Table Of ContentVulnerabilities, Care and Family Law
While in the past family life was characterised as a
‘haven from the harsh realities of life’, it is now
recognised as a site of vulnerabilities and a place where
care work can go unacknowledged and be a source of
social and economic hardship. This book addresses the
strong relationships that exist between vulnerability, care
and dependency in particular contexts, where family law
and social policy have a contribution to make.
A fundamental premise of this collection is that
vulnerability needs to be analysed in a way that gets at
the heart of the differential power relationships that exist
in society, particularly in respect of access to family
justice, including effective social policy and law targeted
at the specific needs of families in mutually dependent
caring relationships. It is therefore crucial to critically
examine the various approaches taken by policy-makers
and law reformers in order to understand the range of
ways that some families, and some family members, may
be rendered more vulnerable than others.
The first book of its kind to provide an intersectional
approach to this subject, Vulnerabilities, Care and
Family Law will be of interest to students and
practitioners of social policy and family law.
Julie Wallbank is based at the University of Leeds;
Jonathan Herring is at the University of Oxford.
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Vulnerabilities, Care and Family Law
Edited by
Julie Wallbank
and Jonathan Herring
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First published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14
4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
A GlassHouse Book
Routledge is an imprint of the Tayfor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2013 Julie Wallbank and Jonathan Herring
The right of Julie Wallbank and Jonathan Herring to be
identified as editors of this work, and the individual
chapter authors for their individual material has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only
for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vulnerabilities, care and family law/edited by Julie
Wallbank, Jonathan Herring.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-415-85750-5 (hardback) -- ISBN
978-0-203-79782-2 (ebk)
I. Domestic relations--Social aspects--Great Britain.
I. Wallbank, Julie A., editor of compilation.
II. Herring, Jonathan, editor of compilation.
KD750.V85 2014
346.4101’5--dc23
2013023397
ISBN: 978-0-415-85750-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-79782-2 (ebk)
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Contents
Notes on contributors
1 Introduction: vulnerabilities, care and family
law
JULIE WALLBANK AND JONATHAN HERRING
2 The contours of ‘vulnerability’
JENNIFER COLLINS
3 Making family law more careful
JONATHAN HERRING
4 Why care? ‘Deserving family members’ and the
conservative movement for broader family
recognition
NICOLA BARKER
5 Universal norms, individualisation and the need
for recognition: the failure(s) of the
self-managed post-separation
JULIE WALLBANK
6 Autonomy and vulnerability in family law: the
missing link
ALISON DIDUCK
7 Mediation and vulnerable parents
CHRISTINE PIPER
8 Child protection and the modernised family
justice system
FELICITY KAGANAS
9 Child support, child contact and social class
STEPHEN MCKAY
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10 Labour law, family law and care: a plea for
convergence
NICOLE BUSBY
11 Relational vulnerability, care and dependency
JO BRIDGEMAN
12 Safeguarding and the elusive, inclusive
vulnerable adult
ALISON BRAMMER
13 When are adult safeguarding interventions
justified?
MICHAEL DUNN
Index
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Notes on contributors
Nicola Barker is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the
University of Kent, teaching family law and public law.
She is the author of Not the Marrying Kind: A Feminist
Critique of Same-Sex Marriage (Palgrave, 2012).
Alison Brammer is a Senior Lecturer in the Law School
at Keele University and a solicitor. She is Director of
two MA programmes (Child Care Law and Practice;
Safeguarding Adults: Law, Policy and Practice). She is
Legal Editor of the Journal of Adult Protection; Series
Editor of the ‘Focus on Social Work Law’ series; and her
textbook Social Work Law is in its third edition.
Research interests focus on the law relating to social
work practice and the developing law relating to
safeguarding adults.
Jo Bridgeman is Professor of Healthcare Law and
Feminist Ethics at the University of Sussex where she
teaches healthcare law and ethics, family law and tort.
Her research, at the intersection of these fields, adopts a
critical feminist perspective informed by, and
developing, the feminist ethic of care in the analysis of
relational responsibilities. She has published work on the
healthcare of babies, infants and young children; the care
of disabled children; parental responsibilities; children
and tort law; compassionate killings; teenagers and
health.
Nicole Busby is Professor of Labour Law at the
University of Strathclyde. Her research interests are in
the areas of labour law and European social policy,
specifically the relationship between paid work and
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unpaid care, the constitutionalisation of labour rights
(with particular reference to the EU constitution
post-Lisbon) and the experiences of claimants in the
Employment Tribunal system. She is the author of A
Right to Care? Unpaid Care Work in European
Employment Law (Oxford University Press, 2011) and
co-editor (with Grace James) of Families, Care-giving
and Paid Work: Challenging Labour Law in the 21st
Century (Edward Elgar, 2011).
Jennifer Collins is a Lecturer in Law at St Peter’s
College, Oxford. Her research focuses on theoretical
issues in the criminal law, particularly the challenges
posed by interpersonal exploitation. Her current DPhil
work examines a type
of exploitation which is primarily targeted at property
interests, and considers its implications for criminal law
theory.
Alison Diduck is Professor of Law at UCL. She is
interested in jurisprudence, gender theory and legal
history, and currently is particularly taken with the social
and legal regulation of personal relationships. She has
published her work in monograph form, in edited
collections, academic and professional journals, and is
co-author, with Felicity Kaganas, (3rd edn of Family
Law, Gender and the State).
Michael Dunn is a Lecturer at the Ethox Centre,
University of Oxford, and has additional appointments as
a Research Associate at Green Templeton College,
Oxford, and as an academic consultant at the Centre for
Biomedical Ethics, National University of Singapore.
His current research interests lie in the ethics of
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managing, organising and delivering community-based
and long-term health and social care services. Another
main area of focus in his current work is the relationship
between philosophy and the social sciences in bioethical
inquiry, and in providing sound theoretical and
methodological justifications for empirical ethics
research. Michael has published over twenty-five
peer-reviewed papers and book chapters in the fields of
bioethics, medical, social welfare and family law, and
health/social services research. He is also an Associate
Editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, and sits on a
number of working parties, committees and research
advisory groups in the ethical and legal aspects of health
and social care.
Jonathan Herring is a Fellow in Law at Exeter College,
Oxford University and Professor of Law at the Law
Faculty, Oxford University. He has written on family
law, medical law, criminal law and legal issues
surrounding caring. He has written over forty books
including: Caring and the Law (Hart, 2013); Older
People in Law and Society (Oxford University Press,
2009); European Human Rights and Family Law (Hart,
2010) (with Shazia Choudhry); Medical Law and Ethics
(Oxford University Press, 2012); Criminal Law (4th edn,
Oxford University Press, 2012); and Family Law (6th
edn, Pearson, 2013).
Felicity Kaganas is a Reader in Law at Brunel Law
School, Brunel University. Her research has included
legal and socio-legal work as well as some examples of
textual analysis. She specialises in family and child law
and also feminist approaches to law. She is co-author,
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