New Scottish Executive E-documents

Link to the documents below have also been added to our Suprimo catalogue - just search for them in the usual way:
McVie, s. (2010). Gang membership and knife carrying: findings from the edinburgh study of youth transitions and crime. Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research.

Social Work Inspection Agency. (2010). Guide to leadership: taking a closer look at leadership in social work services.

Maltreatment in Foster Care

University of York Social Policy Unit, in conjuction with the Fostering Network, have published the following paper:
Biehal, N. & Parry, E. (2010). Maltreatment and allegations of maltreatment in foster care: a review of the evidence. This paper is available via Care Knowledge.

New E-documents on safeguarding children

Mariathasan, J & Hutchinson, D. (2010). Children talking to childline about parental alcohol and drug misuse. Childline/NSPCC.
Atkinson, M., Lamont, E. & Wright, B. (2010). The role of primary mental health workers in education. NFER.
Hicks, L. & Stein, M. (2010). Neglect matters: a multi-agency guide for professionals working together on behalf of teenagers. DCSF.
Rees, G. et al. (2010). Safeguarding young people: responding to young people ages 11to 17 who are maltreated. Children's Society.

Adult Care Leavers Speak Out

Duncalf, Z. (2010). Listen up!: adult care leavers speak out: the views of 310 care leavers aged 17-78. Care Leavers Association. Zachari Duncalf's reports on the experiences of care leavers across the lifespan. Duncalf's report surprises by revealing that more care leavers reported residential care as a positive experience than viewed foster care as positive. Also, care leavers, while often perceived as under achieving educationally, frequently returned to education in later years to gain qualifications.

Children in custody

Jacobson, J. (2010). Punishing disadvantage: a profile of children in custody. Prison Reform Trust. This is the first in-depth analysis of custodial sentencing of children to be carried out since 1984. The authors found that young people finding their way into custody had suffered  a combination of disadvantagous circumstances eg, bereavement, absent parents, being looked after by the state, poverty and self harm. They further found that the 75% increase in custodial sentencing of children since 1992 is not due to increases in offending but in a widening in the types of offences which might lead to incarceration eg for the repetition of minor offences or the breaching of ASBOS. See also The Guardian, 15 september, 2010.

Knife carrying in Scotland

A new research report, Bannister, J, et al, (2010). Troublesome youth groups, gangs and knife carrying in Scotland. Scottish Government Social Research, provides new evidence on youth gangs, the prevalence of knife carrying and gang related violence, and offers recommendations for strategies to reduce such offending, based on evidence collected in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and West Dunbartonshire.

Mental Health

The National Mental Health Development Unit has been publishing a series of well referenced fact files, on mental health. this Department of Health (England) site has searchable resources acrossa  spectrum of mental health topics.

This week on Careknowledge

Report:
Audit Scotland. (2010). Getting it right for children in residential childcare. Examines how effectively councils use their resources for looked after children and improvements which could be made.
Journal Article:
Reece, A. (2010). Leading the change from adult protection to safeguarding adults: more than just semantics. journal of Adult Protection 12 (3), pp. 30-34.  Reece argues that a change in practice and focus is required to improve the life chances of disabled adults.

Discrimination in youth justice

May, T., Gyateng, T. and Hough, M. (2010). Ethnic minority young people: differential treatment in the youth justice system. Institute for Criminal Policy Research. This study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, investigates the causes and extent of differential treatment in the youth justice system including the over representation of Black Carribean and Black African groups, the differential inflows caused by policing and how the youth justice system responds to different ethnic groups.

National Archive opens online for Poor Law Research

More than 115 000 web pages on Victorian workhouses and the poor law, covering England and Wales, are now available for free thanks to the National Archive. Dr Paul Carter, Project Director and Principal Modern Records Specialist at The National Archives said: 'The importance of this series of records cannot be overestimated.'The records cover all aspects of poor relief, but also cover matters such as opposition to the workhouse system, industrial strikes, Chartism, wages, treatment of children and much more. They are essential for any study of Victorian life.'

In Careknowledge this month

This months CareKnowledge brings us a link to a report by the Care Commission: The physical health of young people in residential care: Are services meeting the standards?, Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care, (2010). 
Also available is a report for the Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre: Statham, J. and Chase, E. (2010).  Childhood Wellbeing: a brief overview.
Careknowledge is a very useful source bringing together reports relevant to social work and social care, as well as giving exclusive access to a collection of social work journals including The Mental Health Review Journal, The Journal of Adult Protection  and The Journal of Children's Services.