Implementation Of Official Policy Research Articles

“An Especially Thankless Work”? Filtering Practices in Emergency Shelters and Ethical Dilemmas for Street-level Social Workers in Western Switzerland

Abstract Based on an ethnographic survey conducted in services for the homeless in French-speaking Switzerland, this paper examines street-level social workers’ struggles between the implementation of official policies and their direct work with people. Beyond their common condition of homelessness, people looking for shelter are a very heterogeneous group: undocumented migrants and foreign workers rub shoulders with poor, local pensioners, or with persons suffering from drug addiction or mental illness. Guided by national and international residence and labour legislation, local authorities and institutions have their own policies – more or less strict in their exclusion of poor migrants – regarding the legitimate beneficiaries of a place in the emergency accommodation system. In this article, we analyse the encounters of street-level social workers with homeless people and examine the practical, value-based and ethical dilemmas they face, as well the use of their discretionary power in making more - or less - appropriate shelter available for destitute migrants.

Protecting the Interests of Vulnerable Defendants in the Criminal Justice System: The New Zealand Experience

Approaches to the management of people with intellectual disabilities (IDs) vary across jurisdictions. However, the inconsistent development and implementation of official policy has often resulted in a significant over-representation of persons with developmental difficulties in criminal justice systems worldwide. This reality led the New Zealand government in 2003 to introduce dedicated legislation recognising the special needs of offenders with an ID. The article examines the New Zealand legislative response to the challenges presented by this cohort of offenders, in the light of emerging international data of the incidence of, and official responses to, offenders with special needs. In New Zealand, the emerging problem of how to manage intellectually disabled offenders who commit serious crimes, and the legislative response to it, was driven by changes in mental health legislation in the early 1990s that had effectively disenfranchised persons with ID with challenging behaviours from regimes of supervisory care and treatment. The Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Act 2003 has provided for a separate regime of compulsory care and rehabilitation that may be accessed either directly as a criminal justice disposition, following a finding of unfitness to plead or legal insanity, or as a result of transfer from the mental health or penal systems. The compulsory care regime has proven effective in addressing the needs of intellectually disabled offenders, increasing numbers of whom are young people, who would have great difficulty coping in a prison environment. The New Zealand experience contrasts with experience in other jurisdictions where offenders with an ID are often over-represented in prison statistics and subject to victimisation and abuse. The article suggests that change is clearly required as a matter of urgency to ensure that offenders with an ID are able to benefit from the positive rights guaranteed under the UN Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and other rights instruments.

The relative effectiveness of protected areas, a logging ban, and sacred areas for old-growth forest protection in southwest China

Forests are critically important for life on earth, prompting a variety of efforts to protect them. Protected areas and logging regulations are the most commonly used forest conservation strategies, but local traditions and religious beliefs can also protect natural resources by limiting exploitative use. We compared the effectiveness of protected areas, a logging ban, and sacred areas to protect forests from logging in Northwest Yunnan, China, a global biodiversity hotspot. We combined Mahalanobis matching and panel regression techniques to measure effectiveness of these three protection strategies paying special attention to old growth forest communities. We found that protected areas had no impact on total forest cover, but effectively conserved old-growth forests relative to non-protected areas. The implementation of the logging ban resulted in positive forest conservation outcomes over most of the landscape. The exception was that logging in old-growth forests inside sacred areas accelerated following the implementation of the logging ban, suggesting that local institutions may have been weakened by official policies. Our research finds little evidence that overlapping conservation policies decrease deforestation and suggests that the implementation of official policies may displace local forms of protection. Our results further highlight that relying on total forest cover as a single indicator of conservation outcomes can lead to misleading conclusions about the impacts of forest protection strategies.

Afghanistan’s decentralised regional foreign policy

Afghanistan's lack of a state monopoly of violence reflects on its foreign policy in a number of ways. First, various non-state organizations developing their own relations with foreign countries. Second, enforcing coherent policy making within the institutions of the Afghan state itself has been sometimes problematic as officials could rely on the patronage of organizations external to the state to delay the implementation of official policies. This article discusses the cases of Afghan foreign policy towards Pakistan, India, China and Iran.

