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This article will consider Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) as a chaotic concept that prioritises risk and obscures the material and social conditions of the lives of its objects. It will show how the various definitions of ACEs offer no cohesive body of definitive evidence and measurement, and lead to a great deal of over-claiming. It discusses how ACEs have found their time and place, locating a variety of social ills within the child's home, family and parenting behaviours. It argues that because ACEs are confined to intra-familial circumstances, and largely to narrow parent-child relations, issues outside of parental control are not addressed. It concludes that ACEs form a poor body of evidence for family policy and decision-making about child protection and that different and less stigmatising solutions are hiding in plain sight.

Recent research on mixed racial and ethnic couples and lone parents in Britain indicates that not only are they a diverse group, but they also have a diversity of ways of understanding their difference and creating a sense of belonging for their children (Caballero et al, 2008; Caballero, 2010, 2011). Such research strongly challenges the idea that there is - or should be - a single benchmark of how to raise children from mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds. Nevertheless, placement decisions for this broad group of children are often still rooted in longstanding and politicised assumptions about their identities and how best to instil a positive and healthy sense of self (Phoenix, 1999; Okitikpi, 2005; Goodyer and Okitikpi, 2007; Patel, 2008). Drawing on three recent studies exploring the everyday experiences of lone and couple parents of mixed racial and ethnic children, Chamion Caballero, Rosalind Edwards, Annabel Goodyer and Toyin Okitikpi discuss the ways in which mixed racial and ethnic children who are not in the care system experience difference and belonging within their families, and how they negotiate and manage these factors. In particular, this article illustrates the types of strategies and supports that parents draw on to give their children a positive sense of identity and belonging, as well as the ways in which other issues can be more significant for mixed racial and ethnic children and their parents than what they often see as 'ordinary' internal family difference. Arguing that the demographics and experiences of mixed racial and ethnic families are much more diverse and complex than is commonly imagined, the authors ask to what extent policies and practice around the placement of mixed racial and ethnic children reflect the lives of those families outside the care system. Moreover, in what ways can or should the experiences of these families inform policy and practice for those within it? Implications for adoption and fostering practice and policies emerging from this more multifaceted understanding of the everyday lives of racially and ethnically mixed families are also discussed.

Government expansion of child care services is based on the assumption that both parents are employed (the adult worker model) and make cost‐benefit calculations in choosing child care (the rational economic choice model). This paper addresses this assumption, based on research examining mothers' assessments of appropriate child care. These assessments involve complex moral and emotional decisions around their own and their children's needs, and differ between social groups. On this basis, we conclude that the assumptions underlying current child care expansion policy are inadequate, and that the mere expansion of services is not enough.

Predictive analytics is seen as a way of identifying the risk of future problems in families. Integral to such automated predictive analysis is a shift in time frames that redraws the relationship between families and the state, to potentially intervene on an anticipatory basis of 'what hasn't happened but might'. In the process, human subjects are reformulated as disembodied objects of data-driven futures. The article explains this process and fills a significant gap in knowledge about parents' views of this development. We draw on group and individual discussions with parents across Great Britain to consider their understanding of predictive analytics and how comfortable they are with it. Parents' concerns focused on inaccuracies in the data used for prediction, the unfair risk of false positives and false negatives, the deterministic implications of the past predicting the future, and the disturbing potential of being positioned in what was a pre-problem space. We conclude with policy implications.

AbstractThe article provides a conceptually informed empirical critique of the pursuit of social licence as a warrant for data linkage and predictive analytics in the field of family policy intervention. It draws on research focusing on parental views of digitally‐driven family governance in the United Kingdom. We identify the notion of consensus that undergirds the concept of social licence that acts to obscure inequalities and silence conflict, and to reframe digital surveillance and prediction as a moral rather than political issue. Using focus group and individual interview material, we show how parents assert professional or lay experiential knowledges in making judgements about the legitimacy of and trust in operational data technologies, involving struggles between positionings as parents like 'us' and 'other' parents. We demonstrate how parents have different leverages from these unequal and morally charged social locations. Inevitably, the application of social licence in the domain of digital family policy and intervention is fractured by entrenched social divisions and inequalities.

Abstract
General Data Protection Regulations state that parents may submit a Subject Access Request (SAR) to see personal records held about them. In this article, we draw on interviews with parents who have made an SAR in order to view their children's social care records. Their experiences reveal the significant barriers of time, energy and bureaucracy that they faced in accessing their children's records. The parents felt that they were 'seen' through their records, reported inaccuracies in information about them and relayed the devastating impact that false allegations of maltreatment continued to have in their lives. Datafication becomes an integral part of the unequal power dynamic between parents and professionals, further shifting the balance towards professionals, damaging fragile trust and engagement. Crucially, there are ethical questions raised for the social work profession about the accessibility and accountability of local authority processes when parents seek justice and reparation for harm. Given the importance of records in decision making about intervention in families lives and increasing datafication of public services working with families through electronic systems including predictive analytics, our indicative findings point to the need for further investigation.

