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A fundamental element of quality healthcare is that provision is accessible to all users and culturally sensitive to them. However, there is evidence to suggest that there is inequity of provision across all cultures. Furthermore, there is a paucity of published research in the United Kingdom concerning palliative care for minority ethnic families with a life-threatened or life-limited child or young person. The article sets out to discuss the findings of a literature review and, drawing on current work by the Centre for Children and Families Applied Research at Coventry University under the leadership of Professor Jane Coad, to explore the interface between South Asian cultures and the experience of palliative care services of children, young peoples, and families. All families require a broad range of services which are appropriately delivered and accessible throughout the trajectory of their child's illness. The literature review findings reveal that how families understand concepts such as health and disease arise from the complex interaction between personal experience and cultural lifestyle including language, family values, and faith. There is an urgent need to involve South Asian families in research in order to provide a robust evidence-base on which to develop service provision so that care is matched to the unique needs of individuals concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the first significant change to Special Educational Needs (SEN) legislation in England for over a decade, a change that promises new approaches to identification and assessment, increased parental choice and enhanced pupil outcomes. The paper aims to examine to what extent this new framework can live up to its claims in the field of emotional and behavioural difficulties. It analyses the policy context and some key details of this legislation by focussing on approaches such as person-centred planning, multi-professional collaborations and recent mental health initiatives in schools. It also explores what can be expected from the legislative requirements for collaboration between health, social care and education agencies to improve outcomes for children and young people. The paper concludes by addressing tensions between medical and social model assumptions by proposing a systemic approach to multi-agency working and an educationally oriented and integrated functional framework for identifying and assessing emotional and behavioural difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an exploratory discussion surrounding the views and experiences of women and men who work/train in the early years (0–8 years) by bringing together select findings from two independent doctoral research projects. In an effort to weave together the voices of females and males working/training in the early years sector, this paper focuses its attention on the different ways in which their working roles are constructed and the possible ways in which this leads to the imposition of gender roles upon professionals in the 0–8 workforce in England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with refused asylum seekers from Zimbabwe and Kurds from Turkey, who have stayed in Britain as irregular migrants, this paper examines everyday lives, strategies and fears. The paper focuses on four main areas: individual experiences of the asylum system leading to irregularity; living as an irregular migrant with the constraints on economic participation and limited housing options; social lives, relationships and community activities alongside the ways in which decisions about social interactions intersect with irregularity and subsistence support; the fears and everyday struggles faced by irregular migrant's living in England, and the ways in which this translates into relationships with place and space. The paper draws out both the commonalities and the diversity of experiences among refused asylum seekers living in England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To be a person with learning disabilities/special educational needs is to be vulnerable to projections of hatred from society, as we seek to disavow the damaged and imperfect in all of us. In circumstances which mirror those of other marginalised groups these projections of hate continue to the point of disabled lives being experienced as less valuable as others. In this paper, I will argue that in our current highly capitalised societies, these projections may now also be carried by those children and young people who are experiencing the effects of childhood trauma, with a recognition that a disproportionate amount of developmentally damaging trauma is undergone by children who live in poverty. This paper will reflect on my work as a child psychotherapist in primary schools in London in the UK over the past 10 years, with children and young people who have been identified as having a range of identified special needs, including social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. All have had their capacity to develop to their full potential impacted by their experiences of trauma. Bessel van der Kolk's Developmental Trauma model and Sroufe's Minnesota research will all be considered. Clinical examples will show how long-term, play based child psychotherapy can provide a valuable opportunity for children to identify and express their feelings, in the context of an empathic attuned relationship, even if traumatic experiences are ongoing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary objective: To systematically review the results of investigative research into psychosocial outcomes following paediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) in children of school-age. Methods: Searches were conducted using PsycINFO, MEDLINE and Science Direct. Three hundred and ninety papers were identified, of which 17 met inclusion criteria. Citation searches uncovered 28 further studies. All 44 studies were appraised in terms of their methodological rigour (e.g. sample characteristics, measures utilized, control groups employed). Results: The papers reviewed described outcomes across domains of behavioural, emotional, adaptive and parent/family functioning. Studies describing behavioural functioning post-injury demonstrated least consistent results. Papers examining emotional, adaptive and parent/family outcomes found that those with head injury presented with poorer functioning than other paediatric populations. Injury severity was commonly identified as a significant predictor of outcome, as were several pre-injury psychosocial factors. Conclusions: Inconsistencies in results may have arisen due to the heterogeneous populations studied and methodologies employed. Research which examines the reliability of assessment measures is needed. Given