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The purpose of this paper is to explore professional perspectives on restorative approaches with families in elder abuse cases.

Data were gathered from 37 social workers in statutory and voluntary organisations through nine focus group sessions in one region of Northern Ireland. A thematic analysis was undertaken and themes were derived from the data using NVivo software.

This paper reports main findings under the themes of engaging families and service users; managing risk in working with families in adult safeguarding; and challenges for professionals in practice. A key finding was that professionals felt challenged personally and professionally in managing the risks and working with families in these highly complex cases.

Investigative approaches have their limitations in relation to adult abuse situations. This study adds to the existing knowledge base, identifies potential practice developments and discusses the challenges in adopting restorative approaches with families in elder abuse cases. The study highlights the need for further specialist training. Managers should consider the creation of specialist teams with a focus on alternative or restorative approaches with families.

In the last decades, migration of domestic workers and, in particular, care workers has grown into a significant part of movement from the global South to the global North. This phenomenon is referred to as the “new international division in social reproductive work” – outsourcing domestic chores to (mostly) migrants enables families in the global North to escape from the tensions arising from balancing productive and social reproductive work. This paper seeks to address these issues.

Considering two empirical examples of stereotypically male and female migrant domestic work – Polish handymen and elderly care workers – this paper puts the phenomenon in the context of the broader feminist debate on care work, global care chains and social policies.

It attempts to analyze how the employment of Polish handymen or elderly care workers in Germany results from and recreates social inequalities based on gender, class and ethnicity/citizenship.

For this purpose, it looks at both “ends” of this specific European “care chain” – the employing families in Germany as well as the migrant's families in Poland.

Due to an international ageing population, global health organisations have recognised the challenges arising from fragmented interaction between health and social sectors in the end of life care. The purpose of this paper is to explore the existing literature on integrative palliative care services for older people.

An integrative review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses. Papers included in the review focused upon integrated care within palliative care systems (January 2007–2017). A certain number of papers were excluded when the review focused on individuals younger than 65, not written in English and not being focused on integrated palliative care.

Nine studies fitted the inclusion criteria and three themes were identified: person-centred care, co-ordination of care, and education and training. The review identifies that integrated palliative care requires co-ordinated techniques that focus upon the quality of life, individual needs and awareness of vulnerability rather than fixation on inevitable mortality.

The emerging presence of the need for integrated palliative care requires further research in order to develop coherent models of integrated palliative care which can be incorporated into practice.

This review identified themes relevant to the emerging issues in the global health sector of end of life care. The literature suggests that the optimised use of an integrated care approach to a palliative model of care is required and in need of further investigation.

This chapter qualitatively explored the impact of including parent liaisons (i.e., parents with lived experience caring for a child with complex needs, who support other caregivers in navigating child and family needs) in a case conferencing model for children with complex medical/social needs. Case conferences are used to address fragmented care, shared decision-making, and set patient-centered goals. Seventeen semi-structured interviews were conducted with clinicians and parent liaisons to assess the involvement of parent liaisons in case conferencing. Two main themes included benefits of parent liaison involvement (10 subthemes) and challenges to parent liaison involvement (5 subthemes). Clinicians reported that liaison participation and support of patients reduced stress for clinicians as well as family members. Challenges to liaison involvement included clinical team/parent liaison communication delays, which were further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Parent liaison involvement in case conferences is perceived to be beneficial to children with complex needs, their families, and the clinical team. Integration of liaisons ensures the familial perspective is included in clinical goal setting.

For elderly people the decision to enter an institution is usually the result of complex interactions which involves not only themselves but also professionals and family members. This research concerns the role of families in the decision‐making process over the admission of their elderly relatives to nursing homes in Taiwan. The families' views, including their influence and involvement in the process, were examined. It was found that most elderly people in Taiwan were cared for in their own homes by family members, but under certain circumstances, nursing home entry seemed inevitable. The decision‐making process, mainly within a family context, was influenced by the needs of the elderly people, by their adult children, including their availability, and by perceptions about nursing home entry. The pattern of family care and involvement may change and reasons are suggested for this.

