Statutory Practice Research Articles

Application of Restorative Justice in Statutory Practice

Application of Restorative Justice in Statutory Practice

Will Full Practice Authority Mean Higher Malpractice Premiums for Nurse Practitioners?

Will Full Practice Authority Mean Higher Malpractice Premiums for Nurse Practitioners?

Social work, family welfare, and Muslim personal law in South Africa

Muslim Personal Law is a branch of Islamic Law (sharīʿah) that regulates family life in Islam including marriage, divorce, custody and maintenance arrangements. In South Africa, the recently published draft Muslim Marriages Bill proposes the implementation of this code through the country's secular courts. If enacted, the statutory practice of Muslim Personal Law will intersect with social work and welfare services, in particular family welfare because of a shared focus on the family and family well-being. This will bring new challenges to practitioners in providing multicultural services to Muslim clients in the context of the religious code that regulates their family life. This article explores the proposed practice of Muslim Personal Law and challenges for family welfare service delivery in this environment. It reflects on the history and communal practice of Muslim Personal Law in South Africa and examines its intersection with the secular welfare sector as a space for practitioners to facilitate culturally sensitive and equitable services to Muslim clients, especially women, within the framework of the proposed legislation.

DEVELOPING MOTHERING NARRATIVES IN CHILD PROTECTION PRACTICE

This paper develops the concept of a ‘mothering narrative’ as a means of better supporting mothers involved with child protection. Our paper begins with a brief review of the well‐established dilemmas facing social work practitioners in the arena of child protection. We then turn our attention to feminist psychoanalytic understandings of maternal subjectivity and ambivalence in order to establish the complexities of mothering in the context of multiple oppressions. Against this backdrop, we introduce the need to hear a woman's subjective account of her mothering that we refer to as a mothering narrative and illustrate this approach in relation to a case scenario. The obstacles inherent in engaging in mothering narratives in a statutory practice are also addressed.

Midwives'motivation for continuing education

This study examined midwives' motivations for continuing their education by conducting a survey amongst a sample population of midwives, employed in 4 Health Authorities in the North West of England. The survey was carried out using a questionnaire which asked midwives to indicate the ‘importance’ of a series of requirements of continuing education. Of 120 midwives who received the questionnaire, 83 (69%) replied. Motivational factors included: learning for professional and personal development; fulfilling legal or statutory practice requirement, or as a social activity. The results showed that motivation for continuing education was strongest in relation to professional competence and an innate desire for knowledge. Where personal development was achieved, the emphasis was to promote professional advancement rather than social interaction. Less emphasis was placed on fulfilling the legal requirements for practice. The strongest motivators were learning orientated, which suggests that the subjects were self-directed to fulfil their needs, based on a desire to learn, this being less dependent on external motivators, which may be activated by statutory or employer requirements. Social interaction was seen as the least important aspect, although subjects found it beneficial to meet colleagues from other areas and felt that they learnt from exchanging views about various clinical practices.

Legislative Theory and the Rule of Law: Some Comments on Rubin

Professor Rubin's article is an admirable piece of work on many levels, from its attention to jurisprudence to its concern with the practical changes in the Congress and its function, and their implications. In commenting on it, I mean to restrict myself to the latter subjects. These are the matters that have the closest tangency to my own work and produce for me the strongest response. Professor Rubin has given us a compelling statement of the problems posed for contemporary constitutional and legislative theory by one transformation in statutory practice accompanying the rise of the administrative state, the change from direct (transitive) legislative resolution of policy problems to indirect (intransitive) resolution through the empowerment of agents who are to determine policy problems under instruction. These changes, he argues, undercut such conventional doctrinal norms as delegation and void-for-vagueness as means for assessing legislative action.