The precarious infant brain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wastell ◽  
Sue White
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Early Experience ◽  
Social Disadvantage ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Scientific Rationality ◽  
Life Trajectory ◽  
Infant Brain ◽  
Mind Set ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Brain

This chapter examines how biological thinking is merging with the project of human improvement. It reviews social policies, tracing the ways in which neuroscience has been invoked to relocate a moral project within a scientific rationality. We deconstruct one such report in particular, the Allen report, which has been influential in the UK. The Chapter explores the emergence of a preventive mind-set in social policy which promotes intervention early in infancy to address inter-generational social disadvantage. The idea that the brain is critically susceptible to early experience, predetermining the rest of the life-trajectory, has led to the “the myth of the first three years”. We systematically debunk this myth: what the science actually shows is plasticity and resilience.

scholarly journals Being more certain about Random Assignment in Social Policy Evaluations

2002 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 275-284
Author(s):  
Bruce Stafford
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Evaluation Methodology ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Random Assignment ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Social Experiments ◽  
What Works ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Uk

Social experiments have been widely utilised in evaluations of social programmes in the US to identify ‘what works’, whilst in the UK their use is more controversial. This paper explores the paradigmatic, technical and practical issues evaluators confront in using randomised experiments to evaluate social policies. Possible remedies to some of these problems are outlined. It is argued that although no evaluation methodology is problem-free, policy makers and researchers should be more confident about the merits of using random assignment, provided it is used in conjunction with other methodologies more suited to understanding why and how interventions work.

scholarly journals Early experience of aortic surgery during the COVID‐19 pandemic in the UK: A multicentre study

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 848-856
Author(s):  
Ana Lopez‐Marco ◽  
Amer Harky ◽  
Danilo Verdichizzo ◽  
Emma Hope ◽  
Barbara Rosser ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Multicentre Study ◽  
Aortic Surgery ◽  
Early Experience ◽  
The Uk

Social Exclusion and Transport in the UK: A Role for Virtual Accessibility in the Alleviation of Mobility-Related Social Exclusion?

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUSAN KENYON ◽  
JACKIE RAFFERTY ◽  
GLENN LYONS
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Public Consultation ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Physical Mobility ◽  
Viable Solution ◽  
Virtual Mobility ◽  
The Uk

This paper reports findings from research into the possibility that mobility-related social exclusion could be affected by an increase in access to virtual mobility – access to opportunities, services and social networks, via the Internet – amongst populations that experience exclusion. Transport is starting to be recognised as a key component of social policy, particularly in light of a number of recent studies, which have highlighted the link between transport and social exclusion, suggesting that low access to mobility can reduce the opportunity to participate in society – a finding with which this research concurs. Following the identification of this causal link, the majority of studies suggest that an increase in access to adequate physical mobility can provide a viable solution to mobility-related aspects of social exclusion.This paper questions the likelihood that increased physical mobility can, by itself, provide a fully viable or sustainable solution to mobility-related aspects of social exclusion. Findings from both a desk study and public consultation suggest that virtual mobility is already fulfilling an accessibility role, both substituting for and supplementing physical mobility, working to alleviate some aspects of mobility-related social exclusion in some sectors of society. The paper incorporates an analysis of the barriers to and problems with an increase in virtual mobility in society, and concludes that virtual mobility could be a valuable tool in both social and transport policy.

scholarly journals Silent Non-Exit and Broken Voice. Early Postcommunist Social Policies as Protest-Preempting Strategies

Südosteuropa ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-174
Author(s):  
Pieter Vanhuysse
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Political Sociology ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Competing Interest ◽  
Distributive Conflict

Abstract This essay contributes to the development of an analytical political sociology examination of postcommunist policy pathways and applies such an analysis in a reinterpretation of the social policy pathways taken by Hungary and Poland. During the critical historical juncture of the early 1990s, governments in these new democracies used social policies to proactively create new labor market outsiders (rather than merely accommodate or deal with existing outsiders) in an effort to stifle disruptive repertoires of political voice. Microcollective action theory helps to elucidate how the break-up of hitherto relatively homogeneous clusters of threatened workers into newly competing interest groups shaped the nature of distributive conflict in the formative first decade of these new democracies. In this light, we see how the analytical political sociology of postcommunist social policy can advance and modify current, predominantly Western-oriented theories of insider/outsider conflict and welfare retrenchment policy, and can inform future debates about emerging social policy biases in Eastern Europe.

What fresh hell? UK policies targeting homeless migrants for deportation after Brexit and Covid-19

2021 ◽  
pp. 026101832110156
Author(s):  
Benjamin Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
The Uk

Before Covid-19 around a quarter of the UK’s rough sleeping population were non-UK nationals, with the proportion rising above half in some metropolitan areas. The UK government’s targeting of rough-sleeping EU citizens for ‘administrative removal’ between 2010–2017 reflected a trend in social policy towards enforcement- rather than support-based ‘solutions’ to migrant homelessness. Changes to the Immigration Rules in late 2020 to make rough sleeping a ground for refusal or cancellation of permission to be in the UK represent a revival of this tendency. This commentary analyses UK policies targeting rough sleeping non-UK nationals for deportation from a practitioner’s perspective – the author ran a rights project for homeless migrants between 2018 and 2021.

scholarly journals Risk, Choice and Social Disadvantage: Young People's Decision-Making in a Marketised Higher Education System

