The Australian government purports that employment will improve welfare recipients' wellbeing. However, longitudinal analysis of the subjective wellbeing (SWB) of 135 single parents who were compelled to make the transition from welfare to work revealed that as work hours increased, subjective wellbeing did not improve, and in some cases worsened. Participants who were employed at baseline increased their work hours by an average of 4.75 hours per week; however no change was detected in their SWB. Conversely, participants who moved from not working at baseline to working at follow-up increased their work hours by an average of 15.84 hours per week. For these participants, the change in work hours negatively predicted 20–34 per cent of the variance in SWB. From these data, it is concluded that those parents who were already working were those who faced fewer barriers to employment compared to those who were compelled to work. Those who were previously unemployed may not have the material, social and psychological resources to make a successful work transition.

This article reviews the consultation process during the development of a local dementia strategy. The processes of involvement by the range of stakeholders involved and how their different views shaped the strategy are considered. Particular attention is paid to the involvement of people with dementia as they are the recipients of the services to be shaped by the strategy and also form the group most difficult to reach. This article demonstrates the value of including a wide range of stakeholders in the development of local policy and the importance of involving people with dementia in policy development.

Successive governments have encouraged the view of users of public services as consumers, choosing between different providers on the basis of information about the quality of service. As part of this approach, prospective students are expected to make their decisions about which universities to apply to with reference to the consumer evaluations provided by the National Student Survey. However, a case study of a post-1992 university showed that not all students made genuine choices and those who did tended to be in stronger social and economic positions. Where choices were made, they were infrequently based on external evaluations of quality.

This article reports on shifts and continuities in policy relating to disabled people and the administrative apparatus of federal disability policy under the Rudd government (2007–10). It begins with a brief historical overview of disability policy in Australia. It then gives particular attention to highlighting the contentious and dramatic changes to disability policy which were instigated by the Howard government (1996–2007). Following this, attention is focused on the major developments in disability policy and administration with the election of the Rudd Labor government in 2007. Through this discussion, we demonstrate the ways the altered vocabularies, practices and instruments of the state have manifested in relation to disability policy in Australia, ultimately shaping opportunities for either inclusion or exclusion at the national level among disabled people.

Historically, Travelling Showpeople have sought to distance themselves from the wider Gypsy and Traveller population, on the basis of their unique occupation and travelling patterns, but also based on a discourse around self sufficiency. This article explores how this distinction has been influenced by, and has influenced, policy developments relating to accommodation. It focuses on how this distinction has created a degree of exclusion in terms of accommodation needs, and how this impacts on the position of contemporary Travelling Showpeople, particularly in a time of changing travelling and employment patterns.

There is an extensive body of literature on the ways in which the family home is often a site of conflict and discord rather than security and safety. Much of this work has focussed on the problem of domestic violence perpetrated by adults and how the state should respond to it (Home Office, 2009). Another form of family violence however, that of the abuse of parents (or those occupying a parental role) by their adolescent children, has not received such public (or academic) recognition (Hunter et al., 2010). In the UK, the issue of parent abuse remains one of the most unacknowledged and under-researched form of family violence.

This article reviews the different forms of legal interventions which may be available to address parent abuse. It seeks to examine the evidence as to which are actually used currently and the problems which are inherent in them. We do this both by examining the statutory basis of the existing potential legal remedies and reported cases relating to those provisions, and by drawing on evidence from a small-scale study of relevant professional workers in one city. We conclude that while recourse to the police, and hence potentially the criminal justice system, is most frequent in practice, the criminal justice system is not suited to tackling the issue. Other interventions, such as anti-social behaviour orders and injunctions, also reveal problems. Law struggles to find an effective response to such a complex problem. Notwithstanding the acknowledged limits of law in changing behaviour, we argue that law could be used more effectively to reduce the incidence and impact of parent abuse.

Drawing on data collected as part of a qualitative study on parent abuse, this article explores how child to parent violence is constructed by professionals working within the three related domains of youth justice, domestic violence and child protection. The article, a discussion piece, charts the continuities and contradictions contained within practitioners’ understandings of this form of family violence, focusing on how the problem emerges, the causal explanations employed and their impact on practice responses.

Adolescent to parent violence is a problem which remains largely unarticulated within youth justice policy literature and academic discourse in England and Wales. This article presents research evidence suggesting that adolescent to parent violence is a significant problem which needs to be clearly addressed in the youth justice policy agenda. Although it is widely recognised by practitioners and regularly encountered in their work, there is a ‘silence’ at the policy level and a lack of appropriate support services or responses. The article considers reasons for the absence of adolescent to parent violence in youth justice policy and argues for the importance of recognising and defining the problem and for the development of appropriate responses.

This article reports on parent abuse by 112 young people within a sample of 209 families with adolescent children who were receiving family support services, presenting both young people and parents’ accounts of this abuse. Drawing on an analysis of quantitative data, it also reports on the characteristics, histories and circumstances of the young people and families and examines the predictors of parent abuse. Lone mothers were more likely to be victims of this abuse. Many of the young people had experienced maltreatment and those who had witnessed domestic violence were more likely to be violent to parents.

Although research into parent abuse is scant in the context of the UK, there is now a burgeoning of interest into how this form of family violence fits into the historically well-defined arena of domestic violence research. This article investigates one aspect of the phenomena of parent abuse; that is, how teenage boys, who are often perceived as perpetrators of such violence due to problematic ‘cycle of violence’ or ‘intergenerational transmission of violence’ theories, are constructed in relation to it. These now widely discredited theories, which correlate being a man with being violent, are problematic, but may re-emerge as a possible explanation for parent abuse. This article questions these theories in the context of both domestic violence and parent abuse by demonstrating how they are based upon a culturally constructed notion of masculinity.

There is a lack of research on parent abuse in the UK and a lack of research on the overlap between domestic violence and parent abuse internationally. This article explores why this is the case. Findings suggest that conceptual conflicts in defining both concepts, in framing children's safety as subsumed under mothers’ safety and the desire to challenge deterministic ‘cycle of violence’ models may unwittingly have contributed to the failure to address parent abuse in the domestic violence field. The author argues that only by integrating parent abuse into the domestic violence framework will this issue be appropriately addressed.

‘Parent abuse’ is the most under-researched form of family abuse and the research that exists is characterised by diverse and discrete methodological approaches which have produced somewhat inconsistent findings. This critical review examines these different research approaches and discusses the methodological challenges which they present. The review concludes by suggesting how research might develop to produce a more coherent and contextual methodology which does justice to the complexities of the topic.

The following list provides a brief overview of relevant publications on parent abuse, together with links to some useful websites. Given the nature of parent abuse the publications come from a varied disciplinary background ranging from the therapeutic to social policy and criminological. Some look at the nature and incidence of parent abuse, some examine the experience and causes of it, while others suggest therapeutic interventions. See further the discussion by Holt, this volume.