Reviews/Comptes rendus
Mending Broken Families. Social Policies for
Divorced Families – How Effective Are They?
by E.M. Douglas. Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2005.
A book with appeal to social work, law, and social
policy analysts, Douglas’ Mending Broken Families:
Social Policies for Divorced Families – How Effective Are They? examines the efficacy of a number of
current US social policies that affect divorcing couples and their children. Douglas identifies the seed
for the book as having been planted during her dissertation defence in a question regarding the effectiveness of intervention for divorcing families. This
germination resulted in a critical examination of
what assists and what hinders families who are journeying through divorce.
Douglas examines five social policies for divorcing couples: mediation, divorce education programs,
parenting plans, joint custody, and the presumption
of joint custody in child-custody statutes. Some of
these social policies will be of interest to Canadian
readers given that forms of these policies exist in
Canada. Douglas also provides a guide to statespecific statutes which, for Canadian readers, will
be of less interest than the actual outcomes of research. Emerging trends in social policy regarding
divorce comprise the next section, which includes
parental relocation, divorce prevention programs,
and covenant marriage laws. Douglas concludes the
book with her recommendation of mandating social
policies for divorce.
Embedded within each section, Douglas offers
her conclusions regarding the effectiveness of each
social policy. The results are mixed: mediation and
divorce education programs show some effectiveness in the areas of parental communication and
cooperation; joint custody is seen as neither helping nor harming the child (provided low parental
conflict); and, due to a lack of empirical evidence,
no conclusions are reached regarding the effectiveness of parenting plans to delineate the roles and
responsibilities of divorcing parents, or presump-
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tion of joint custody to guarantee each parent physical custody. These indecisive conclusions lead
Douglas to an incisive discussion on the paucity of
reliable research in all areas of divorce social policy.
She explicates the major concerns including small
sample sizes, poor and unequal comparison groups,
lack of random assignment to either an intervention
or control group, and a dearth of longitudinal
studies. By outlining needed improvements to evaluate the effectiveness of social policy regarding divorce, Douglas serves social policy researchers well.
Douglas recommends mandating social policy, as
opposed to relying on the willingness of parent engagement. In practice, however, this is problematic
as the onus lies on one parent to prove noncompliance of the other parent, for instance, in retrieving a child at an agreed time under a parenting
plan. Douglas further recommends either penalties
for non-compliance or incentives to encourage compliance with mandated laws. However, experience
of others suggests penalties for non-compliance may
be difficult to administer in jurisdictions with limited
financial resources, and Douglas cites no literature
regarding the effectiveness of incentives.
Policy-makers may be curious why Douglas cites
covenant marriage laws, which permit couples to divorce only under extreme circumstances such as criminal behaviour, family violence or adultery, as an
emerging trend despite the fact that this version of
marriage law currently exists in only three states and
represents a small percentage of couples. Douglas argues that covenant marriage laws symbolize a return
in the United States toward traditional marriage values. However, a topic more germane to emerging trends
and one Douglas identifies as such, but does not explore, is the issue of denying children access to one of
their parents. From a prevalence perspective, this issue impacts divorcing couples to a greater extent than
covenant marriage laws.
Lastly, although Douglas concentrates on the
overriding effectiveness of various social policies,
she could have bolstered her conclusions by delin-
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274 Reviews/Comptes rendus
eating social policy effectiveness on the basis of
factors such as whether the policies have more influence on families with older children as opposed
to those with younger children. A divorce education program or parenting plan for parents of young
children would, in theory, differ from one aimed at
parents of older children, given the child’s developmental stage and needs. Empirical evidence may
exist on the basis of this delineation, but Douglas
does not cite any research in this area.
In sum, there is much to admire in Douglas’ careful and deliberate examination of the effectiveness
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE
of divorce social policy. The book has wider applicability in the United States than in Canada, but it
does offer Canadian social policy-makers and those
working with divorcing families a compass by which
to navigate. Despite the lacklustre evidence on effectiveness, Douglas sums it best when she notes
that “even if one-time interventions improve two out
of ten indicators of family functioning, then this is
success, as opposed to failure” (p. x).
LEA TUFFORD, Faculty of Social work, University of
Toronto
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Reviews/Comptes rendus
Child Poverty and the Canadian Welfare State:
From Entitlement to Charity
by Shereen Ismael. Edmonton: University of Alberta
Press, 2006, 111 pages.
