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Reports on recent seminars

Professor Robert McCall and Dr Christina Groak of the University of Pittsburgh led a seminar on March 30th 2006, initiated by Nuffield, called ‘Implementing Interventions for Children’. They reported to an audience of researchers and practitioners on their programme of work to change the childcare regime in three orphanages in St Petersburg, Russia. This has involved a worked through programme both to educate and motivate the workforce to consider the children’s need for one-to-one caring and interaction. While the examples – including a powerful video of the training and its results – were drawn from the orphanages, the focus was not on institutional child care per se, but rather on how to think about and provide interventions that have the most chance of succeeding, yielding better outcomes for children and researchers alike.

On May 9th, the Foundation hosted a seminar on the Fragile Families Study, led by Professors Sara Maclanahan and Irwin Garfinkel of Princeton University and Columbia University, respectively. The event was sponsored by Nuffield and organised by One Plus One, a charity that aims to ensure that robust research relating to marriage and partners informs practice and policy. That seminar looked at some of the initial findings from their study of 5000 children born to parents in American cities; about three quarters of the selected sample were not married, and a quarter were. the participants discussed the research and teased out questions and implications for the UK. There was a lively discussion of what questions might usefully asked in a UK setting about the role of parental stability and particularly issues to do with fathers (the US study apparently continues to keep in contact with the vast majority of fathers, which few others studies have managed to do).

A launch of the preliminary findings of a study by Professor Elizabeth Cooke, Ms Anne Barlow and Dr Thérèse Callus (of Reading and Exeter Universities) on ‘community of property’ regimes took place on On June 9th. Their study aimed to investigate the benefits and disadvantages of a European-style community of property regime for married and cohabiting couples, as compared with the system of separate property which exists in England and Wales. The prime motivation for the project is the predicted Europeanisation of English family law, coupled with the acknowledged problems both of the wide discretionary basis of the redistribution of assets on divorce and the lack of discretion in adjusting cohabitants assets on relationship breakdown in England and Wales. Representatives from the Law Commission team working on their proposals for financial arrangements resulting from the breakdown of cohabitations also attended.

This study brought together empirical research in three comparator jurisdictions -- France, the Netherlands and Sweden—based on what actually happens in such cases (what proportion of people opt for particular options, accept the default option, make prenuptial or pre-cohabitation arrangements and so on) and then carried out some small-scale research on the views of adults in England and Wales to vignettes based on these regimes. This revealed a more complex picture of what was thought to be ‘fair’ in various contexts than many superficial studies have shown, as well as revealing various professional views and practices about the extent to which such regimes contribute to stability.

Throughout May and June, the Foundation funded a series of seminars organised by One Parent Families on research relevant to the Henshaw review of the Child Support regime. One Parent Families (formerly the National Council of One Parent Families) has members who are both fathers and mothers, both with and without residence orders, and undertook to bring together researchers and others with a variety of viewpoints. Seminars have featured a number of projects funded by the Foundation over the years. These have included projects by Professor Nick Wikeley of the University of Southampton (who is now also a part-time Child Support Commissioner) on the previous Child Support Agency.

Last Updated Thu, 20 July 2006