the high prevalence of difficulties, psychosocial assessment is warranted in this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives.A systematic review and synthesis of quantitative and qualitative research were undertaken to examine attitudes to deceased donation and registration as an organ donor among ethnic minorities in the UK and North America. Design.A systematic search and assessments of relevance and quality were conducted. Parallel syntheses were then undertaken of 14 quantitative and 12 qualitative papers followed by their integration. The synthesis was organised around five barriers that emerged as key issues: (1) knowledge regarding deceased donation and registration as a donor; (2) discussion of donation/registration with family members; (3) faith and cultural beliefs; (4) bodily concerns including disfigurement and intactness; and (5) trust in doctors and the health care system. Results.In all countries, knowledge of organ donation and registration remained low despite public campaigns, with African-Americans and Black African and Black Caribbean populations in the UK often regarding organ donation as a ‘white’ issue. Each of the four attitudinal barriers was also more prevalent among ethnic minorities compared with the majority population. However, the significance of trust and uncertainties regarding religion/faith differed between groups, reflecting salient aspects of ethnic identity and experiences. Differences were also identified within ethnic groups associated with age and generation, although respect for the views of elders often influenced younger peoples' willingness to donate. Conclusion.There is a need for a more nuanced understanding of ethnicity and of variations in attitudes associated with country of origin, age/generation, socio-economic status and area of residence, to inform public campaigns and promote sensitive discussions with bereaved ethnic minority families. The traditional focus on knowledge and attitudes also requires to be complemented by a greater emphasis on organisational and service-related barriers and changes required to enhance ethnic minorities' access to registration as a donor and consent to deceased donation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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International health electives pose specific ethical challenges for students travelling from to low and middle income countries. We undertook a systematic review of the literature on interventions to prepare students to identify ethical issues addressed, educational approaches and to collate evidence on the effectiveness of different strategies. We searched nine electronic databases of peer-reviewed literature and identified grey literature through key word searches; supplemented through citation mapping and expert consultation. Articles that described ethical training conducted by universities or professional bodies were included for review. We reviewed forty-four full text articles. Ten sources of published literature and seven sources of grey literature met our inclusion criteria. We identified thirteen ethical situations that students should be prepared to manage and eight generic skills to support this process. Most interventions were delivered before the elective, used case studies or guidelines. Some suggested ethical principles or a framework for analysis of ethical issues. Only two papers evaluated the intervention described. Our paper collates a small but growing body of work on education to prepare students to manage ethical issues. Ethical training should have elements that are delivered before, during and after the elective. Interventions should include case studies covering thirteen ethical issues identified here, linked to ethical principles and a process for responding to ethical issues. We suggest that evaluations of interventions are an important area for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper outlines the recent history of LGBT psychology and psychotherapy in the United Kingdom, focusing on key publications, and the current terrain, highlighting similarities and differences between the UK and the US contexts. The paper is divided into four sections: the first focuses on the early development of the field in the late 1960s. The second section explores the 1980s--a decade that witnessed the publication of two key texts that had a strong influence on the development of the field and, in particular, on the development of critical and discursive approaches. The third section details the rapid changes that occurred in the 1990s including the establishment of a Lesbian and Gay Psychology Section within the British Psychological Society. The final section considers the current terrain and the similarities and differences in the theoretical commitments of researchers and practitioners working in the UK and in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Counselling psychology is a relatively recent arrival on the professional psychological scene in Britain. This paper examines the ways in which this new branch of professional psychology has been constructed by the counselling psychology community. Articles which embodied this construction process from the 1990 and 1996 volumes of the journal Counselling Psychology Review were subjected to discourse analysis. The main themes of the 1990 articles concerned the construction of identity and legitimation, achieved largely through representations of similarity with and difference from related professions at a general level, whereas in the 1996 articles, the emphasis was on more fine-grained constructions of similarity and difference. Implications for the future construction of counselling psychology are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Working Party on Social Workers in the Local Authority Health and Welfare Services was established in 1955 to enquire into the kind of work which social workers in the health and welfare departments of local authorities should be carrying out and, because very few were qualified, to make recommendations about their recruitment and training. This paper evaluates the influence of the Report’s recommendation for 2-year training courses on the development of social work in the United Kingdom. It places the recommendation in the historical context of the period by reviewing some of the key submissions to the Working Party, highlighting the interests and concerns of social work, medical and academic bodies; responses of those bodies to the final report are analysed. The paper argues that the discussion about social work in the final report and the introduction of training courses in 1961 for social workers in the local authority health and welfare services were significant in providing an initial basis for expanding the numbers of social workers and contributing