Shereen Ismael seeks to understand how Canada’s
social policies allow child poverty to exist despite
the country’s wealth. In 1989 Ed Broadbent, then
leader of the New Democratic Party, declared an end
to child poverty. Ismael believes this may have been
a rallying call to stir up political will for the maintenance of a national social policy framework. The
failure to sustain this framework has allowed child
poverty to increase; a recent report from Campaign
2000 (2006) indicates that Canada’s child poverty
rate is worse than it was in 1989 despite strong economic growth. Ismael argues that the dismantling
of the Canadian welfare state into a new residual
state, which emphasized provincial development of
social policy and an ethic of liberal individualism,
has enabled child poverty to continue to flourish.
To support this argument, Ismael first examines
the development of the Canadian welfare state. During the post-Depression years, he suggests that the
Canadian government was strongly influenced by
the Marsh Report and consequently developed a
wide range of social programs. From 1965 to approximately 1973, the welfare state expanded with
the introduction of the Canada Assistance Plan, the
New Unemployment Insurance Act, and the Family
Allowance Act. Ismael believes that the social security review of 1973 signified the end of this expansion. The author argues further that the passage
of the Canada Health Act in 1984 reversed the federal government’s use of spending power from positive incentives to negative sanctions as a method to
enforce compliance. For Ismael, this was the start
of the fragmentation of the Canadian welfare state.
Ismael contends that Canada has changed from a
welfare state to a residual state. A residual state involves the promotion of liberal individualism in
public and social policy. His belief about Canada’s
275
transformation is supported by his review of the
major alterations in Canadian federal government
policies from 1989 to 1999. These policy changes
included the end of the Canada Assistance Plan, the
introduction of the Canada Health and Social Transfer, and the dismantling of the Unemployment Insurance Act. In 1999, under the new residual state,
the Social Union Framework Agreement (SUFA)
was formalized. Ismael argues that SUFA limited
the federal government’s responsibility for social
welfare and gave power for social policy to provincial jurisdictions that emphasized liberal individualism. The residual state’s promotion of this ethic
involving work attachment and individual selfreliance can be seen in social policies at the provincial level. Though the degree of this liberal ethic
encouraged in each province varies, the author’s
review of provincial income security programs
suggests that the majority of assistance plans stress
returning recipients to the labour market.
Lastly, Ismael explores the relationship between
child poverty and changing federal social policy. He
demonstrates that during the welfare state’s maturity an increase in federal expenditures on social
policy was associated with a decrease in child poverty, while the opposite held true during the transition to a residual state. Ismael argues that this
evidence provides support for the maintenance of a
strong national social security net. As Ismael states,
“In the residual state federal social policy essentially
plays a handmaiden role to provincial social policy
regimes. As a result, the national character of the
Canadian social safety net has dissipated as each
province and territory developed its own distinctive
set of policies and programs” (p. 59).
Ismael believes that national standards would be
ideal due to a decrease in the variation among
provinces in the promotion of individual liberalism
in social policy. A counter-argument to Ismael’s
ideas is Kathryn Harrison’s (2006) perspective in
which she contends that programs at a provincial
level are optimal as they provide opportunity for
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276 Reviews/Comptes rendus
greater experimentation, and thus allow for improvements in both program design and implementation.
Ismael’s argument could be improved with a more
in-depth discussion on how national standards would
be better able to reduce individual liberalism and
child poverty than separate enhancements to provincial programs.
On balance, I did find that the author’s examination of Canadian social policy provided an answer
to the question of understanding the social policies
that allow child poverty to persist in a nation as
wealthy as Canada. Ismael believes that Canada’s
transformation from a welfare state to a residual state
resulted in provincial governments obtaining a significant role in the creation of social policy. Child
poverty continues to exist because of the emphasis
on individual liberalism, especially regarding in-
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come security programs at a provincial-policy level.
Ismael’s arguments could be strengthened with suggestions on how his thoughts and ideas could be
further developed in future research.
REFERENCES
Campaign 2000. 2006. Oh Canada! Too Many Children
in Poverty for Too Long. 2006 Report Card on Child
and Family Poverty in Canada. Toronto: Conference
Board of Canada.
Harrison, K., ed. 2006. Racing to the Bottom? Provincial
Interdependence in the Canadian Federation. Vancouver: UBC Press.
TERESA KATHERINE LIGHTBODY , Doctorate Student,
Department of Human Ecology, University of
Alberta
DE POLITIQUES, VOL . XXXIII, NO . 2 2007
Reviews/Comptes rendus
A Different Kind of Care: The Social Pediatrics
Approach
by Gilles Julien. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004.
