The Children Act, 1989, requires that services for children are provided in partnership with parents and that the wishes and feelings of the child and his/her parents are ascertained and given due consideration (sect . 22) . As part of a research project assessing the quality of services to children with disabilities under the Children Act, the authors carried out evaluations of six residential respite care services. The services were used mainly by children with learning difficulties, some of whom had little or no speech. Staff at the schools attended by the children were asked to interview them, so that their views could be included in the evaluation reports . Interview schedules and aids to communication were devised to try and enable all the children to express their views . This article describes the initial schedules and the changes made in the light of experience during the research . The authors then summarise the children's responses and consider how the process of consultation could be improved in future .

This article summarises a symposium presented at the 1993 BILD conference by researchers based at the Norah Fry Research Centre, University of Bristol. The linking theme of the several contributions to the symposium was the need to involve people with learning difficulties in research. The article argues that a traditional model of research, in which detached observers set the agenda and present the results to their funders and academic colleagues, should not be seen as the only acceptable approach to research. This article advocates involving people with learning difficulties at every stage of the research process. The article then describes several pieces of work, carried out by or with the support of staff at Norah Fry, which illustrate the Centre's attempts to put this principle into practice. It is argued that the end result is better research, which is of more direct benefit to people with learning difficulties.This article summarises a symposium presented at the 1993 BILD conference by researchers from the Norah Fry Research Centre at the University of Bristol. The theme of the presentation was the involvement of people with learning difficulties in research.After exhorting service providers to involve service users in a whole range of activities, from hiring and firing staff to reviewing complaints procedures, we felt it was time to turn the spotlight on our own activities. Until recently, much of the research carried out in the field of disability has treated people with learning difficulties as objects of study, rather than people with opinions and information about what is important in their own lives. This traditional model of conducting research, where researchers act as detached observers, presenting their findings only to their funders and academic colleagues, has become the subject of much debate. This article briefly sets out the ways in which researchers at the Norah Fry Research Centre have tried to develop a more participatory approach to conducting research. We define 'research to include activities relating to making decisions about what to study, planning and carrying out the work itself, and producing and disseminating the findings in formats appropriate to the intended audi-ence. The article is therefore divided into three sections: setting the agenda, involvement in the research process, and making the results of research more accessible.

This article describes the quality of the partnerships between youth offending teams and substance misuse projects working with young offenders. It draws on local evaluations of 25 projects funded by the Youth Justice Board's Development Fund from 1999 to 2002. For the most part, the relationships were described in mainly positive terms but a number of areas of potential and actual conflict were identified, notably confidentiality, referral criteria and enforcement. The findings are compared with previous research on partnerships between criminal justice and voluntary agencies, which generally indicate similar advantages and tensions. To some extent, YOTs and projects were able to avoid some of the predictable tensions by careful liaison and planning. However, the speed of the tendering process and the practical complexities of setting up the projects at the same time as the YOTs themselves were coming into being made this difficult for some projects.This article describes and evaluates a major national initiative in encouraging partnership between youth offending teams (YOTs) and statutory and voluntary substance misuse agencies in working with young offenders. It compares the evaluation with the findings of previous research on partnerships in the criminal justice system and identifies a number of persistent challenges to the effectiveness of collaboration between agencies.The initiative took place within the context of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, one of many recent UK acts and policies explicitly intended to improve inter-agency and interdisciplinary working practices in social care and health. The Act established the Youth Justice Board (YJB) and local YOTs to conduct, co-ordinate and develop such work for youth offending, creating teams of youth justice workers from different professional backgrounds, including youth justice, probation, police, social work,

This paper examines some emerging evidence in relation to the impact of recent organisational changes in the delivery of youth justice services, and the implementation of National Standards for youth justice, on occupational culture in work with young offenders. It considers the potential conflict between traditional child centred youth justice practice and the new priorities set for Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) by the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, and it draws attention to the possibility of a divergence in philosophy and practice between Wales and England. The paper highlights the uneasy philosophical differences that co-exist within YOTs, and it explores the respective perceptions of qualified practitioners and social work students on placement, concerning the state of current practice. Finally, the implications for those involved in the education and training of social work students are briefly considered.

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This article uses accounts of three murder trials of the 1950s to examine the role played in the criminal justice process by stereotyped and prejudicial attitudes towards women and people from ethnic minorities. All three defendants were executed although it is arguable that none of them should have been. Ruth Ellis's case highlights the gendered nature of criminal justice in the 1950s, especially in regard to domestic violence and the defence of provocation. Mahmood Mattan's case illustrates the kind of language and assumptions about race which could go unchallenged in the courtroom at that time. Finally, the account of the trial and execution of Styllou Christofi sees these two elements combined. While a significant proportion of the article is concerned with the historical record, comparisons are also drawn with some elements of modern understanding of gender and race in the criminal justice system.The origin of this article was the granting to the authors of access to two petitions to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (the CCRC). 1 These petitions presented the cases of Mahmood Mattan Hussein and Ruth Ellis. Mattan, executed in 1952, was the last man to be hanged at Cardiff Prison, and the first to have a conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal as a result of a referral by the CCRC. In 1998, 46 years after his death, his conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal. The solicitors who had prepared the petition were then asked to take on the much more famous case of Ruth Ellis, the last woman executed in Britain. Her case was also referred to the Court of Appeal but the appeal was dismissed on 8 December 2003. 2 In the article we explore the roles played respectively by race and gender by drawing on the transcripts of their trials and other literature relating to their cases. We then trace similar themes in a third capital trial from the period, that of Styllou Christofi, in whose case both race and gender played a substantial part. 3 The trials of Ellis and Christofi illustrate the lack of awareness that permitted the expression of both overt and tacit sexism, while those of Christofi and Mattan demonstrate the same lack of awareness in respect of racism. The stereotyped and pejorative

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