Dr Doug Martin

Family Drug and Alcohol Courts (FDAC) were introduced to England in 2008 following their development in the USA. Pilots launched across the country adopted a family-based strategy with the aim to improve outcomes for children that live with parents who misuse substances or alcohol. The numbers of children entering the care system has increased with ‘subsequent new borns’ being a particular concern frequently becoming ‘looked after’ by the state at birth. This article will focus upon an initial phase of a study that tracked the establishment of an FDAC pilot. It reveals how the FDAC team collaborated with Judges and a diversity of professionals and parents to create conditions through which ground-breaking practice was forged. The environment created is unique as it is one fully set within the context of each family’s lived experience. Through this approach parents have become full participants in court proceedings as opposed to purely subject to them. As a result, significant numbers of children have remained with or been returned to their families.

English school policy since 1988 has increasingly been defined in neoliberal terms, with an emphasis on markets, competition, and education in its narrowest sense (ENS). However, for a brief interlude from 2005 to 2010, school leaders were challenged by a new Extended Schools (ES) policy to look outside their classrooms and beyond their school gates and to consider education from a wider perspective. This article, based on research in four communities, examines how schools responded to this policy change, through developing ES partnerships, and engaging with community-based organisations and the community itself. The learning from this research undertaken across diverse schools and communities covering this unique period points to what a ‘new public school’ might be and the conditions it might need to successfully evolve.