The marketers of this book make a startling claim
that “more children in western society suffer from
the effects of poverty than from cancer, kidney disease or any other major illness” (back cover). Conceived out of the realization that health is socially
patterned by the unequal distribution of life chances,
not by differences in access to health services, social
pediatrics is a child of the marriage of traditional
pediatrics and social medicine. Social pediatric approaches see the solutions to the clinical manifestations of societal ills as lying beyond mainstream
medicine and traditional professional boundaries.
Social pediatrics “complements the traditional practice of pediatrics” (back cover), but as an approach
to care it is child-centred, community-based, and
integrated. Working with professionals and community members alike, it aims to create “a network
within the community that acts to empower children
and their families” (back cover).
In A Different Kind of Care, Dr. Gilles Julien
describes the principles of social pediatrics and outlines his approach to clinical practice. This approach, he suggests, is just an updated version of
the traditional scientific method: collecting and
analyzing data, formulating hypotheses, and implementing and evaluating an action plan. The book
features a series of case studies that exemplify the complexity of the issues that social pediatricians face, and
also illustrate the application of Julien’s method and
the need for a new approach. The clinical value of A
Different Kind of Care has been criticized. Moorehead
(2005) finds the book poorly written and of little help
to pediatricians-in-training who need more information on how to implement Julien’s method. Such criticism is perhaps overstated. There is enough substance
in the description of the approach and the associated
case studies to encourage reflective learning and to
supplement and perhaps even anchor an inquiry-based
course in social pediatrics.
277
Policy is not Julien’s focus, but there are clear
policy implications in his call for a new approach
to pediatric care. The unacknowledged context of
this book is Canada’s system of remunerating clinicians. Fee-for-service rewards simple cases where
throughput can be maximized. It is not conducive
to the types of complex, child-centred, and interdisciplinary ways of working that are essential features of the network approach advocated here. If we
accept that a new approach to pediatrics is needed,
then thought has to be given to the system of remuneration to ensure that the incentives it generates
are consistent with best clinical practice.
While Julien seeks to demonstrate that social
pediatrics is a better approach to the problems faced
by the children featured in the case studies, I was
not convinced that priority should be given to bolstering the health system as first response. The first
case study illustrates part of the problem. Mark is a
lovesick nine-year-old. His best friend, Isabel, has
moved away and Mark has lost contact with her. This
has a profound effect on Mark, who loses interest
in everything around him. “Diagnosing” this
problem took Julien just “a few minutes.” The solution lay in finding out where Isabel had moved to
and in Mark writing to her to describe how he felt.
One wonders what we have done to undermine the
school system and supports to the family that this
problem had not been dealt with adequately before
it reached the health system.
Perhaps most importantly, as the origins of the
problems discussed in the text lie “upstream” in
social and economic conditions that shape lives, the
key to their prevention lies surely in tackling the
problems at source. But Julien “has no illusions
about remaking society” (p. 88). Instead, he implies
that the damage that social inequality causes is inevitable. “Regardless of trends or countries,” he
writes, “the immutable fact remains that children
are the population group most affected by poverty”
(p. 25). It may be true that children are the worst
affected among all of those living in poverty, but it
is not true that children are always and everywhere
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the most affected by poverty. The make up of who
is poor is the result of conscious policy decisions.
In Sweden, less than 5 percent of children live in
poverty. In Canada the figure is closer to 25 percent. Certainly, we need socialized medicine of the
sort advocated by Julien to deal with the complex
problems faced by disadvantaged people, but clinicians have a powerful voice in society and perhaps
would be more effective if they also advocated for
social policies that were poverty-reducing and
health-enhancing.
REFERENCE
Moorehead, P. 2005. “A Message in Search of a Method.”
Canadian Medical Association Journal 173(2005):
789-90.
ALAN SHIELL, Professor and AHFMR Health Scientist, Population Health Intervention Research
Centre, Department of Community Health Sciences,
University of Calgary
Governing Education
by Benjamin Levin. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2005, 240 pp.
Governing Education provides an insider’s account
of how governments work and illuminates the important dynamics that drive and constrain how governments operate. Author, professor of educational
policy, and former Deputy Minister of Education
Ben Levin explains, “government is experienced less
as a set of structures and processes than as a kind of
endless bombardment of issues and events that have
to be coped with.” The impetus for this book emerges
from his concern with the high levels of cynicism
about politics as expressed in the media and the
growing distrust of government that is manifested
in declining voter turnout. He worries that this may
be an indication of public disenchantment with the
electoral democracy, with the resulting apathy of the
electorate putting democracy in peril. The intent of
this book is to improve public understanding of how
government works through an in-depth exploration
of real life accounts of government in action. Levin’s
description of the processes involved in implementing electoral promises in education, managing political issues, and advising government demonstrates
that despite the shortcomings and mistakes inherent in the process of governing, the government is
still the most powerful tool for creating and enforcing social policy. The government has been given a
mandate and mechanisms for shaping and defining
the kind of society we live in, and can contribute to
improvements in society, provided the electorate is
interested and informed.