to their wider development as a single occupational group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports in the British media over the last 4 years have highlighted the schisms and contestations that have accompanied the reports of gender selective abortions amongst British Asian families. The position that sex-selection may be within the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act has particularly sparked controversy amongst abortion campaigners and politicians but equally among medical practitioners and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service who have hitherto tended to stay clear of such debates. In what ways has the controversy around gender-based abortion led to new framings of the entitlement to service provision and new ways of thinking about evidence in the context of reproductive rights? We reflect on these issues drawing on critiques of what constitutes best evidence, contested notions of reproductive rights and reproductive governance, comparative work in India and China as well as our involvement with different groups of campaigners including British South Asian NGOs. The aim of the paper is to situate the medical and legal provision of abortion services in Britain within current discursive practices around gender equality, ethnicity, reproductive autonomy, probable and plausible evidence, and policies of health reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the basic social process of "personal legitimising" and illustrates its influence on marketing activity. Personal legitimising is the process by which individuals manipulate situations to suit their own agenda. The link between personal legitimising and an organisation's marketing activity was discovered using a grounded theory research strategy within a UK management consulting firm. Personal legitimising has two groupings of behaviour, namely "obstructing existing marketing activity" and "driving new marketing activity". Within the former are the categories of "stigmatising," "pseudo endorsing" and "smokescreening". The latter incorporates the categories of "latching on," "self indulging" and "bragging" The paper has three parts The first explains the basic social process of personal legitimising The second shows how grounded theory methodology was used in this context. The third develops the possible contribution of personal legitimising to the understanding of marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates key findings from a qualitative doctoral research project exploring women's experience of infertility. Six women maintained treatment diaries, reflecting on their experiences prior to, during and beyond infertility treatment. The following key themes are identified: hopefulness, adaptation, transitioning and shifting focus. The data suggest that treatment, clinic experience and living a life 'on hold' act as turning points within the individual life course. It is at the intersection between treatment and outcome that difficulties negotiating the expected and anticipated life course become illuminated, revealing limited connectivity and transitioning through and beyond the treatment process. This is a critical focus area and one that sets the scene for effective future adaptation. The data suggest that the accessibility of supportive care moving through and beyond treatment is limited. This paper argues that the infertility clinic is a critical space and place and one where effective supportive care may enable effective transitioning beyond the experience of infertility as an unanticipated life course disruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new conceptual framework for the study of supervision, called a ‘semi-open supervision systems model’ or supervision model. It was developed for a research study funded by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) in England, UK. The supervision model was needed because the evidence base for supervision was weak and under-developed, and the theoretical base insubstantial. The supervision model was developed using systems theory and was informed by policy developments, which are normally excluded from supervision research. The research team was tasked with collecting evidence of good and/or innovative supervision at a time of significant service transformation across adult care settings in England and Northern Ireland. The research design was informed by the supervision model and researchers used a mixed methodology for data collection and analysis. This paper examines how the supervision model was developed and used in the study, and concludes by reviewing its contribution to the field of supervision study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study of the views and experiences of 21 sperm donors and five egg donors registered with UK DonorLink (UKDL), a voluntary DNA-based contact register established to facilitate contact between adults who wish to identify and locate others to whom they are genetically related following donor conception. Specifically, the paper examines donors’ reasons for searching for, or making information about themselves available to donor-conceived offspring. Their expectations of registration with UKDL, experiences of being registered and finally, the experiences of those who had contacted donor-conceived offspring and other genetic relatives are investigated. While most respondents reported largely positive experiences of registration, the study found significant issues relating to concerns about donation, DNA testing, possible linking with offspring and expectations of any relationship that might be established with offspring that have implications for support, mediation and counselling. Research that puts the experiences, perceptions and interests of gamete donors as the central focus of study is a relatively recent phenomenon. This study contributes to this debate and highlights directions for future research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the responses of nearly 1200 children and young people in Wales who were asked to identify which three famous people they most admired and which three they most disliked. Analysis of these young people's responses reveals a number of sociological and educational issues. Their selections confirm other research which has highlighted the importance of celebrities in the lives of young people. Their ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ are drawn mostly from the worlds of popular music and sport. Their choices are also highly gendered and ‘raced’. Of particular interest is the finding that someone's ‘villain’ is more than likely to be someone else's ‘hero’. Our young people's selection of heroes and villains reflects the broader landscape of celebrity culture, where female fame is as much about appearance as talent and Black and minority