This chapter considers the mobilities of families subject to child protection involvement at the threshold of the birth of a new baby. The author presents data arising from an ethnographic study of child protection social work with unborn babies. This study aimed to draw near to social work practice within the Scottish context through mobile research methods and included non-participant observations of a range of child protection meetings with expectant families. Research interviews were sought with expectant mothers and fathers, social workers and the chair persons of Pre-birth Child Protection Case Conferences. Case conferences are formal administrative meetings designed to consider the risks to children, including unborn children. This chapter focusses on the experiences of expectant parents of navigating the child protection involvement with their as yet unborn infant. The strategies that parents adopted to steer a course through the multiple possibilities in relation to the future care of their infant are explored here. Three major strategies: resistance, defeatism and holding on are considered. These emerged as means by which expectant parents responded to social work involvement and which enabled their continued forwards motion towards an uncertain future.

It was nearly twenty years ago that Howard Zehr (1990) wrote the first book about Restorative Justice (Changing Lenses), John Braithwaite (1989) wrote about “Crime, Shame and Reintegration” and New Zealand introduced the family group conference – a restorative process for resolving matters when children and young people became involved in offending.11Family group conferences are also used in the child welfare system when options are being considered for children thought to be in need of care or protection. These events marked the transition from a theoretical debate about alternatives to Western models of criminal justice to the recognition of a new theory, a new set of values and a new practical alternative to the Western-style court system. Since then, theory has evolved and many other jurisdictions have experimented with various processes for delivering restorative justice (Johnstone & Van Ness, 2007). Perhaps the most common form, especially for young people has been the use of the restorative conference in youth justice. From its beginnings in New Zealand, it has spread to Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, Ireland, Macao, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Singapore, South Africa, Tonga, Thailand and the United States of America. Many different forms of restorative family conferencing for young people who have offended have emerged in these different states, provinces and countries for many different types of offences and for people from many different cultures. In this chapter, I want to briefly review what has been learnt about the transferability of the process. In particular, what are the questions that have been largely resolved and what issues still remain unresolved? And what are the key conditions which must be met for the process to work in different jurisdictions and among different peoples and what aspects of the process tend to vary to reflect the diversity of cultures and customs within and between peoples in various areas?

This paper presents an overview of research and practice literature on the use of Mediation (M) and Family Group Conferences (FGC) in the context of adult safeguarding in the UK.

This paper describes the main features of M and FGC and explores how such “family led” approaches to adult safeguarding fit within the wider agenda of personalisation and empowerment, including the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and its associated Code of Practice. It also considers the main implications for best practice and future research and service priorities.

M and FGC in an adult context are inclusive processes that enable people to explore choices and options in a supportive environment, assuring maximum possible independence and autonomous control over basic life decisions, while still addressing the person's need for assistance. When used appropriately, both approaches can be a valuable response to safeguarding concerns, promoting choice and control at the same time as protecting people from risk of abuse and harm. However, there are few robust evaluation studies currently available and no systematic research studies were found on cost‐effectiveness.

The paper shows that there is a clear need for further pilots of M and FGC in adult safeguarding. If such research and pilot evaluations find M and/or FGC to be effective, then more consideration will need to be given as to how to integrate such approaches into mainstream social work practice. There is also currently wide variation in the training and experience of mediators and FGC co‐ordinators, and further work is required to ensure that there are appropriate training and accreditation models in the UK for mediators and FGC co‐ordinators working with at‐risk adults.

Why is it that in the current period of high unemployment and industrial restructuring, some employers are implementing policies which attempt to make it easier for employees to combine employment, domestic and family responsibilities? It would seem unnecessary in times of economic difficulty and adjustment for employers to accommodate the needs of employees, particularly when unemployment levels are high ‐ in the case of Australia unemployment exceeds 11%. This paradox, however, exists in many western industrialised countries.