Children, Family Responsibilities and the State

This book explores the growing interest in the way in which the state polices, and ought to police, families failing in their responsibilities.

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• Reflects on the increasing social science research and growing legal system involvement in the ‘problem’ of failing families particularly where children are involved
  
• Considers topics ranging from the state’s attempts to promote responsible parenting by training parents and by punishing them and their children for their children’s antisocial behaviour through to its enthusiasm for creating frameworks for better substituted parenting (through fostering and adoption)
  
• Evaluates problems from the perspective of both empirical evidence and the practical and ideological ambitions that government policy is attempting to pursue
  
• Brings together commentators from a variety of disciplines who all offer a fresh critique on these matters

1. Introduction: Responsible Parents and a Responsible State: Craig Lind and Heather Keating.

2. Adoption support and the negotiation of ambivalence in family policy and children’s services: Barry Luckock.

3. Making and Breaking Family Life: Adoption, the State and Human Rights: Sonia Harris-Short.

4. The state as parent: The reluctant parent? The problems of parents of last resort: Judith Masson.

5. Child Maltreatment in Diverse Households: Challenges to Child Care Law, Theory and Practice: Julia Brophy.

6. Perspectives on Parenting Responsibility: Contextualising Values and Practices: Val Gillies.

7. Holding Parents to Account: Tough on Children, Tough on the Causes of Children?: Laurence Koffman.

8. Youth Crime: Whose Responsibility?: Alex Newbury.

9. Governing Parenting: Is there a case for a policy review and statement of parenting rights and responsibilities?: Clem Henricson.

10. The ‘Change for Children’ Agenda in England: Towards the ‘Preventive-Surveillance State’: Nigel Parton

Craig Lind is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Sussex, Brighton.

Heather Keating is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Sussex, Brighton.

This volume explores the growing interest in the way in which the state polices, and ought to police, families failing in their responsibilities. In considering this subject we also reflect on the responsibilities the state has or ought to bear for families. The chapters consider some of the swiftly developing government policy in this area and reflect on increasing social science research and growing legal system involvement in the ‘problem’ of failing families particularly where children are involved. The scope of the work is fairly broad. It ranges from the state's attempts to foster responsible parenting by training parents and by punishing them and their children for their children's anti-social behaviour to its enthusiasm for creating frameworks for better substituted parenting (through fostering and adoption). The authors consider the problems they identify from the perspective of both empirical evidence and the practical and ideological ambitions that government policy is attempting to pursue.

The volume brings together commentators from a variety of disciplines in an attempt to offer a fresh critique on these matters.

Contributors: Craig Lind, Heather Keating, Barry Luckock, Sonia Harris-Short, Judith Masson, Julia Brophy, Val Gillies, Laurence Koffman, Alex Newbury, Clem Henricson, Nigel Parton