University of Victoria Journals
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A No Hope Guarantee: The Cruel and Unusual Treatment of Victoria’s Bylaw Impound Scheme
No full textSince the inclusion of section 12 in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the “Charter”), much has been written about cruel and unusual punishment. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the issue of cruel and unusual treatment. As society becomes increasingly regulated and individuals interact with government through administrative bodies with broad discretion, clearer protections against cruel and unusual treatment are necessary to fully realize the intent of the Charter right. Over the past two decades, the City of Victoria has progressively restricted the use of public spaces by individuals experiencing homelessness. While these restrictions have been challenged under various Charter provisions, section 12 has rarely been considered. !e 2023 amendments to the City of Victoria’s public space bylaws o#er a timely opportunity to consider the application of section 12 in the context of non-punitive administrative decisions that amount to government treatment. Although the test for cruel and unusual treatment requires further clari%cation, Victoria’s bylaw scheme underscores the need for section 12 analyses to more explicitly address government treatment, or risk neglecting the Charter’s dignity-centred focus
RESIDENTIAL CARE IN ISRAEL: PRINCIPLES FOR CONSTRUCTING A COMPUTERIZED SYSTEM FOR GATHERING DATA, PLANNING INTERVENTIONS, AND EVALUATING OUTCOMES
No full textThe project described here aimed to assist the Residential Placement Unit of the Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs in developing tools for planning interventions for children in their care, monitoring activities and practices, and assessing outcomes. A major requirement was to ensure that the data produced would be relevant to field workers and support their daily therapeutic work with the children. The tools also facilitate ongoing follow-up on the children’s characteristics, needs, strengths, and prior interventions, including evaluating their effectiveness. This information is organized and can be presented in outputs tailored to the needs of field workers, supervisors, and policymakers. Key principles that guided the project were: collaboration among a multitiered team; involvement of service recipients and care leavers (“experts by experience”); balancing the needs of policymakers, staff and field workers; use of standardized and accepted terminology; reliance on a shared measurement framework; and use of outcome-based thinking to structure the system and its components. The implementation of such a computerized system often raises apprehension or resistance among both managers and staff. To address this, a lengthy and in-depth process of building trust took place, including training sessions that communicated the rationale behind the system’s development and the principles underlying its design, and the establishment of a structured feedback mechanism to assess the staff’s acceptance of the system. The system was successfully assimilated and is in routine use in all the residential care facilities of the Ministry of Welfare. Several factors were identified to explain this success: the commitment of the administration of the Residential Placement Unit to this project; the availability of an existing computerized system upon which to develop the project; and the involvement of the research team in the characterization of the system, training the staff, and refining and modifying the system based on the feedback received
ENABLING CHILDREN WITH VULNERABILITIES TO PURSUE THEIR EDUCATIONAL ASPIRATIONS: PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES
No full textIn India, millions of vulnerable children, particularly those without parental care and living in alternative care settings, and girls from vulnerable sections of society, face significant barriers to accessing quality education. This compromises their fundamental right to education and often leaves their potential unfulfilled. There are also many cross-sectional barriers, such as poverty, gender, caste, and social norms, that reduce opportunities for education. Despite strong legislative and policy mandates in India that emphasise the government’s obligation to protect children’s rights and ensure access to education, gaps persist. Inadequate education hampers children’s overall well-being and development, leaving them unprepared for independent living. This paper highlights the efforts of Udayan Care, a practitioner organization, in regard to improving educational access and outcomes for vulnerable young people. It highlights the role of practitioners in two key programs run by Udayan Care when it comes to supporting academic pursuits and their effects on life outcomes for the recipients of its two programs: Udayan Ghars (Sunshine Homes), a residential program for children without parental care; and Udayan Shalini Fellowship, a program to support girls from underserved families through higher education and leadership. This paper explores the systematic and sociocultural barriers to education for children in care and for young adolescent girls in the communities, and demonstrates how individualised support, mentoring, and a trauma-informed approach can transform their lives. Findings are based on internal program evaluations and practitioner insights and experiences. This paper also offers recommendations to empower vulnerable children through comprehensive education and skill-building initiatives. These best practices demonstrate the transformative power of tailored interventions in shaping the lives of marginalised children and creating a foundation for their independent and successful futures