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 110-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheryl Clark ◽  
Anna Mountford-Zimdars ◽  
Becky Francis
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Disadvantage ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Tuition Fees ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
High Achieving Students ◽  
Risk Choice ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Relationship

Rising tuition fees in England have been accompanied by a policy mandate for universities to widen participation by attracting students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. This article focuses on one such group of high achieving students and their responses to rising tuition fees within the context of their participation in an outreach scheme at a research-intensive university in the UK. Our findings suggest that rather than being deterred from attending university as a result of fee increases, these young people demonstrated a detailed and fairly sophisticated understanding of higher education provision as a stratified and marketised system and justified fees within a discourse of ‘private good.’ Our analysis situates their ‘risk’ responses within the discursive tensions of the fees/widening participation mandate. We suggest that this tension highlights an intensified commodification of the relationship between higher education institutions and potential students from disadvantaged backgrounds in which widening participation agendas have shifted towards recruitment exercises. We argue that an ongoing effect of this shift has resulted in increased instrumentalism and a narrowing of choices for young people faced with the task of seeking out ‘value for money’ in their degrees whilst concurrently engaging in a number of personalised strategies aimed at compensating for social disadvantage in a system beset by structural inequalities.

scholarly journals A Mana Wahine Critical Analysis of New Zealand Legislation Concerning Education: Implications for Addressing Māori Social Disadvantage

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tagan Wetekia Paul
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Disadvantage ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Critical Policy Analysis ◽  
Significant Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Common Goals ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Critical Policy

<p>Theory and practice are intertwined, woven inextricably together by the way that each informs and is informed by the other (Moss 2002, Pihama 2001, Simmonds 2009). This research confronts and analyses the legal bases of gendered and race-based inequalities by critically analysing New Zealand social policy legislation through a mana wahine perspective. Mana wahine and critical policy analysis share common goals to challenge dominant theoretical and methodological norms in order to recognise unequal power distributions, of which colonisation is implicit (Tomlins-Jahnke 1997).  This research has been guided by a reading of literature that suggests Māori social disadvantage has become ingrained and that policies designed to address this inequality and to include Māori people and Māori perspectives in mainstreamed systems are both confusing, and yet to be successful. This study has been designed to explore present policy legislation concerning social development. A case study of the education system has been used, which draws on historic and more contemporary Western political agendas as reflected in legislative shifts.  Key findings of this research include the exclusion of mana wahine through the ongoing processes of colonisation that do not give rise to Māori cultural understandings. To summarise, the social policy context at present is characterised by: Māori demands for greater self-determination; an absence of Treaty rights for Māori; liberal interpretations of Treaty principles, and scant processes to implement them; a devoid of aspects pertinent to mana wahine, and; the contradiction between Government's articulated position on rights and inclusion in social policy and the language used in and concepts enforced by legislation.  The findings are significant and reveal the ongoing complexities of Indigenous inequalities in the context of widespread policy ‘commitment’ to inclusion and equality. The central argument developed throughout this study is that there is an urgent need to shift policy thinking toward Māori if there is to be a significant movement toward justice for Māori women, which will involve Māori-centred decolonisation and the inclusion of aspects pertinent to mana wahine.</p>

scholarly journals Patterns of brain asymmetry associated with polygenic risks for autism and schizophrenia implicate language and executive functions but not brain masculinization

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiqiang Sha ◽  
Dick Schijven ◽  
Clyde Francks
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Executive Functions ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Brain Asymmetry ◽  
Risk Scores ◽  
Imaging Data ◽  
Polygenic Risk ◽  
Left Right Asymmetry ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Brain

AbstractAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia have been conceived as partly opposing disorders in terms of systemizing versus empathizing cognitive styles, with resemblances to male versus female average sex differences. Left-right asymmetry of the brain is an important aspect of its organization that shows average differences between the sexes, and can be altered in both ASD and schizophrenia. Here we mapped multivariate associations of polygenic risk scores (PRS) for ASD and schizophrenia with asymmetries of regional cerebral cortical surface area, thickness and subcortical volume measures in 32,256 participants from the UK Biobank. PRS for the two disorders were positively correlated (r=0.08, p=7.13×10−50), and both were higher in females compared to males, consistent with biased participation against higher-risk males. Each PRS was associated with multivariate brain asymmetry after adjusting for sex, ASD PRS r=0.03, p=2.17×10−9, schizophrenia PRS r=0.04, p=2.61×10−11, but the multivariate patterns were mostly distinct for the two PRS, and neither resembled average sex differences. Annotation based on meta-analyzed functional imaging data showed that both PRS were associated with asymmetries of regions important for language and executive functions, consistent with behavioural associations that arose in phenome-wide association analysis. Overall, the results indicate that distinct patterns of subtly altered brain asymmetry may be functionally relevant manifestations of polygenic risk for ASD and schizophrenia, but do not support brain masculinization or feminization in their etiologies.

The SNP Government and Poverty

2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 255-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Turok
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Discussion Paper ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
Election Victory ◽  
The Uk

There is considerable public interest across the UK in whether distinctive economic and social policies will emerge from the Scottish National Party's election victory in 2007. The SNP manifesto did not have very much to say about poverty and inequality, but early in 2008 the new Government published a discussion paper, Tackling Poverty, Inequality and Deprivation in Scotland (TPID), laying the basis for a national policy framework due at the end of 2008. At a time when there are tentative signs of poverty moving up the political agenda across Britain, TPID offers the first indication of how the SNP Government views the problem and what it might do to make a difference.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document