Frontline Responses to Domestic Abuse in Scotland

Scotland's progress in tackling domestic abuse is recognised for the gendered analysis which underpins it. This gendered analysis recognises structural gender inequalities as the context in which domestic abuse occurs, enabling more effective targeting of resources for prevention and response. The Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018, described as a 'gold standard' in legislation to tackle domestic abuse, draws on the gendered concept of coercive control. The Act seeks to recognise in law the nature of domestic abuse not as isolated incidents but rather as an ongoing exercise of power and control by the perpetrator, using various tactics. In this chapter, we describe what is known about domestic abuse in Scotland, the strengths and weaknesses of different data sources in capturing the gendered nature of domestic abuse and the reality of how victim-survivors experience it. We consider the multi-agency structures, in particular Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences and Multi-Agency Tasking and Coordinating groups, which support Scotland's partnership approach in the front-line response to domestic abuse, recognising the crucial role of feminist third sector agencies alongside statutory agencies such as police, health, social work, and housing.

Animal-Assisted Play: A Strategy for Promoting Children’s Physical Activity Play

This article explores how animal-assisted play might be used as a strategy in playwork to support children’s right to play, enrich their play experiences, encourage their physical activity play and better their health and life quality. Children’s interactions with pets or companion animals in free play or animal-assisted activities (AAA) can yield therapeutic benefits by increasing physical and mental health and well-being and also offer possibilities for more outdoor play, agency, risk-taking, fun and enjoyment, as well as high-quality play experiences. We invite playwork practitioners to consider the important role of animals in children’s lives and the potential value of animal-assisted play in creating opportunities for enriching children’s play and life quality.

Time to Fix the Damage of Weakened Chemical Disaster Prevention Regulations

The Trump administration weakened regulations through changes on rules that have been improved during the Obama years. An example is the reversal in 2019 of the improvements to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Risk Management Program, Chemical Disaster Prevention Rule. In 2013 a catastrophic explosion of ammonium nitrate in West, Texas, provided the impetus to improve the original regulations after an investigation of its consequences. The justification for reversing the improvements was provided by one of the three federal investigations conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives which alleged, without proof, that the West Texas explosion was caused by arson and thus nonpreventable. This commentary reviews the details of this reversal and recommends that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, now under the Biden Administration, resurrect its 2016 Risk Management Program chemical disaster rule in order to prevent future chemical facility catastrophes.

Innovating during the pandemic? Policing, domestic abuse and multi-agency risk assessment conferencing (MARACs)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the challenges posed for the ongoing implementation of multi-agency risk assessment conferences (MARACs) for police forces in England and Wales during the 2020 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach This is rapid response research involving qualitative methods primarily online semi-structured interviewing with a sample of police domestic abuse leads in England and Wales. Findings The findings point to increased use of virtual platforms particularly for MARACs and that this has beneficial consequences both for the police and in their view also for victim-survivors. Research limitations/implications The findings reported here are from policing domestic abuse leads. More work needs to be done to explore the value of engaging in virtual MARACs for all the agencies concerned but also whether MARACs continue to be the best way to ensure the victim-survivor is kept in view. Practical implications The use of virtual platforms carries a range of practice implications for the future of MARACs for the foreseeable future. These range from ensuring attendance of the appropriate agencies to the range and frequency of meetings, to infrastructural support for all agencies to engage. Originality/value This is an original study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council examining police and court responses to domestic abuse during the covid-19 pandemic.

Stock pledging and earnings management: an empirical analysis

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of agency risk implied in case of personal debt obtained by promoters through pledging of their stock on accrual and real earnings management practices. Design/methodology/approach In this paper abnormal accruals, as suggested in Dechow et al. (1995), and the real earnings management proxies as indicated in Dechow et al. (1998) and Roychowdhury (2006) are used. OLS regression is run over 29,054 firm-years of Indian companies starting from the year 2008 to 2016. Then the occurrence of earnings management is tested in firms in year t where promoters pledge/release their holdings from the pledge in year t+1. Findings The findings suggest that earnings management increases in the prior year with an increase in the proportion of promoters’ stock pledge in the subsequent year. The authors find evidence for increased earnings management through accruals and also for real earnings management using abnormal cash flows and abnormal discretionary expenses. However, the authors do not find real earnings management using abnormal production cost as a measure. Practical implications The paper has considerable implications on managerial behavior toward earnings management because of the flexibility managers have in applying accounting policies and authority in operating decisions under domestic GAAP, and IFRS and earnings are prone to management tactics, fostering agency risk when they relate to the welfare of decision makers. Originality/value This paper addresses the consequences of individual borrowing of promoters collateralized by their stake in the firm, which is a global phenomenon, on reporting quality.