“I THINK, SHE DOES NOT KNOW THIS ANY MORE”: CHILD AGENCY NEGOTIATED THROUGH THE DYNAMICS OF FAMILY INTERACTIONS IN GERMANY DURING COVID-19
No full textWe examined child agency in terms of prevailing theories of childhood (seeing children as “been”, “being”, or “becoming”) in the context of interviews about COVID-19 experiences. In our study we focused on conversations between the interlocutor (a child or a parent) and additional family members and used a discourse approach for analyzing and interpreting the interactions. In total, 9 families of diverse sociocultural backgrounds (13 parents and 16 children aged 6–15 years) were interviewed about their individual COVID-19 experience in Germany. Irrespective of age, children were able to describe events and experiences during COVID-19 times and were thus aware of the “been”. These ranged from enjoying playtime with parents to playgrounds being cordoned off and classmates being ill. Interview interactions underscored a dynamic of children’s agency that alternated between active involvement in their own and the parent’s interview and reactively referring questions to a parent or letting the parent take control of the interview situation. Neither parents’ views of children nor children’s own behavior could be consistently assigned to the category of “being” or “becoming”. Rather, our study highlighted children’s agency along a being–becoming continuum through an interactive transformational process in terms of interdependent agency between children and parents in a particular context. This process of negotiated agency should be explored further in future studies with children and parents
“Stand With Us”: Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Must Not Be Forgotten in Our Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic and Anti- Asian Racism
No full textPeople all over the world have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, racialized, migrant, poor, criminalized, and otherwise marginalized people, including sex workers, have been disproportionately affected. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inequality Asian sex workers continuously experience and how they have fallen through the cracks. The heavy economic, social, and mental impacts on them during the pandemic have exacerbated their exclusion from access to financial relief, social support, and health services. The stigma, discrimination, poverty, violence, harassment, surveillance, and repressive policing have also been intensified by govern- ment emergency measures. Despite the oppression and the challenges, sex workers’ organizations all over the world have spoken out about their struggles, developed rapid responses to support their communities, and asked for support. In this grassroots com- munity report, I illustrate the oppression and challenges Asian and migrant sex workers in Canada faced during the pandemic and examine how one Canadian sex worker organization, Butterfly (Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network), worked with workers, migrants, and racialized communities to support Asians and migrants and to build their resilience. Butterfly is a community-led organization that organizes over 5,000 Asian workers, including permanent residents, refugees, and non-status women, who work in massage parlours and the sex industry across Canada and provides them with crisis, social, health, and legal supports. Butterfly also builds the capacity and leadership of the workers, organizing them to fight for their rights. Butterfly is founded upon the belief that sex workers are entitled to respect and the acknowledgement of their human rights. In addition to the challenges faced by workers, including racism, classism, sexism, gender inequality, xenophobia, transphobia, language barriers, and other kinds of oppression, both undocumented and permitted workers have little to no access to the health and social services needed to navigate their work safely, and they live in constant fear of being deported from Canada. They face surveillance, policing, and criminalization and, particularly, the harms done by the anti-trafficking movement
“Being There” in More-Than-Human Worlds: Place, Body, and Time in Ethnographic Research With Children
No full textIn its attention to numerous small explorations with children and place, we reflect on how Edvard Munch’s painting “The Researchers” could almost be a scene from our ethnographic fieldwork with children. Prompted by our engagement with Munch’s painting, we explore three shifts in our own research practice over time. First, a shift from a sole focus on human relationships to the more-than-human nature of long-term research relations with place points to the bodily, relational nature of knowing that is not easily articulable in words. Second, we grapple with the shifting meaning and purpose of the “data set” within our research. By viewing data as part of a gift-giving logic, interconnection and shifting time scales are emphasized. Third, drawing on the Sámi concept of meahcci, we discuss how fieldwork became “unbounded” spatially and temporally, allowing new ways of knowing to emerge
Pedagogical Documentation: A Key for Change and Transformation
No full textThe discourse on pedagogical documentation inspired by the municipal preschools in the Italian city of Reggio Emilia is currently travelling around the world. The fact that this discourse has become so prominent can largely be seen as a resistance towards the reform development that has taken place internationally within the educational system since the 1990s, a reform development linked to global economic competition in the shape of new forms of quality assurance instruments connected to the ideology and policy of neoliberalism. In the article, three constructions of pedagogical documentation are described that can be seen as a form of resistance towards the above educational reforms