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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.

Media power plays a role in determining which news is told, who is listened to and how subject matter is treated, resulting in some stories being reported in depth while others remain cursory and opaque. This chapter examines how domestic violence and abuse (DVA) is reported in mainstream and social media encompassing newspapers, television and digital platforms. In the United Kingdom, newspapers have freedom to convey particular views on subjects such as DVA as, unlike radio and television broadcasting, they are not required to be impartial (Reeves, 2015).

The gendered way DVA is represented in the UK media has been a long-standing concern. Previous research into newspaper representations of DVA, including our own (Lloyd & Ramon, 2017), found evidence of victim blaming and sexualising violence against women. This current study assesses whether there is continuity with earlier research regarding how victims of DVA, predominantly women, are portrayed as provoking their own abuse and, in cases of femicide, their characters denigrated by some in the media with impunity (Soothill & Walby, 1991). The chapter examines how certain narratives on DVA are constructed and privileged in sections of the media while others are marginalised or silenced. With the rise in digital media, the chapter analyses the changing patterns of news media consumption in the UK and how social media users are responding to DVA cases reported in the news. Through discourse analysis of language and images, the potential messages projected to media consumers are considered, together with consumer dialogue and interaction articulated via online and social media platforms.

In 2020, the Westminster Government proposed statutory provision prohibiting the use of ‘consent to serious harm for sexual gratification’ as a defence to criminal charges of violence. This addition to the Domestic Abuse bill was made in response to the 18 month campaign by We Can’t Consent To This and a cross party group of MPs, after rising numbers of homicides of women where the perpetrators claimed the woman asked for the violence, in ‘rough sex’, ‘gone wrong’.

This research is based on new data and detailed analysis on 67 non-fatal violent assaults and 24 homicides where the accused claimed that this violence was consensual, focussing on criminal cases in England and Wales over the 10 years from 2010. Some earlier cases are included for historical context and particularly where they became influential in later Criminal Justice System (CJS) outcomes. It addresses a shortage of data on the use of ‘consent’ claims in defence to charges of fatal and non-fatal violence, using keyword searches on historic news and legal archives and submissions from victims in criminal cases to establish the extent of these claims, the nature of the assaults claimed consensual, and to assess the CJS’s response to the claims.

This research – part of the evidence from We Can’t Consent To This which was considered by Government – set out the case for new law on consent defences to violence, despite there being existing common law in England and Wales. This research finds that the so-called ‘rough sex’ defences have been successful in deflecting prosecution for violence against women for decades, identifying failings at every stage of the CJS, in fatal and non-fatal violent assaults. Notably the women injured in these criminal cases do not agree that they consented to the violence, where they are able to take part in criminal proceedings. But still the claims that they did appear to have succeeded.

This research proposes that change in attitudes and outcomes is needed at every stage of the CJS, and, with the UK Government proposing to keep the criminal law on this ‘under review’, identifying where further provision in law or in practice may be needed.

Using original transcripts of cases in which ‘sex games’ have ‘gone wrong’, this chapter examines how the practice of bondage and sado-masochism (BDSM) is figured in legal discourses and the implications this understanding of it has for debates about consent and sexual violence. The premise that consent to sexual violence might act as a defence or mitigating factor in cases which go to trial suggests that something understood as BDSM is recognized as a legitimate sexual practice by the courts. Recognizing the legitimacy of marginalized sexual practices can be understood as a progressive way to recognize individuals’ autonomy and freedom, within the contemporary neoliberal framework in which these cases play out. Campaigners against the judgement of the foundational Brown case make this clear (The Spanner Trust, n.d.). Yet, BDSM practice has also been mobilized to justify or diminish the significance of sexualized violence against women (Harman & Garnier, 2019, July 19).

This chapter navigates the line between these two priorities to interrogate the ways in which courts themselves interpret and understand BDSM. Gaining insight into how courts might be said to ‘operationalise’ BDSM, we can gain some insight into the role that consent plays in understanding sexual violence, including the work that consent has to do to turn an act of sexual violence into one of BDSM.

In order to do this work, I have acquired nine transcripts of crown court cases from 2010 to 2020 in which a ‘rough sex’ defence was used. Conducting a discourse analysis of how BDSM is imagined in these cases, in dialogue with previous I have conducted on consent and BDSM communities (Fanghanel, 2019, 2020), this chapter traces how knowledge about BDSM in created, and how this becomes used to affect justice outcomes.

This chapter explores the ways in which, over the past several years, the onus of UK central government policy has impacted upon managers and practitioners across services and agencies that work with children, young people and their families. It further considers the changes that have taken place in the education and training of the related professional workforces, with examples from education, social work, youth justice, residential work and fostering.

By drawing upon ideas from attachment theory and the principles of nurture, it becomes possible to identify alternative ways of working in these settings. In these new models the importance of positive relationships comes to the forefront of policy and practice, whilst the education and training of professional workers is shaped by a greater emphasis on children's development and the profound significance of attachment and nurture.

In different settings and across age groups, nurture groups provide an outstanding practice model, offering children and young people the right sort of experiences for improving their self-esteem, building up their resilience and overcoming barriers to learning. The principles upon which nurture groups are based offer an exciting template, not only for developing models of practice, but for influencing the formulation of policy and the education of students in initial training or as part of continuing professional development.