Ravinder Barn

Care leavers and social capital: understanding and negotiating racial and ethnic identity

Abstract Young people leaving state care are recognized to be one of the most marginalized groups in society. In comparison to their counterparts living in their own family and community context, care leavers experience enormous adversity and upheaval. A combination of poor pre-care, in-care and post-care experiences serves to disadvantage this group of young people in many important ways. Moreover, research evidence documents the complexity of identity issues and concerns for minority ethnic children and young people who are separated from their birth families and are being brought up in public care. By drawing upon a recent and wider empirical study into care leavers in England, this paper explores the sociological concept of social capital and the ways in which this may contribute to young peoples understanding and negotiation of their own racial and ethnic identity.

Black children in local authority care: Admission patterns

Abstract This article reports upon findings from an investigation into care career patterns of children in a London inner‐city borough. Reviewing the literature on child care services, it highlights the dated and inadequate nature of information on this subject, and the degree to which black1 childrens concerns have been omitted from the literature. Published studies on black children in care have focussed upon a partial sector of the care process and failed adequately to explain their admission and representation. Attention to the detailed information available from case notes enables a critical evaluation of explanations, and interviews with individuals illustrate the operation of racism in the admission of children into care.

Understanding the interconnections between ethnicity, gender, social class and health:experiences of minority ethnic women in britain.

Abstract This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study about the impact of ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic status upon health, and use and access to appropriate service provision. A total of 54 interviews were carried out with women who identified themselves as Muslim and Bangladeshi. Health and social care professionals were also interviewed. However, the focus of this paper is upon the ways in which women conceptualised their health and social care needs and concerns. Our findings indicate that individual characteristics serve to mediate the influence of gender and ethnicity on health, but for the women in our study, socio-economic status represents the most potent factor in adversely affecting their health status and access to health care.

On the role of value sensitive concerns in software engineering practice

The role of software systems on societal sustainability has generally not been the subject of substantive research activity. In this paper we examine the role of software engineering practice as an agent of change/impact for societal sustainability through the manifestation of value sensitive concerns. These concerns remain relatively neglected by software design processes except at early stages of user interface design. Here, we propose a conceptual model that can contribute to a translation of value sensitive design from its current focus in participatory design to one located in mainstream software engineering processes. Addressing this need will have an impact of societal sustainability and we outline some of the key research challenges for that journey.

Family Group Conferences and Cultural Competence in Social Work

Family Group Conferences (FGCs) as a method of preventive work came into being over two decades ago. The FGC approach arose from a minority cultural perspective and the rising numbers of Maori children in state care in New Zealand. Two decades after the Family Rights Group first championed FGC in the UK, it is a great concern that we know little or nothing about how such an approach is being utilised with culturally diverse families in the UK. This paper draws upon an empirical study carried out in London to ascertain the views and experiences of social and community work FGC coordinators and managers, located in statutory and non-government organisations, who employed the FGC approach with culturally diverse families. Findings from this study are discussed in the context of extant research literature into the nature and extent of involvement of black and minority ethnic (BME) families with child welfare services across the globe. Moreover, given the inherent emphasis on the foundational ‘cultural framework’ of the FGC approach, the paper makes an important contribution to the literature on cultural competence within social work through the practice of FGC.

An approach to early evaluation of informational privacy requirements

The widespread availability of information in the digital age places a significant demand on the privacy needs of individuals. However, privacy considerations in requirements management are often treated as non-functional concerns and in particular, early feedback of privacy concerns is not easily embedded into current requirements practice. Luciano Floridis Ontological Theory of Informational Privacy presents an extensive interpretation of informational privacy using concepts such as ontological friction. This paper first recasts the theory in terms of modelling constructs and then applies the theory in the form of a Bayesian network of beliefs in the context of an existing research project aimed at developing socio-technical system delivered as a mobile app in the UK youth justice system. The operationalisation of the theory and its relationship to value sensitive design creates opportunities for early evaluation of informational privacy concerns in the requirements process.

An approximate theory for value sensitivity

The software engineering community is on a quest for general and specific theories for the discipline. Increasingly, systems constructed for todays hyper connected world are raising issues of security and privacy, both examples of value concerns. Hence there is a need to articulate a theory for value sensitivity that software engineers can draw upon to evaluate their designs and to embed outcomes into systems that are developed. This paper proposes an approximate theory of value sensitivity in recognition that this is a journey and an interim struggle. The theory is articulated using the framework proposed by Sjøberg et al. An initial evaluation is provided for both the value sensitivity theory and the framework.

An Exploration of Resilience and Values in the Co-Design of Sociotechnical Systems

The notion of resilience is becoming an important consideration in addressing the needs of vulnerable individuals and groups in the public sector. In Information Systems development, resilience has often been treated as a non-functional requirement such as scalability and little or no work has aimed at building resilience in end-users through systems development. Sociotechnical approaches while not specifically addressing resilience, have strived for a balance between technology and humans. While there are many variants of sociotechnical approaches, in this paper the authors introduce a refinement of the value sensitive action-reflection model used in co-design, first introduced by Yoo et al, that recognises the tension between values and resilience. The authors report on their activities of using this approach for a project aimed at developing mobile apps for promoting better engagement between young people in conflict with the law and their case workers in the UK youth justice system. They examine the ambiguity created when designer and stakeholder prompts change their role and purpose during the co-design process and discuss the impact of this on resilience building for the end-user and the possible implications for Information Systems design processes.

Resilience and Values: Antecedents for Effective Co-design of Information Systems

The notion of resilience is becoming an important consideration in addressing the needs of vulnerable individuals and groups in the public sector. In Information Systems development, resilience has often been treated as non-functional requirement such as scalability and little or no work is aimed at building resilience in end-users through systems development. In this paper we introduce a refinement of the value sensitive action-reflection model used in co-design, first introduced by Yoo et al, that recognises the tension between values and resilience. We report on our activities of using this approach for a project aimed at developing mobile apps for promoting better engagement between young people in conflict with the law and their case workers in the UK youth justice system. We examine the ambiguity created when designer and stakeholder prompts change their role and purpose during the co-design process and discuss the impact of this on resilience building for the end-user and the possible implications for Information Systems design processes.

Towards a unified conceptual model for surveillance theories: "we shall meet in the place where there is no darkness" - 1984, george orwell

The erosion of values such as privacy can be a critical factor in preventing the acceptance of new innovative technology especially in challenging environments such as the criminal justice system. Erosion of privacy happens through either deliberate or inadvertent surveillance. Since Benthams original liberal project in the 1900s, a literature and a whole study area around theories of surveillance has developed. Increasingly this general body of work has focussed on the role of information technology as a vehicle for surveillance activity. Despite an abundance of knowledge, a uni ed view of key surveillance concepts that is useful to designers of information systems in preventing or reducing unintended surveillance remains elusive. This paper contributes a conceptual model that synthesises the gamut of surveillance theories as a rst step to a theory building e ort for use by Information Systems professionals. The model is evaluated using a design science research paradigm using data from both examples of surveillance and a recently completed research project that developed technology for the UK youth justice system.