Editorial

This editorial is being drafted in the days following Christmas 2021 when the government in England, unlike the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland refrained from introducing further Covid related restrictions on social interaction, despite expert scientific advice to take action in order to prevent further disruption of family life and mental well-being. A difficult decision to take, to support, or to justify. But there has been a considerable amount of comment on the increasingly socially responsible behaviour of the population, many of whom are forgoing individual wishes and feelings for the sake of the greater good. So perhaps this is a good moment for JSWFL to contribute by looking at some areas of policy making and individual experience at the interface between legal regulation for the greater good and individual need for freedom.

We have two articles concerned with the complex balance of needs which arise in the context of mental illness. Jessica Fish gives us a detailed account of the attempts to incorporate the social work perspective of the role of the Approved Social Worker (ASW) by inserting the 2008 Code of Practice into the 1983 Mental Health Act. This will/would broaden the role of the Approved Mental Health Professional (AHMP) to reach beyond the structure of health care, where the focus lies on identifying symptom, diagnosis and treatment, to include a range of social factors which may affect the individual’s progress. But this change too has been affected by attempts to incorporate aspects of Human Rights legislation, which aim to protect the dignity and rights of the vulnerable person, in particular by promoting the Least Restrictive Option (LRO) for each patient. Fish concludes that the social perspective is often neglected in law reform and policy decision making, limiting both advancing the social perspective and reducing the safeguarding function for the service user. The second article on “The Madness of Accessing Justice by Lisa Vanhala and Jacqueline Kinghan looks at the attempt at legal mobilisation by those with mental health problems and the case of RF, an anonymous claimant against the Department of Work and Pensions cuts to disability mobility benefits for those facing “psychological distress”. While there has been a rapid increase in the mobilisation of disability rights around the world, there has been less attention paid by socio legal scholars to the mobilisation of law by those experiencing mental health issues, or the potential of adopting a social model of madness, mental distress, and confusion. The authors show how the litigation process has both progressive and empowering potential for those who are otherwise subject to systemic oppression by mental health and welfare benefit services . The example explored in interviews with 14 claimants looks at collective actors and the court experience in the context of Personal Independent Payments.

The third article by Jed Meers moves on from the individual impact of law and policy making on social welfare problems to look at the collective cumulative impact problem which was first observed in the context of environmental policy work. The author suggests that this field is now well developed, and can provide a rich source of material to help interrogate the same problems in the social welfare context. Meers argues that the legal requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) under s 149 of the Equality Act 2010 require a public authority to have due regard to the clear cumulative impacts between measures. He suggest that in the context of social security reform, there may be aggregative impacts, (the summing of impacts) interactive impacts (where one policy affects another) and longitudinal impacts (which can be traced over time). The paper makes a strong case for taking a closer look at cumulative impacts in the context of social security policy making, and provides a strong starting point for doing so. For example, the increase in housing benefit levels in response to Covid for those in the private rented sector to the 30^th percentile of rents in 2020, pegged to 2012 rent levels, led to a significant increase in the support available. But for many households the effect was nullified by the interaction with the benefit cap policy.

We also have a much needed account of the development of spousal support in Ireland, with a strong endorsement of the Canadian Spousal Support guidelines approach by Kathryn O’ Sullivan which raises important questions about the value of a more formulaic approach, and emphasises the importance of avoiding rigidity over a division between periodic payments and lump sums, using the Canadian principles of fairness, taking into account the financial impact of division on the parties.

Our final article by Woodhead and colleagues is a scoping review of the social welfare advice and health among young people, which provides essential background to the recent debates about co location of health and welfare law advice in the post LASPO period.

We also include a review by Julie Doughty of “Adoption from Care” edited by Poso, Skiveness and Thoburn, and close with casenotes from Donna Crowe Urbaniak, Charlotte Elves and Jonathan Herring, Maria Moscati and Alice Welsh.

Despite the sad demise of our European section in the wake of Brexit, we remain committed to publishing papers from around the world where there is a significant connection with matters of concern in this jurisdiction. In this issue we are pleased to include the important contribution from Emily Schindeler on the current concerns about the role of family mediation within the family justice system in Australia. This is a particularly timely contribution given that mandatory mediation is under consideration in this jurisdiction.

May we repeat our thanks to the Journal’s authors for their valuable contribution in these difficult times, and send all good wishes for the coming year