On September 3, 2010, the RCMP in Grande Prairie, Alberta, received a 911 call from Mat Crichton about a shooting on a local farm. Seconds later, miles from home, Holly Crichton got a shocking call from her son. "I just shot Dad," Mat told her. The violent end to a violent situation came as no surprise to the community; Holly and her sons had been living in terror from the abuse of her husband for many years. This is Holly Crichton's story of tenacity, hope, love and courage and a remarkable testament to the power of community
This is a comment on the article by Stephen Gay in this volume entitled 'The Choice Between Adoption and Foster Care as Child Protection Responses' It aims to provide a different perspective on the relative merits of adoption and foster care. The article begins in Part I by outlining the historical and legislative context of adoption in England and Wales. Part II offers some observations on several different measures available in this jurisdiction aimed at ensuring that the interests of children are protected, including the Special Guardianship Order, which was introduced in 2005.
Policies relating to contraceptive services (population, family planning and reproductive health policies) often receive weak or fluctuating levels of commitment from national policy elites in Southern countries, leading to slow policy evolution and undermining implementation. This is true of Kenya, despite the government's early progress in committing to population and reproductive health policies, and its success in implementing them during the 1980s. This key informant study on family planning policy in Kenya found that policy space contracted, and then began to expand, because of shifts in contextual factors, and because of the actions of different actors. Policy space contracted during the mid-1990s in the context of weakening prioritization of reproductive health in national and international policy agendas, undermining access to contraceptive services and contributing to the stalling of the country's fertility rates. However, during the mid-2000s, champions of family planning within the Kenyan Government bureaucracy played an important role in expanding the policy space through both public and hidden advocacy activities. The case study demonstrates that policy space analysis can provide useful insights into the dynamics of routine policy and programme evolution and the challenge of sustaining support for issues even after they have reached the policy agenda.
Canada's provincial, federal, and territorial governments committed to a Canadian Biodiversity Strategy in 1995 for the conservation and sustainable use of Canada's biodiversity. Contemporary demands on natural resources and the move to ecosystem based management dictated a different approach to resource management then was traditionally the case. Public awareness of biological diversity and understanding of the need for conservation dictated the new approach. Ecosystem management means using an ecological approach to achieve forest management by blending the needs of society with environmental values in such a way that ecosystems remain diverse, healthy, productive, and sustainable. Canada was mapped into ecozones and ecoregions, which are a unique combination of landscape, physiography, and climate. Use of these widely accepted categories facilitates interjurisdictional co-operation. There is increasing evidence that moose play a fundamental role in structure and function of boreal forests. Management guidelines for moose habitat favour wildlife species which use edge and early successional habitats. In Manitoba, use of 5 forest types by 257 wildlife species suggested that managing for moose habitat will accommodate the habitat needs for 62% of other boreal wildlife species. This reinforces findings elsewhere that moose are an important indicator species and have a major role to play in forest management and conservation of biodiversity.
