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The aim of this paper is to examine the available data on children's lives in South Africa in order to see whether we have the necessary tools to trace changes in child poverty and well-being over time, and to link these changes to broader social, political and economic trends. The analysis offered in this paper is important not only in terms of understanding the factors that currently influence the lives of almost half of South Africa's population, but also in terms of gaining insight into the links between child poverty and adult poverty, and the opportunities that exist to break the poverty cycle. Before addressing these concerns, I set the scene by briefly describing the major developments in the social sciences and in social development policy with respect to the study of children and childhood.

Transition to a net-zero energy system provides society with an opportunity to embed justice principles and practices across the energy sector in order to achieve a transition that is not just 'green' but also 'just'. The just transition concept, born out of international trade union movements, takes into account the rights of the workforce and encourages the creation of decent work and quality jobs. It maintains that the burden of climate action should not be borne unequally by one set of workers or communities or any one country. However, the concept today is much broader than its labour and workforce-focussed roots; it encompasses the transition of the whole of society over time from one that is inherently extractive and unsustainable to one that is regenerative and more sustainable. To achieve this broader 'whole of society' transition many stakeholders need to take action. However, there are a range of challenges that impact their capacity to make these justice outcomes happen, and limited accountability mechanisms for supporting delivery. While some of these challenges can be overcome through a change in internal processes, many result from the interactions between different stakeholders, either in driving action or holding organisations to account. To be more ambitious in delivery therefore there is a need to develop cross-organisational and cross-community commitments to take more joined up action and ambition. This Manifesto for Change was developed as the final output from the ALIGN project1 and was developed by bringing together stakeholders from across national and local government, business and industry, trade unions, finance, community organisations and the third sector to hear their ambitions for a just energy transition by 2045. We did this by way of a half-day online workshop held in February 2022 in conjunction with the Just Transition Engagement Team at Scottish Government.

The transition to a net zero energy system provides society with an opportunity to embed energy justice principles and practices across the energy sector in order to achieve a transition which is not just 'green' but also 'just'. The past decade has seen a surge of activity around the topics of energy justice and just transitions in both academic literature and policy priorities. While these investigations and activities have advanced our understanding of both concepts and unearthed potential mechanisms for applying these to policy making a number of key questions remain: What do we mean when we talk about delivering a just transition to net zero or embedding energy justice within the energy system? Who is responsible for operationalising this and ensuring energy justice is embedded in the transition to net zero? Do different stakeholders have different capacities to act? How can those with real power be motivated to create change and held accountable for their actions? This report attempts to address these questions, drawing on a series of 12 in-depth interviews with experts in the topic of energy justice and just transitions (see Appendix 1). The experts are based in academic institutions across the UK, the European Union, the USA, Australia and Norway – with their research spanning their countries of residence as well as Central America and Africa.

The transition to clean energy is one of the UK's five priority areas for COP26. Alongside the potential benefits from creating green energy jobs, transition to a net-zero energy system offers the potential for delivering broader social, political, and economic benefits (Hamilton and Akbar, 2010; Hepburn et al., 2020; Roy et al., 2018; Sovacool et al., 2020). History shows us that socio-economic disruptions associated with transitions tend to amplify inequalities (Sovacool and Brisbois, 2019). It is likely that without intervention, these benefits, and the costs to deliver them, will not be evenly distributed across society, with negative impacts disproportionately affecting those in lower socio-economic and minority groups. Against this backdrop there has been increasing recognition for the need for Energy Justice – to deliver a socially inclusive and equitable net-zero transition (Abram et al., 2020). This growing awareness of the importance of energy justice has created the need for a framework or lens through which policy impact can be explored at the wider system level to help mitigate against unintended consequences. Energy Justice POINTs (Policy Overview and Impacts for Net-zero Transitions) provides a useful and usable framework to help decision makers explore the wide-reaching energy justice implications of their net-zero visions, strategies, and policies. It is based on four tenets of justice: * Distributional – where injustices lie * Recognition – who is affected * Procedural – how injustices can be overcome * Restorative – what we can do to ameliorate past injustices and mitigate against future injustices It also includes an additional four dimensions to take a whole-systems approach to a just transition which has been developed through a review of the literature. In this paper we outline the development of the Energy Justice POINTs framework, discuss how it can be used, and provide a worked example of how the framework could be applied to a specific project. The framework has also been tested by ...

This article enquires into how parenting support, as concept, policy and provision, has penetrated the English social policy landscape, and critically considers why it has proved so popular with policy makers. It first outlines the existing policy configuration. The second section identifies some key factors precipitating the roll-out of parenting support and the third section takes an overview of the significance of the developments from a social and family policy perspective. The argument advanced is that the growth and expansion of parenting support is explained by a coming together of a set of political exigencies around 'risk' and the healthy child, and a set of policy 'solutions' which are seen to have high promise. In particular, parenting support has the advantage of being relatively easily generalisable (especially in the form of programmes) and aligns with several current developments of the welfare state, towards activation, provision of support through services and an interest in localism.

Much of the literature on children's participation distinguishes sharply between "informal" and "formal" forms of participation, which although analytically convenient, may limit possibilities for theorising. This paper examines tensions and links between children's informal and formal participation, and looks at how participation is constituted in and by different social spaces in South Africa. Some of the ways in which children have participated in public matters prior to and following the advent of democracy in South Africa are examined, e.g. through public protest, school governance, law and policy development and service delivery. Shifts in the political landscape since apartheid are shown to have both opened and closed spaces and opportunities for children to influence decision making. Ultimately, a shrinking of informal spaces and the limited functioning of formal spaces due to popular attitudes and socio-economic factors has resulted in a constrained participation environment. Small shifts, however, in acknowledgement of the multiple ways that children collectively and individually contribute to the unfolding of everyday life, the emergence of new informal spaces and a broadening of the focus of participation initiatives, may herald an opportunity to move beyond often formulaic "formal" participation in governance to a broader inclusion of children in decision making.