Hospitals caring for rural Aboriginal patients: holding response and denial.

To investigate how policy requiring cultural respect and attention to health equity is implemented in the care of rural and remote Aboriginal people in city hospitals. Interviews with 26 staff in public hospitals in Adelaide, South Australia, were analysed (using a framework based on cultural competence) to identify their perceptions of the enabling strategies and systemic barriers against the implementation of official policy in the care of rural Aboriginal patients. The major underlying barriers were lack of knowledge and skills among staff generally, and the persistent use of 'business as usual' approaches in their hospitals, despite the clear need for proactive responses to the complex care journeys these patients undertake. Staff reported a sense that while they are required to provide responsive care, care systems often fail to authorise or guide necessary action to enable equitable care. Staff caring for rural Aboriginal patients are required to respond to complex particular needs in the absence of effective authorisation. We suggest that systemic misinterpretation of the principle of equal treatment is an important barrier against the development of culturally competent organisations. WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THIS TOPIC?: The care received by Aboriginal patients is less effective than it is for the population generally, and access to care is poorer. Those in rural and remote settings experience both severe access barriers and predictable complexity in their patient care journeys. This situation persists despite high-level policies that require tailored responses to the particular needs of Aboriginal people. WHAT DOES THIS PAPER ADD?: Staff who care for these patients develop skills and modify care delivery to respond to their particular needs, but they do so in the absence of systematic policies, procedures and programs that would 'build in' or authorise the required responsiveness. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS?: Systematic attention, at hospital and clinical unit level, to operationalising high policy goals is needed. The framework of cultural competence offers relevant guidance for efforts (at system, organisation and care delivery levels) to improve care, but requires organisations to address misinterpretation of the principle of equal treatment.

“Iraq Opportunities”: The New National Curriculum and Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Iraqi Primary Schools

In 2007-2008, a new official curriculum was promulgated through which English is introduced in Grade 3 of primary schooling (generally age 8) as it is one of primary education objectives and the government policy in Iraq. So, the present work aims to investigate some of the problems associated with the implementation of this new curriculum, its nature, an understanding of the curriculum principles and philosophies, and its constituents in the Iraqi contexts. Research on the curriculum planning process and curriculum analysis has not been conducted on the Iraqi English language curriculum before this. The present work gives a clear picture about the implementation, the nature of the curriculum, an understanding of the curriculum principles and philosophies, and its constituents in the Iraqi contexts. The work has three foci: the curriculum, the implementation and teaching and learning. The findings came from questionnaires and interviews with school teachers and supervisors’ .A questionnaire based survey of a sample of 100 primary school English teachers was conducted. It is concluded that (1) the implementation of official policy on the teaching of English in primary schools is fraught with problems evident at every stage in the process, from Education policy, through materials design to lesson planning and delivery;(2) the curriculum has problems at the level of understanding and implementation and this has led to the difficulty of conveying the philosophy of Iraq education to the primary school level. Keywords - curriculum implementation, Education policy, EFL, education philosophy, syllabus design, ENN(English New National ) Curriculum

The Limits of Malay Educational and Language Hegemony

In Malaysia, the implementation of official policies to entrench Malay educational and language hegemony has prevented the growth of an inclusive multicultural educational system. The New Economic Policy (NEP) period, 1971-90, was characterized by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) dominated state aggressively pursuing its educational and linguistic hegemonic objectives. In the 1990s, however, several developments forced the state to take a more conciliatory stance towards the educational and linguistic needs of the minority groups. The state claims that critical aspects of multiculturalism have been incorporated into the 1996 Education Act. But, in practice, it appears that official policies have not fully abandoned the hegemonic project, and minority languages and educational needs are still discriminated against in the national education system.