In recent years, there has been an intense public and policy debate about ethnic diversity, community cohesion, and immigration in Britain and other societies worldwide. In addition, there has been a growing preoccupation with the possible dangers to social cohesion represented by growing immigration flows and ethnic diversity. This paper proposes a critical framework for assessing the links between immigration, social cohesion, and social capital. It argues that the concept of social capital is episodic, socially constructed and value-based, depending on the prevailing ideological climate. Considerations of social capital as a public policy tool to achieve social cohesion need to incorporate an appreciation of alternative conceptions of social capital rooted in a textured under-standing of immigrant processes and migration contexts.

Step-fathering is becoming increasingly common in contemporary western societies, yet it has received little research attention from either social policy or sociological perspectives. In this article, we draw on our empirical studies of step-families in Britain and Sweden to argue that social context is important in shaping step-fathers' understandings of their position. Policy and legislation in these countries emphasise the importance of ascribed, biological parenthood, marginalising step-parents. There are, however, notable class differences in both our British and Swedish samples concerning whether step-fathers see their relationship to their step-children as the same as biological fathering, supplementary to it, or as disengaged from fathering. The analysis also reveals that policies simultaneously emphasise achieved contemporary involved fathering alongside promoting ascribed biological fatherhood. Such policies contain a contradiction for step-fathers' understandings of their everyday relationships with their step- children.

Single mothers caring for dependent children are an important and increasing population in industrialized countries. In some, single mothers are seen primarily as mothers and few have paid work; in others, they are regarded as workers and most have paid work; and sometimes they are seen as an uneasy combination of the two with varying proportions taking up paid work.; This edited collection explores these variations, focusing on the interaction between dominant discourses around single motherhood, state policies towards single mothers, the structure of the labour market at national and local l

This book is the first specifically to explore methodological issues relating to the involvement of refugees in both service evaluation and development and research more generally. It builds on a two-year seminar series funded by the ESRC and attended by members of a range of statutory and voluntary organisations, as well as academics and refugees themselves. The participants jointly drew up a set of good practice guidelines that are re-produced in the book for the first time. Key features include a focus on the methodology for active involvement of refugees; a discussion of barriers to involvement; suggestions for overcoming barriers; analysis of existing practices and ideas for change and a discussion of the implications for policy, research and practice. Doing research with refugees is essential reading for anyone working with in the field. This includes academics, researchers, health and social care providers and voluntary organisations. Refugees themselves who are interested in their role in service evaluation, development and research will also find the book of interest

The lifecourse perspective continues to be an important subject in the social sciences. Researching the Lifecourse offers a distinctive approach in that it truly covers the lifecourse (childhood, adulthood and older age), focusing on innovative methods and case study examples from a variety of European and North American contexts. This original approach connects theory and practice from across the social sciences by situating methodology and research design within relevant conceptual frameworks. This diverse collection features methods that are linked to questions of time, space and mobilities while providing practitioners with practical detail in each chapter

Large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system ('geoengineering' or 'climate engineering') is increasingly present in discussions about possible responses to climate change. Research has tended to focus on the acceptability of geoengineering proposals to adults, with youth perspectives under-represented despite the intergenerational consequences of policy in this field. We report on a novel participatory approach to research and practice, resulting in the co-creation of a youth guide and policy brief by participants (aged 17-26) and facilitators. Findings fall into two categories: those pertaining to youth priorities for geoengineering and those in relation to authorial responsibility as an approach to engagement and advancing youth voices. We argue that co-creative and participatory approaches avoid polarisation and build reciprocity into the research process, promoting rational discourse about geoengineering and climate change and its intersection with ethics, politics and society. The model is potentially valuable for engaging youth at the early stages of technoscientific innovations. Tentative conclusions from youth participants are that mitigation efforts must be prioritised, i.e. action is needed now to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and there is a need for proactive international cooperation on the governance of geoengineering and for investment in research to understand potential environmental and social consequences of geoengineering for people at different temporal and spatial scales. Greater public dialogue on geoengineering and its governance is needed, particularly involving young people. The youth guide and policy brief co-authored by participants and facilitators, and the dialogic methods used in their production, can contribute to this dialogue.

How did the UK Coalition Government's policies differ from previous Conservative (or Labour) Government policies? How did the Liberal Democrats influence them? And what can this tell us about the likely policy direction of the Conservative government elected in May 2015? Responding to the political and social policy changes made between 2010-15 this book considers the relationship between the two coalition parties to provide a critical assessment of how their policies affected the British welfare state, including the impact of 'austerity'. Looking beyond 2015, the contributors consider what the implications of these changes may be for social policy, both the challenges and opportunities, which will present themselves in the future