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This thesis takes a feminist approach to researching the use of self with fifteen cisgendered professional youth and community workers who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or queer (LGBQ). It examined their understanding of their journeys towards their current sexual identities and how they used these identities and other aspects of their self in their youth work. The core values of youth work require professionals to develop reciprocal and authentic relationships as they work alongside young people in young people’s journeys towards adulthood. This study, focussing on the experiences of these LGBQ youth workers, examined how the self was used on a daily basis within their professional contexts. Rich data was gathered through semi-structured in-depth interviews with these fifteen women who all worked in the north of England. A template approach to thematic analysis (drawing on King & Horrocks, 2010) was used to draw out five key themes from stories told by these women youth workers. These included: first the resilience of these women through their own childhood and adolescence as they came to an awareness of their LGBQ sexuality. The second: the usefulness of understanding the experiences and current identities of these youth workers from an intersectional approach as each women’s experiences was a unique combination of a range of socioeconomic and cultural factors with their LGBQ identity such as social class, ethnicity, religion and age. The third theme was the impact of colleagues and partner agencies as the youth workers negotiated how to share important information regarding their LGBQ sexuality and other personal matters with young people. The fourth theme: the importance of their continual and critical reflections on the fluid boundaries between the personal and professional lives as they developed useful and transformational relationships with young people. The final theme the challenge of working in a context where change continually impacts on their working situation. Many of these themes will be useful for trainers and managers of youth and community workers. Some themes developed knowledge already in the field whilst other themes were new insights for youth and community work educators, managers. The new themes include bringing a focus to LGBQ issues within the youth work literature; a focus on intersectional theory in understanding how youth workers name their selves (as discussed in Hatton & Monro, 2019) and understanding how LGBQ youth workers apply boundaries and ethics in their day-to-day work. It is hoped that the findings from this research will assist in supporting all youth workers as they use their self, their myriad different and varied identities, in their professional role. This is a role which is important in supporting young people in their journeys from adolescence to adulthood and in supporting young people to be much needed catalysts for change in the early 21st century.

This thesis enquires into the application of concepts and practices associated with psychoanalysis (as a broad therapeutic tradition linked by a concern for what is unconscious) in qualitative social work research. It is specifically concerned with the theory and practice of psychoanalytically-informed research interviewing. The first half of thesis considers the application of free association and the use of therapeutic interpretation in interviews. It also provides a critical account of Hollway and Jefferson’s (2000, 2013) “free association narrative interview method” - a well-known approach to research interviewing and analysis (at least amongst scholars interested in the extrapolation of psychoanalytic principles to extra-clinical qualitative research) that is grounded in a framework combining aspects of psychoanalytic and discursive psychology. The second half of the thesis then relates findings from an empirical study informed by this method which sought to explore how children’s services professionals experience the suffering of parents in their work via 33 interviews with 15 participants. The reporting of this research allows for further consideration of how interview narratives can be understood from a psychoanalytically-informed perspective, and how participants experience being the subjects of this type of study. It also illustrates how insights from psychoanalytically based psycho-social theory can be used for enquiring into the ways in which parents figure in the minds of children’s services professionals and how their capacity to hold the suffering parent in mind relates to working conditions and practices, and individual and organisational psychodynamics. Overall, in addressing these different tasks, the thesis makes a contribution, firstly, in rectifying a lack of critical concern amongst social work researchers with the free association narrative interview method. Secondly, and more broadly, it develops and refines understanding about the relationship between psychoanalysis and qualitative research interviewing, the quasi-therapeutic qualities of research interview participation, and the nature of psycho-social understanding in social work research.

Grounded in Piagetian epistemology, a key aim of this thesis was to better understand the complex constructs of well- and ill-being. According to Deci and Ryan (2000) the quality of our well-being is fundamental to how much we consider ourselves to be functioning optimally. Yet little is known concerning how children and adolescents conceptualise well- and ill-being. To address this limitation, the overarching aim of this thesis was to develop an assessment tool for use with children and adolescents to meaningfully, validly and reliably measure youngsters' well- and ill-being via the concepts and words of young people themselves. In Chapter 2, an indicator of well-being (i.e., the subjective vitality scale) often employed with younger populations, was examined in terms of measurement invariance. Findings suggested differences between children and adolescents well-being scores warranted further investigation. In Chapters 3 and 4, a developmental approach was used to explore children's (7-11 years) and adolescents (12-18 years) understanding and experience of well- and ill-being. A developmental trajectory in well- and ill-being was revealed, which holds implications for valid and reliable assessment in research and practice contexts. Using the young people's descriptors of well- and ill-being derived an initial questionnaire was presented in Chapter 4. A set of studies presented in Chapter 5 details the development of two multidimensional measures of well- and ill-being (MMWIB-C), one for children and another version for adolescents (MMWIB-A). Evidence of validity and reliability of the new measure(s) outlined in Chapter 5 is promising, suggesting the MMWIB has the potential to validly record and report on the well- and ill-being of children and adolescents in future.

Following the Munro Review of Child Protection in England in 2011, the appointment of a Principal Child and Family Social Worker was recommended to provide practice leadership across child protection social work with children and families. Since this time, the experience of local authorities has varied greatly in the interpretation and implementation of the role. Using a multi-method qualitative approach, this study considered the views and perspectives of Senior Managers in the conception and implementation, and the experience of PCFSWs in undertaking the role, to interrogate the following research questions: - How has the role of PCFSW been implemented? - What does the implementation tell about management, leadership and professional status? - What does the implementation reveal about boundary spanning, organisational change, and complexity? - What are the implications for future policy development? The wider context of continuing changes in legislation, policy, regulation, and DfE lead reform was considered. Building on the systems approach advocated by Munro, this research was conceptualised with reference to boundary spanning and complexity theory. The findings suggest that current policy and practice in child protection social work has evolved in a closed system, where compliance and the features of managerialism prevail. In contrast, frontline practitioners more readily operate in a complex system. Tensions between the two perspectives continue such that the aspirations for reform instigated by Munro and articulated by the participants in this study have not been fully achieved. Such aspirations may not be achievable when one part of the wider system needs to be open and adaptive, while the authority in the system seeks to be controllable, and hence closed. These tensions are reflected in current DfE policy initiatives. Given this, it is unlikely that one role, the PCFSW, can singularly effect such change within the organisation or the wider system.