Drawing upon his tenure as Deputy Minister of
Education for a newly elected government in Manitoba during the period of 1999–2002, Levin renders
an insightful account of the events and conditions
that governed Manitoba’s educational policy as a
way of illustrating the larger dynamics of the political process. He explains how standardized assessments were implemented, how enrolments at
community colleges were expanded, how funding
formulae were altered, how school boards were
amalgamated, and how adult learning centres were
built. He concludes by highlighting the sobering
reality that there is no guarantee that the most important substantive issues as defined by bureaucrats
will have the pizzazz to reach the public political
agenda or get the right kind of attention once there.
The stories illustrate the ways in which the dynamics of government can create difficulties and frustrations, and how good and important things can get
done when people want them to happen and are willing to work for them. Throughout the book there is
an element of optimism for both government and
the future of public education. While Levin speaks
frankly of the difficulties, obstacles, and tradeoffs
involved in the management of education, he also
provides recommendations and insights as to how
to improve the educational policy process, work
more effectively with government, and improve the
organizational culture and relations within the government bureaucracy.
The book is essentially a collection of stories
about issues that were prominent while Levin was
deputy minister, grounded in personal experience
rather than in a particular theoretical framework. The
book is useful in that it provides the unique perspective of a senior civil servant working through
the political process, providing critical insight into
what occurs below the political radar. While the focus is on issues related to governing education, the
book would appeal to a broader audience because
the kinds of dilemmas described and the ways in
which pressures are expressed and acted upon are
similar in any department or portfolio in government. Education provides an excellent case study
to examine the dynamics of the political process
because it is the second largest sector next to health,
is influenced by organized stakeholder groups, and
has a prominent place on the political agendas of
provincial and federal governments.
The book begins with election night in Manitoba
in 1999 and continues with a brief history of the
280 Reviews/Comptes rendus
contested nature of political party life. Levin chronicles the ten months prior to the election and details
the transition planning necessary for an opposition
party to become the new government. He illustrates
how new governments are caught up in the same
dynamics that shaped all previous governments, dispelling the myth that a change of politics is a matter
of electing new people—political and institutional
realities limit what they can do. In reflecting upon
the early days of a new government, Levin highlights key elements that limit and influence what
governments can do. He discusses the role of people,
public opinion, evidence, media, influence, government agendas and emerging political issues, and bureaucracy. Levin concludes that the power of
influence is perhaps the most significant factor shaping government action. He discusses the explosion
of different forms of government consultation (e.g.,
white papers, reports, public forums, task forces)
sometimes done in earnest to find out what people
think, and other times as justification or cover-up
for decisions already made.
Another key factor in how governments operate
is the intersection between politics and bureaucracy—two cultures that often clash. The lure of
electoral success and unpredictable shifts in public
opinion encourage politicians to make decisions on
tricky issues without sufficient time to do them justice. Political life is fast-paced and unpredictable,
whereas bureaucratic life is the opposite, operating
on rules, standard procedures, and careful attention
to detail. Politicians are often frustrated by the slow
pace of bureaucracies, suspicious that civil servants
may still be aligned with their opponents, and hold
them in low regard because they spent previous years
in opposition criticizing virtually everything civil
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE
servants did. Despite these adversarial relations, bureaucracies have to carry out the decisions of the
elected government, make recommendations on
what to do, and advise the minister on the potential
consequences of his/her decisions. Levin provides
a number of recommendations on how to improve
relations between elected government officials and
the civil service.
Levin concludes the book with a discussion of
ways to improve government and education. He calls
for realism in politics and government and offers
six strategies that are relevant to everyone involved
with the process of government and those trying to
influence government. The strategies include developing modest proposals that take into account the
complexity of issues and the political process, designing polices to improve accountability for mistakes that are likely to be made, increasing
opportunities for dialogue around important policy
issues, providing more support for innovation, and
thinking about political action in terms of creating
lasting change as well as short-term interest.
Levin’s book speaks to civil servants, educators,
and politicians involved in affecting positive change
in education and society, providing them with
practical advice on how to work more effectively
within the constraints of government and the political process. The unique value of the book rests with
the “real life” stories written in a style and language
that makes understanding the complexity of governing education accessible to the general public.
LYNN BOSETTI, Educational Leadership and Policy
Studies, University of Calgary
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