ethnic celebrities are to be found largely in the fields of sport or popular music. The paper concludes by discussing the chasm between our young people's ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ and those which are ‘officially sanctioned’ within the school curriculum and considers what schools and teachers might do about it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the 1980s, the primary public health response to injecting drug use in the UK has been one of harm reduction. That is, reducing the harms associated with drug use without necessarily reducing consumption itself. Rooted in a post-Enlightenment idea of rationalism, interventions are premised on the rational individual who, given the right means, will choose to avoid harm. This lies in stark contrast to dominant addiction models that pervade popular images of the ‘out of control’ drug user, or worse, ‘junkie’. Whilst harm reduction has undoubtedly had vast successes, including challenging the otherwise pathologising and often stigmatising model of addiction, I argue that it has not gone far enough in addressing aspects of drug use that go beyond ‘rational’ and ‘human’ control. Drawing on my doctoral research with people who inject drugs, conducted in London, UK, this paper highlights the role of the injecting ‘event’, which far from being directed or controlled by a pre-defined individual or ‘body’ was composed by a fragile assemblage of bodies, human and nonhuman. Furthermore, in line with the ‘event’s’ heterogeneous and precarious make-up, multiple ways of ‘becoming’ through these events were possible. I look here at these ‘becomings’ as both stabilising and destabilising ways of being in the world, and argue that we need to pay closer attention to these events and what people are actually in the process of becoming in order to enact more accountable and ‘response-able’ harm reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper frames trustworthiness as the key upstream construct of trust and recognises that trust operates at two levels in services relationships, with a number of key drivers that are mediated by trustworthiness. Our findings are supported by survey data from customers of UK financial services, with the data points captured over a number of years which allow for fluctuations in trust level. Empirically we find that trustworthiness impacts both the cognitive and affecting dimensions of trust, with the impact being greatest on cognitive trust. As a result of our findings it is possible for practitioner to implement policies to not only build trust but also deal with issues where there is a need to rebuild it, as in the case of our research setting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The world in 2010 is a very different place to 1987 when Bhugra's paper on homophobia was published. Huge shifts have occurred in society's attitudes to gender, sex, sexuality and identity - notably by the internet, changes in HIV treatment, media representation of homosexuality and feminism and the role of women in society. This paper updates the literature review on homophobia revisiting society's assumptions about homosexuals. Changes are discussed in the context of definitions of homophobia, socio-cultural and politico-legal perspectives and homophobia and medicine. New current assumptions are drawn up and offered as a way of understanding both development and limitations - whilst there has been a reduction in the fear associated with gay men and women, discrimination remains. Newer issues such as internalised homophobia, globalisation and mainstream representations of homosexuality add complexity to this ongoing concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the notion of 'haunting' to explore how even those who might be considered to be particularly individualized are inhabited by the traces of the lives of others. The paper works with a single detailed case study taken from UK based research on the personal lives and values of people living outside the conventional cohabiting couple. It develops a psycho-social-analysis of interviews with Ben, a black English man in his 50s who is a 'strong' case of the individualization of personal life. Ben represents himself as highly self-reliant and self-sufficient, yet his narratives repeatedly return to the central importance of his long dead father; the paper suggests that his interviews, and his subjectivity, are 'haunted' by the ghost of his father. It explores the ways in which conflicted issues of gendered and racialized belonging and identification, and questions of ethical subjectivity, are worked out in relation to his dead father. The paper is informed by psychoanalytic and sociological writing on psychic and socio-cultural processes of haunting, particularly the work of Christopher Bollas and Avery Gordon. It contributes to the re-thinking of sociological theories of individualization, challenging sociology to take seriously a psychoanalytically inspired ontology of relationality, and the impacts of past relationships on subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to focus on the politics of exclusion by opening up a debate about black perspectives in social work and articulates a comparative assessment between the UK and USA which includes contributions from social and political theory, particularly the 'politics of recognition'. The paper begins by mapping the territory denoted in the growth of 'studies' in sociology and academia. Following these discussions, I review criticisms and possibilities of anti-racist social work and black perspectives to argue that in the British context, the dilution of anti-racist social work into a discriminatory practice framework undermined the place of black perspectives in social work education. In the next section, a reframing of black perspectives is envisaged with implications for social work learning and practice. By attending to these issues, social work learning and practice can support a more inclusive approach to professional knowledge which recognizes changing patterns of social life, complexity and multiple perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an autoethnographic approach and drawing on principles of reflective practice, this paper illustrates how a long-standing professional involvement in community education evolved into a personal search for meaning that included engagement with the concept of spirituality. It re-views typologies of community education developed in the UK in the 1980s and argues that, when they are viewed holistically, a spiritual dimension is implicit in them. The paper suggests that spirituality needs to be addressed as a dimension of educational practice and research in order to keep pace with growing popular interests and emergent thinking in the natural sciences. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference. (Frost 1920) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the shifting nature of Further Education (FE) professionalism through the lenses of the Transforming Learning Cultures in FE (TLC) project. Despite over a decade of market and managerial reform professionalism in FE remains an elusive and paradoxical concept. With some notable exceptions there exists little official data or research evidence of who its practitioners are, their dispositions or how they define professionalism in the contested contexts of their work. In addressing this neglected issue, albeit in a brief fashion here, the paper engages with wider debate concerning the culturally oriented nature of FE practice, as it mediates contradictory policy agendas, at college level. The paper highlights some of the paradoxes involved in a public management discourse that seeks to modernize FE professionals whilst, at the same time, displaying little understanding of their current practice or contexts in which they work. Drawing on the narratives of experienced practitioners participating in the TLC project (2001-2005) the paper explores their perceptions and experiences of professionalism through cultures of learning that simultaneously enhance and restrict their professional room for manoeuvre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sport spectator experience is one that is widely held to involve "live" presence at a sporting event, and that the raison detre of sports spectating is to witness events live and in person. This paper builds on a previous ethnography of football spectating in the pub to develop a theoretical basis for the suggestion that sports spectating is as much about shared experience as it is about live presence. In doing so, it utilises perspectives from tourism literature relating to the nature of proximity and to the importance of being able to re-live and re-tell experiences. The paper concludes that whilst the pub as a spectator venue can provide a proximity to the sport spectating experience, the longevity of the experience in terms of its value as an experience to be re-told is significantly shorter than being able to say that one has "been there" at a live event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a neurophysiological research, which specifically examines the biological mechanisms that cause fatigue and its treatment, by a group of researchers in Great Britain. The study found out that after a brain injury, fatigue is the common complaint of patients. Several factors had contributed to the indepth discovery and investigation of the disorder. There is a need for a collaboration among researchers who are interested in the physiology and the psychology of fatigue.

This paper will discuss examples of mental health training developed and co-produced in active partnership with two communities, one in Britain and one in Sri Lanka. This work has taken place in community settings, not within the consulting room. The learning had a bi-directional flow; through these partnerships, both partners/groups shared and developed their understanding of different cultures, idioms of distress, explanatory mental health models and ways of dealing with these. This expanded everyone's knowledge, understanding, and repertoires of practice. The work in Britain was audited through a range of psychometric tests and that in Sri Lanka through questionnaires. Semi-structured interviews also took place with both groups as did meetings with a range of key informants. Working beyond the clinic can benefit people, who have obliquely been labeled, as 'hard to reach' groups and who may find it difficult to access mental health services or who find services inappropriate. Therefore, community groups may be well-positioned to bridge this gap in non-stigmatizing, accessible and culturally appropriate ways. Evidence has begun to emerge suggesting that mental health services developed in conjunction with service users and the wider community may lead to better usage, more appropriate and accessible services, and to an improved sense of inclusivity. The implications of this for the global mental health debate will be briefly considered as will health pluralism and the importance of language and using a mother tongue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deliberate firesetting research predominantly focuses on apprehended populations. In contrast, this paper focuses on the prevalence and characteristics of un-apprehended firesetters living in the UK. Social media was utilized to recruit 232 participants for an online questionnaire. Two hundred and twenty-five people answered a question relating to deliberate firesetting. Forty participants (17.78%) indicated that they had ignited a deliberate fire and were classified as un-apprehended firesetters. Firesetting was most common in childhood and adolescence. Relative to non-firesetters, un-apprehended deliberate firesetters were more likely to report; a diagnoses of a psychiatric illness, a diagnosis of a behavioural problem, having been suspended from school, a history of suicide attempts, experimenting with fire before the age of 10 years old, and having a family member who also ignited a deliberate fire. Un-apprehended firesetters also scored significantly higher compared to non-firesetters on theFire Setting Scaleand theFire Proclivity Scale[Gannon, T. A., & Barrowcliffe, E. R. (2012). Firesetting in the general population: The development and validation of the Fire Setting and Fire Proclivity Scales.Legal and Criminological Psychology,17(1), 105–122], theFire Interest Rating Scale[Murphy, G. H., & Clare, I. C. H. (1996). Analysis of motivation in people with mild learning disabilities (mental handicap) who set fires.Psychology, Crime & Law,2(3), 153–164], theNovaco Anger Scale and Provocation Inventory[Novaco, R. W. (2003). The Novaco AngerScaleandProvocation Inventory: NAS-PI. Los Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services], theBoredom Proneness Scale – Short Form[Vodanovich, S. J., Wallace, J. C., & Kass, S. J. (2005). A confirmatory approach to the factor structure of the Boredom Proneness Scale: Evidence for a two-factor short form.Journal of Personality Assessment,85(3), 295–303], and theMeasure of Criminal Attitudes and Associates Scale[Mills, J. F., & Kroner, D. G. (1999). Measures of criminal attitudes and associates: User guide. Unpublished instrument and user guide]. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Children identified with special educational needs (SEN) and behavioural difficulties present extra challenges to educators and require additional supports in school. This paper presents views from special educational needs coordinators (SENCos) on various strategies used by educators to support children identified with SEN and problematic behaviours. The data were collected from telephone interviews with six SENCos from the UK’s South West Peninsula. The SENCos were invited to participate because their school was participating in a cluster-randomised trial of a teacher classroom management course (Incredible Years). Using thematic analysis to analyse the data, this paper illustrates strategies deemed by SENCos to be successful in the support of children identified with SEN. The management strategies generated by participating SENCos were then mapped onto those taught as part of the classroom management course for comparison. Findings indicate that strategies from the training programme appear to be appropriate for children identified with both SEN and behavioural difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the first half of this paper the evidence concerning the costs of job insecurity is presented. There is now sufficient good research data to conclude that job insecurity is damaging to psychological health, marriages and employee motivation, and contributes to 'cycles of disadvantage'. In the second half of this paper, flows out of secure and insecure jobs are analysed using a work-histories dataset. Not only is it the case that flows from secure to insecure jobs were more common in the 1980s than in the 1970s and 1960s, but it is also apparent that the risk of a transition from a secure job into an insecure job is much greater for those in less advantaged jobs. The negative consequences of this further polarisation of the UK labour market are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adult participation in higher education has frequently entailed mature students studying part time in lower-ranked institutions. In England, higher education policies have increasingly emphasised higher education provision in vocational further education colleges, settings which have extensive adult traditions but which mainly teach employment-based skills and are widely regarded as 'outside' higher education. This paper interrogates the significance of these dimensions of college higher education, through a qualitative study of identity formation by adult part-time students. Their accounts, developed through individual interviews and focus groups, emphasised the significance of work to their interpretations of higher education participation: these are compared here to a range of conceptualisations of identity that have been applied in relation to work organisations. This analysis indicates some of the ways in which pathways which adults may interpret as meaningful in terms of work-related identities may correspondingly be constrained by a narrow discourse of work-based skills and credentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is understood about social work students or social workers' perceptions of ageing in the UK. This paper presents a small-scale study of 20 master social work students' perceptions of ageing during the first year of their programme. A mixed method approach was employed over a two-staged research project, in both stages the social work students were asked to complete Kogan's attitudes towards older people scale (KATOPS) and draw a person aged 75. Results demonstrated that most students had neutral to positive attitudes towards older people at the beginning of the programme and these improved in stage two; all had positive attitudes. The drawings provided a visual narrative of their perceptions of older people; visual signifiers included physical signs of ageing. Fulfilment, emotion, family, individuality and appearance were emergent themes. Whilst the programme enhanced the students' perceptions more work is needed to dispel the myths and stereotypes about ageing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mental health of migrant communities is an important public health concern. A growing body of literature suggests that social and cultural determinants of health significantly contribute to the mental health and wellbeing of older migrants in their host countries. Despite the increasing population of older Nepalese migrants in the UK, there is little research exploring the mental health needs of this community. This article explores older Nepalese women’s experiences of drivers of mental distress in London. Data was collected using in-depth interviews with 20 older Nepalese women living in the London Borough of Greenwich. Grounded thematic analysis of women’s narratives identified six overarching factors contributing to their emotional distress that pose potential risks to their mental health: absence of family, language barriers, housing problems, physical illness, lack of appropriate support, fears of death, and inadequate financial resources. In many cases, the impact of these factors was experienced in combination rather than isolation, often influenced by cultural dynamics. Findings highlight that re-settlement in the absence of family is at the heart of emotional challenges for older Nepalese women. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations for supporting processes of settlement to mitigate this risk among older Nepalese women in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's sexting is an area of increasing concern amongst parents, educationalists and policy makers, yet little research has been conducted with young people themselves to explore their perspectives on the support they need to navigate relationships in the new digital media landscape. To address this absence, an inter-disciplinary team of researchers undertook a participatory study with students, aged 13 to 15, in a UK secondary school. This paper outlines key study findings, including young people's views on sexting, their recommendations for improved education around sexting in schools, their preferred sources of support, and their perspectives on the way adults should respond to young people's sexting. Findings indicate that sexting education needs to be developed within the context of wider relationship issues, such as gender, power dynamics and trust between peers, and improved communication between students and teachers or other responsible adults. Findings may be used to consider ways of designing and communicating messages around sexting to young people within and beyond educational settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the development of staff consultation in the context of an innovative residential childcare pathway within a local authority in the United Kingdom. A preceding attempt to develop group consultations in residential homes has been expanded upon and enhanced as part of implementing a broader therapeutic residential service model. A wide-ranging training programme and consultations have been developed for residential childcare workers to introduce and embed therapeutic ideas. Systemic therapy and