A 'Just Transition' seeks to protect the rights of the workforce throughout transition away from high carbon industries and towards sustainable economic sectors. This includes reskilling where appropriate and a fair distribution of benefits, alongside recognition and participation of affected communities. Drawing on a systematic literature review and a case study delineated by the 38 English Local Enterprise Partnerships we analyse the variety of skills required to support a just transition to more decentralised and smart low carbon energy systems (defined as 'smart local energy systems') in England. We found that more attention is required in assessing skills provision, alongside upskilling the workforce, or risk the transition being unjust. Regional disparities in skills availability could be mitigated through a local skills provision system whereby stakeholders can review training opportunities, identify emergent skill-gaps and leverage investment. In addition, greater devolution to local authorities would enable them to support stakeholders more effectively.

Merging of Knowledge is a research approach that creates the conditions for people with lived experience of poverty to participate at an equal level with academics and practitioners, in the co-generation of knowledge about poverty. This paper reflects critically on the application of 'Merging of Knowledge' to study poverty in Tanzania, assessing its challenges, achievements, and lessons learned about revealing hidden knowledge about poverty. It also provides a brief literature review to place the Merging of Knowledge alongside other participatory approaches. This paper finds that Merging of Knowledge can effectively interrupt patterned social relationships, and empower individuals and peer groups, thereby stimulating transformation of both academics and people and poverty. It does so by addressing imbalances in social status, empowering all groups of participants at each stage of the research, and building trust, confidence, and freedom from fear in a sustainable manner. The conclusion drawn is that Merging of Knowledge holds great promise for future research on topics where strong hierarchies of knowledge exist, and where the physical inclusion of participants in data collection is not readily translated into intellectual inclusivity during analysis and the dissemination of findings.

AbstractIntroductionPopulation‐based biomarker surveys are the gold standard for estimating HIV prevalence but are susceptible to substantial non‐participation (up to 30%). Analytical missing data methods, including inverse‐probability weighting (IPW) and multiple imputation (MI), are biased when data are missing‐not‐at‐random, for example when people living with HIV more frequently decline participation. Heckman‐type selection models can, under certain assumptions, recover unbiased prevalence estimates in such scenarios.MethodsWe pooled data from 142,706 participants aged 15–49 years from nationally representative cross‐sectional Population‐based HIV Impact Assessments in seven countries in sub‐Saharan Africa, conducted between 2015 and 2018 in Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Eswatini. We compared sex‐stratified HIV prevalence estimates from unadjusted, IPW, MI and selection models, controlling for household and individual‐level predictors of non‐participation, and assessed the sensitivity of selection models to the copula function specifying the correlation between study participation and HIV status.ResultsIn total, 84.1% of participants provided a blood sample to determine HIV serostatus (range: 76% in Malawi to 95% in Uganda). HIV prevalence estimates from selection models diverged from IPW and MI models by up to 5% in Lesotho, without substantial precision loss. In Tanzania, the IPW model yielded lower HIV prevalence estimates among males than the best‐fitting copula selection model (3.8% vs. 7.9%).ConclusionsWe demonstrate how HIV prevalence estimates from selection models can differ from those obtained under missing‐at‐random assumptions. Further benefits include exploration of plausible relationships between participation and outcome. While selection models require additional assumptions and careful specification, they are an important tool for triangulating prevalence estimates in surveys with substantial missing data due to non‐participation.

AbstractIntroductionHazardous alcohol use (HAU), defined as a pattern of alcohol consumption that increases the risk of harmful consequences for the user or others, is associated with an elevated risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and poor health outcomes. We describe the association between people living with HIV (PLHIV) who report HAU and key HIV indicators. Gaps in current literature in estimating HAU on HIV outcomes at the regional level of Eastern and Southern Africa still exist and our analysis aims to address this issue.MethodsWe used weighted pooled data (2015–2017) from the nationally representative Population‐based HIV Impact Assessments among adults who provided written consent aged 18–59 years from Eswatini, Malawi, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. We estimated differences in the prevalence of HIV infection and The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) 90‐90‐90 indicators between PLHIV by HAU status using log‐binomial regression, stratified by sex. HAU was determined using the Alcohol Use Identification Test—Consumption.ResultsAmong the 9755 women and 4444 men who tested HIV positive, 6.6% of women and 21.8% of men engaged in HAU. Women who reported HAU were more likely to be HIV positive (adjusted prevalence ratio [aPR] = 1.31, 95% CI: 1.18–1.46) compared to those who did not report HAU. For the UNAIDS 90‐90‐90 targets, women who engaged in HAU were more likely to be unaware of their HIV‐positive status (aPR = 1.22, 95% CI: 1.01–1.47) and not on antiretroviral therapy (ART) (aPR = 1.73, 95% CI: 1.26–2.37). Men who engaged in HAU were more likely to be unaware of their HIV‐positive status (aPR = 1.56, 95% CI 1.39–1.76) and not on ART (aPR = 1.72, 95% CI: 1.30–2.29). No difference in viral load suppression, defined as <1000 copies/ml of HIV RNA, was seen by sex.ConclusionsPLHIV who engage in HAU were more likely to have suboptimal outcomes along the HIV care continuum when compared to those who did not engage in HAU. Targeted interventions, such as alcohol screening for HAU in HIV testing and treatment settings and HIV prevention efforts in alcohol‐based venues, may help countries reach HIV epidemic control by 2030.