the other group’. The ‘othering’ of Disabled people, and the belief that disabled lives are not of value raise fundamental questions about social justice in our society. We need to come together to fight for a global society where diversity is valued and where we can all live free from abuse, fear and oppression. And as the understanding of hate crime increases, it becomes even more important that officials across government engage with those working in the research community and with organisations of Disabled people to build the evidence base for policy interventions.

*Not Dead Yet UK is a network of disabled people in the UK who have joined a growing international alliance of disabled people, who oppose the legalised killing of disabled people. All those involved are disabled people including people with physical and sensory impairments, learning difficulties, and mental health conditions.

Dr Paul Willis, is a Senior lecturer in social work with adults, in the School for Policy Studies. His research interests include sexuality, care and ageing, and trans issues in later life.  This blog was first published on the website for Lyn Romeo, the Chief Social Worker for Adults.

Sex and sexuality are undoubtedly difficult topics to discuss with service users and carers – with older adults, even more so. To open up conversations about sexual intimacy risks causing offence, alienating older adults and compromising rapport built up with service users over time.

In some recent research on care home provision for older lesbian, gay and bisexual adults, we found that often managers and staff were reluctant to have these conversations with residents—these were no-go zones because of concerns about offending others, causing embarrassment (for staff and residents) and infringing people’s privacy.

The notion of individual wellbeing sits at the heart of the Care Act 2014. If we are truly invested in promoting the wellbeing of older adults then sexuality needs to be acknowledged as an integral part of their physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.

We often talk about person-centred approaches in adult social care, but what about sexual personhood? This means recognising the unique elements of an individual’s sexual life-story, including their sexual identity and past and current relationships. Experiences of sexual activity in early adulthood, affirming or negative, can have a lifelong impact on how individuals view themselves and relate to others in later life.

So what makes sex such a tricky subject to discuss with older adults? First, we have to look past the common myth that older people are asexual, in other words older adults are disinterested in sex and it’s no longer important to them. We know that older adults remain sexually active in later life.

The most recent wave of the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles 3 in Britain included respondents up to 74 years of age for the first time and highlighted how older adults over 59 years continue to engage in sexual activity, albeit with less frequency than younger folk.

The idea of older adults engaging in sex can often evoke individual responses of disgust and repulsion—some researchers in ageing studies refer to this reaction as ‘ageist erotophobia’. These negative beliefs can make us blind to the sexual health needs of older adults, which can prevent older people from accessing sexual health services. Sexually transmitted infections and HIV do not discriminate on the basis of age. According to the National AIDS Trust in 2014, 636 people over 55 years of age were diagnosed with HIV.

Another popular myth is that all older people are straight or have lived heterosexual lives. Many older adults belong to sexual and gender minority groups and identify as lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB).

Equally, some older adults may be same-sex attracted but do not identify as LGB. For older gay and bisexual men this means they may have had hidden relationships during a time when sex between men was a criminal act and subject to prosecution, prior to decriminalisation in 1967 in England and Wales.

For older lesbian and bisexual women their identities and relationships were not recognised in UK law and policy prior to the wave of equality laws introduced during the last 15 years. During their younger years, some older women and men may have felt compelled to receive psychiatric treatment to ‘cure’ their sexual and gender orientation while others may have experienced social exclusion from faith groups, family and local communities.

These legacies cast a long shadow and we know that older LGB adults are reluctant to access health and social care services as a consequence.

So how do we tune in to the sexual lives and histories of all older service users? This is not a topic easily broached in a first meeting. It’s a gradual and persistent process that relies on trusting relationships built over time, gently and sensitively asking open-ended questions about past and current relationships, and continually signalling to older service users that we are receptive to conversations about sexual health, relationships and identity.

It requires us to ask questions about relationships and intimacy when these issues may not be mentioned or initially appear relevant to people’s care needs. It also requires us to quietly challenge the views of others working with us such as students, colleagues or professionals from other agencies.

And for a lot of us it could mean taking time to reflect on and reconsider the ageist views and assumptions we may hang on to about sex, sexuality and ageing, often unknowingly. This is not an easy endeavour when religious beliefs and personal values about sex and sexuality can run deep.

Fundamentally, social workers have a pivotal role in advocating for the sexual wellbeing of older adults in receipt of care services in their homes, in community settings or in long-term care. Maintaining sexual health and sexual wellbeing is a human right applicable to all—the World Health Organisation reminds us that ‘the sexual rights of all persons must be respected, protected and fulfilled.’ Older people are no exception.

Dr Dendy Platt, Senior Lecturer in Social Work, and Head of the Children and Families Research Centre, School for Policy Studies, examines the potential for the C-Change approach.