attachment theory ideas have been used explicitly through exploring with staff how these approaches can inform practice, and implicitly by providing a framework of consultation to inform and expand individual and team thinking. Promoting reflective practice through group consultations has highlighted complex challenges, stimulating opportunities as well as a need to consider multiple levels of context. Recommendations from this learning are discussed to help inform practice in new and existing residential services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residential child care is an inherently distressing and multi-layered endeavour undertaken by staff who are often poorly trained and supported. In addition, the children, and the adults who care for them, can provide a convenient receptacle for the split off negative feelings of professionals, politicians and the public. The complexity and difficulty of this work is often unrecognised and a simplistic response based on a programmatic, behavioural framework, reinforced by performance-based management and an audit culture, is common. This paper argues for the usefulness of a different approach, drawing on psychoanalytic and open systems thinking, to provide a more nuanced understanding of what is happening in these volatile settings that can guide interventions which match the complexity of the work. Alongside advocating the use of key psychoanalytic and systems concepts to improve understanding, it argues for the importance of providing a containing and reflective environment for staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiences of autism-spectrum disorder are now increasingly studied by social scientists. Human-animal relations have also become a major focus of social inquiry in recent years. Examining horse-assisted therapy for autistic spectrum disorders, this is the first paper that brings these fields together. Drawing on participant observation and interviews at a UK horse therapy Centre, this article examines how staff and the parents of riders account for the successes and limitations of equine therapy. To the respondents, horses ‘open up’ autistic children and make possible interactions that seemed impossible before. Horses were regarded as facilitating the emergence of apparently social behaviours, which included eye contact, pointing, and speech. Three key explanations emerged for therapeutic success: the sensorial, embodied experience of riding the horse; the specific movements and rhythms of the horse; and, the ‘personality’ of the horse. Equine therapy can be regarded as enabling a form of multispecies intersubjectivity, with the resonance between rider and horse seeming to make possible a new attunement between humans. Practices of equine therapy, and perceptions of its efficacy, serve in turn to attune social scientists to a version of empathy constituted through lively and sensorial interactions, as opposed to one that is restricted to particular kinds of humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Employment for people with learning difficulties is considered key to their social inclusion. This contradicts the perceived un-employability of people with learning difficulties that has been part of their social identities throughout their history hitherto. The national rate of employment for people with learning difficulties remains extremely low and has barely changed in the 20 years between 1990 and 2010. This paper investigates links between learning disabilities and employment, drawing on interview-based research. It analyses the quality of experience of the minority in employment to consider whether employment can serve the inclusive purpose expected of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the social psychological aspects of British national identification among British South Asians, which constitutes the largest ethnic minority group in Britain. Identity process theory can elucidate the social and psychological ‘functions’ of Britishness for social actors, offering a holistic account of national identification within this population. The paper provides a discussion of nationhood and the construction of national identity, temporal factors in national identification, its cognitive and affective aspects, the psychological ‘functionality’ of Britishness, and its social representations. It is argued that a civic, instrumental conception of Britishness might facilitate access to this identity among British South Asians. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The World Health Organization’s Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion has been considered a seminal document and template for health promotion since its inception and is still seen as a “gold standard” for health promoters worldwide who wish to improve health and reduce inequalities. Although its principles have been widely applauded, opportunities to transfer these principles into the radical changes and practical solutions needed globally to improve health have been missed. This paper examines how the Charter has influenced United Kingdom health care policies by examining two of the Charter’s key strategies, creating healthy environments and reorientating health services. In the UK, currently, there remains an over emphasis on personal responsibility and behaviour change, rather than tackling fundamental societal-wide issues. Nevertheless, it is argued that the Ottawa Charter retains its relevance to the present day and that all policy makers and professionals working to promote positive health should revisit and take heed of its principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of psychosocial environments to health outcomes - physical health, mental health and wellbeing, and health behaviours - has been increasingly recognised in recent years, but more so in relation to the workplace than other settings. This paper seeks to extend this field of inquiry both conceptually and empirically. it argues that housing and neighbourhoods can equally be viewed as comprising an important residential psychosocial environment operating via processes of appearance, perceived relative position, control, status and empowerment. The paper goes on to demonstrate this approach by looking at the relationships between housing and neighbourhood psychosocial risk factors and psychosocial benefits and mental wellbeing for residents in relatively deprived areas. A range of psychosocial factors are positively associated with mental wellbeing, with the most important being: the attainment of feelings of residential and personal progress; having a sense of control at home; and the aesthetic qualities of the dwelling and neighbourhood environment. Empowerment in relation to both one's landlord and local area changes were both also important, although slightly less strongly