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44 J. Soc. Welfare & Fam. L. 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/jnlosclwl44 and id is 1 raw text is: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE AND FAMILY LAW Routledne 2022, VOL. 44, NO. 1, 1-2 https://doi.org/10.1080/09649069.2022.2028390 Taylor & Francis Group 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 © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group