Social workers’ assessments of parental capacity to change are becoming increasingly important when working with children in need and children who may be at risk of maltreatment.  Expectations from the courts regarding care proceedings in England have increased in the last couple of years, focusing particularly on better analysis in social work assessments, and better exploration of alternative courses of action for the child in question.  Assessing the likelihood of a parent being able to make sufficient changes in their lives to ensure the child’s safety and wellbeing is a part of this analysis.  And capacity to change is now included in the court report template from the Association of Directors of Children’s Services – requiring assessment of whether a parental capability gap can be bridged.

Fulfilling these requirements, however, presents some problems.  One view of court decision-making suggests that the key evidence the courts need to make a decision is:

1) Whether harm has occurred to the child;

2) What caused that harm, and whether it can be attributable to the parent(s);

3) What can be done about the situation – and in particularly, whether the parent(s) can change things sufficiently to ensure that the child is well cared for into the future.

A brief look at the history of child protection work shows that there has been a great deal of research into the first point.  Child maltreatment is well-understood.  Research has helped us develop and improve methods of identifying it, investigating it, utilising medical expertise to arrive at satisfactory diagnoses, and so forth.  Similarly, on the second point, a variety of assessment approaches have been developed over the years to give us ways of exploring the context of the harm, the contributory or causal factors, and to help us understand the parents’ roles.  Examples include the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families, and the Signs of Safety approach, but there are many others.  All these developments have been backed up by theory and research.

The third element of the decision, the potential for changes that benefit the child, has received much less attention.  In terms of assessing parents, there are methods that support parents to make changes, and the impact of this can be measured using before and after measures.  Examples include the work of Paul Harnett, but few such approaches are widely used, despite their underpinning research.  In terms of theory related to behaviour change, the only theoretical approach that has had a significant impact in the context of UK social work practice is the Transtheoretical or Stages of Change model.  This model is useful in drawing the practitioner’s attention to the idea that individuals approach change in different ways, and that relapse is a regular part of most attempts to change.  However, the model itself has been widely criticised, particularly in the child welfare field.  The stages themselves have not proved detectable in significant empirical studies, and individuals’ progress from one stage to the next has not been demonstrated at all clearly.

The key point is that theory and research, to date, have not offered very much help to social work practitioners in relation to understanding and assessing capacity to change.

The C-Change approach, developed by Katie Riches and myself at the University of Bristol aims to fill this gap.  Its central principle is that there are two parts to an assessment of capacity to change.  The first involves understanding what helps and hinders change in individual parents.  The second involves creating an opportunity for change and assessing progress.  C-Change brings both of these elements together into one systematic approach.

The first part of the approach draws on behaviour change theories.  It can be seen that capacity to change is affected by a variety of factors, ranging from social and contextual circumstances to individual motivations and intentions.  These factors interact, and practitioners should avoid relying for their assessment on isolated elements – such as whether a parent has ‘owned up’ to actions that have harmed their child.  Some factors may help change, and others may hinder it.  The social work assessment should weigh up barriers and facilitators in the individual situation.

The second aspect of the C-Change approach involves creating an opportunity for change, with appropriate support and help, and assessing the success or otherwise of achieving the necessary changes.  In this, we have drawn on the work of Paul Harnett in particular, including his use of Goal Attainment Scaling.

These two parts have been combined into a single approach, under the name C-Change, and are supported by a practitioner-friendly manual.  The double meaning of “C-“ in the name refers not simply to “capacity” but also indicates our view that a “sea change” is needed in the importance of capacity to change assessment.  Whereas at present this part of the assessment can be a bit of an afterthought, our view is that it should be have a central role in the assessment process in recognition of its real importance in decision-making.

Further information, about the C-Change approach and the ideas put forward here, is available from our website: www.capacitytochange.org.uk. The practice manual can be downloaded free of charge by following the links on the site.

See also: Platt D. & Riches K. (2016), Assessing Parental Capacity to Change: The missing jigsaw piece in the assessment of a child’s welfare?  Children and Youth Services Review, vol 61, pp. 141–148.

Dr Debbie Watson, Reader in Childhood Studies discusses an innovative research methodology in this blog piece for the Sociological Review. This is part of their special issue on the relationship between sociology and fiction. With colleagues from the ‘Life Chances’ research team, Debbie describes how the project has been using fictional methods to co-create a fictional novel with community volunteers to better understand life on low income for children and families.

The Life Chances project is part of the ESRC funded Productive Margins project led by Professor Morag McDermot which has a number of themed co-produced projects with academics from the universities of Bristol and Cardiff working with a number of grass roots organisations and volunteers to enable new forms of engagement and to challenge regulation of people’s lives.

Read ‘Life Chances: Co-written re-imagined welfare utopias through a fictional novel‘