associated with mental wellbeing. The perceived relative position of the dwelling and neighbourhood had the least strong associations with mental wellbeing once aspects of quality were taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has demonstrated that all 16 psychological types are preparing for or engaged in the exercise of Christian ministry. Drawing on Jungian psychological-type theory, this paper suggests that each of the 16 types may approach ministry in ways that reflect both the unique strengths and the unique weaknesses of that type. The thesis is tested by developing a detailed analysis of the ministry profile associated with one of the 16 types, the INTJ minister. On the basis of this analysis of one specific type, the paper recommends the value and wisdom of examining the other 15 types in a similar manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 2015, a new statutory duty was sanctioned in the UK for a range of professional practitioners, including social workers, to pay ‘due regard to preventing terrorism’. The duty has contributed to a shifting of social work practice and decision-making from the fields of advocacy and promotion of ethics, social justice and human rights, towards risk-work more analogous to that of the security services. Social workers are caught up in pre-emptive risk work, operating in a pre-crime space. Further, an ‘ethic of silence’ has emerged because social workers are not speaking back or challenging the duty due to the ensnared nature of the dominant securitised discourses, which prevent counter-discourses from emerging. Utilising an autoethnographic approach, this paper shows that the new duty is reorganising and rearranging new networks of practitioners with securitisation a dominant feature, and this significantly affects practice decisions. Latour’s actor network theory (ANT) helps us to examine the ethical and practical implications for decision-making. Shifting notions of ethics, rights and as yet unforeseen consequences of PREVENT concern us. This being said, humane and socially just social work practice within the duty is possible; strengths-based risk practices provide practical and ethical ways forward and these are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The term ‘thinspiration’ is used within the pro-anorexia (pro-ana) community to classify images of slenderness that represent aspects of anorexic experience and/or idealise extreme to emaciated slender bodies. This paper discusses thinspiration via an analysis of 1990s grunge culture and its stylisation of subjective crisis. By reflecting on some of the meanings associated with British fashion's figure of ‘the waif’, it argues that images of extremely slender bodies presented in pro-ana thinspiration menus can be located within a discursive field where distress is a problematic signifier of subjective agency and power. It suggests that although some strategies of the pro-ana community are aligned with the feminist challenge to the dominant gaze and its demand for slender femininities, some images of anorexic distress, such as those found in the category of ‘real girl’ thinspiration, have the potential to reproduce oppressive representational strategies and sustain a view in which damage to women's bodies is promoted as a source of identity. As thinspiration is produced largely online and by women themselves, this paper calls for a renewed focus on the debate about the impact of slender ideals not only on women as consumers but also as producers of images. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is now good evidence that some religious ideas and perspectives have an influence on their adherents’ ability to cope with life stresses. However, there have been few attempts to explain this effect by recourse to experimentally-tested models of human cognition. In the present paper, the author argues that this shortfall both limits the usefulness of statistically-based studies and impedes the acceptance of religious or spiritual care as part of healthcare practice. A model based on that developed by cognitive psychologists of religion is subjected to initial, inductive testing in terms of its ability to explain some of the essential features and counter-intuitive results from the research literature on religious coping. The author concludes that, in the particular context represented by an individual in hospital, the model has significant explanatory potential and clarifies some recurring themes in the literature on coping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether voters mobilized by a Get Out The Vote (GOTV) campaign continue to turn out in a subsequent election. It thereby tests the extent to which they gain the habit of voting. The research examined electoral registers in the 2006 English local elections in the constituency of Wythenshawe and Sale East. This was the site of John and Brannan's (2007) GOTV experiment, which had compared the impact of telephoning and door-to-door canvassing in the 2005 General Election. Descriptive statistics show that the downstream effect of the treatment was quite small at 3% in 2006. But the habit effect was large. Voting in 2005 raised the probability of voting in 2006 by more than half. Regression analysis confirms the size of the habit effect. The paper discusses the limitations of sample size in making statistical inferences about the prevalence of the habit effect in one location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The teaching of qualitative methods is now a required element of degree courses in the UK which seek to gain professional accreditation. This paper reports the work of a network group focused on enhancing the teaching of qualitative methods at the undergraduate level. Following a brief summary of the results of a survey into current teaching practices we indicate potential areas of resource support with linked references to examples produced by the network group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes its point of departure from the importance for stable democracy of citizens' confidence in the probity of public office holders and from the growing public concerns in this area since the early 1990s. Against this background, the paper seeks to offer, for the British case, an 'inventory' of (a) what is currently known about citizens' perceptions and attitudes in this area and (b) the legislative responses which, since the early 1990s, have responded to public concerns. Starting with a series of reflections on the possible causes of growing public anxieties, the paper explores what we know about how these anxieties have been articulated, and then suggests some possible ways in which, paradoxically, attempts to address the anxieties may actually have served to enhance them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]