Individuals who have been in care are often thought of as a homogenous group who, because of past and ongoing contextual adversities, have outcomes reflecting hardship in various do mains. Aggregated outcomes may conceal the presence of individuals within this group who develop life projects and are able to put plans into action. Some manage to succeed educationally and take up places on university course. This research seeks to explore the reflexivity, internal conversations and social networks of young people who had been in care but had managed to become students at university. Five young people were interviewed using Archer’s (2003, 2007) semi-structured internal conversation inter view and then using Hartman’s (1978) ecogram to graphically represent their social network. Data was analysed using Robinson and Smith’s (2010) composite analysis, which incorporates elements of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (2015) and the Inter active Model (Miles and Huberman (1995)). The young people’s accounts showed that they were proudly independent, demonstrating considerable personal agency, but were well connected and able to access emotional and practical support in their social networks. They felt different to others and managed their difficult histories in a variety of ways. The results are considered in relationship to Archer’s theory and theories of resilience.

This qualitative research study into professional youth work identities and practices offers an insider perspective on the youth work community of practice. The research inquiry adopts a socially constructivist theoretical framework and was contextualised by the political and socio-economic climate in the north-west of England in 2013. Seventeen professionally-qualified youth workers took part in focus groups and interviews that were audio-recorded and transcribed, producing data for both thematic and discursive analyses. The data seeks to shed light on personal, professional and political dimensions of youth work identities; the professional knowledge used by youth workers, evidence of the value of youth work and the discursive construction of youth work accounts. Noticeably, the youth workers’ descriptions and explanations of their practice portrayed the formative influence of biography and learning in shaping their journey into youth work. They expressed commitment to reflective practice and had passion for youth work, espousing roles as listeners, advocates and informal educators in evolving practice situations. Moreover, some innovative youth work responses to young people’s needs were being recognised in some formal inter-agency contexts. Nevertheless, the data depicted youth workers conjuring up ‘the blitz spirit’ to deal with funding shortfalls that created feelings of being ‘the poor relation’ at times and finding themselves ‘fighting the corner’ against the onset of managerial preoccupations with targeting and outcome measures that side-lined the professional value base. The discursive lens illuminated the dialogical interaction that was positioning speakers in the discourse and constructing social and professional identities. It was evident that these were animated accounts of practice, infused with evocative imagery and capturing vibrant youth work voices that articulated the youth work point of view, an under-represented perspective in wider discourses on work with young people.

Youth-led provision within organisations that serve young people is not a new concept. However, the majority of youth-led work is project-based or within educational institutions, and little research exists regarding systemic youth-led work within non-educational youth organisations. This research followed a youth centre in North West England during its transition from a practitioner-led model to a more youth-led model. The aims of this research were to identify and analyse the logics and rationalities, practices and processes, and relationships that facilitated and/or hindered the process of change at the centre. The research began as a participant action research (PAR) project, which concluded abruptly mid-way through data collection. In collaboration with the youth centre, it morphed into an ethnography that examined youth-led work in the wider centre. The first contribution to knowledge is the analysis of the process of change using a complexity framework, which found that certain kinds of interactions heavily influenced the character of the centre and thus the process of change. The second contribution is in illustrating the way in which young people can realise their ability for youth leadership as an organic process rooted in context of their own interests and priorities.

This thesis reports on the first study into the role of self-conscious emotions, namely pride, shame, guilt, humiliation, and embarrassment, in social work practice. Employing a qualitative case study research design, involving the safeguarding service of one local authority, ethnographic constructionist grounded theory methods were used to develop a conceptual understanding of these emotional experiences in the practice of the social workers involved. Integrating data from 246.5 hours of observations, 99 diary entries, 33 assessments written by the social workers, 19 interviews, and 329 pages of documents relating to the organisation, this study analyses the context for these emotional experiences within the case study site, how they were experienced, and their influence on the social workers’ practice. It argues that these emotional experiences are inherently part of practice, influencing what the social workers did and how they did it, which could be manipulated by others to regulate the social workers’ identities so that they acted in institutionally ‘appropriate’ ways. While some social workers felt proud to act in such a manner in some contexts, often resulting in a difficult experience for the parents, most social workers felt constrained, believing they were no longer doing social work, and in some contexts sought to resist the institutional expectations.

Recent UK policy rhetoric has emphasised the need for wider society to recognise their shared responsibility for the well-being and safety of young people. This thesis explores the ways in which communities can have an impact upon the welfare of local children and young people in a particular, non-deprived commuter suburb. Government policies in England and Wales have asserted that children’s well-being is ‘everybody’s business’. Similarly, political rhetoric in England about the ‘big society’ and neighbourhood based programmes in Wales have echoed this shift in responsibility for improving children’s lives from central government to local communities, although both are ambiguous about how this should be done. Drawing on primary, qualitative research, this thesis explores how communities facilitate the well-being of children in a non-deprived, modern suburban neighbourhood in South Wales. The ethnographically driven study included interviews with 35 residents and over 200 hours of observation in a variety of community settings. The findings suggest that in Newtown Common there are a number of ways in which community can be conceptualised as influencing the well-being of children and young people in its midst. These include the role of: the social and environmental hazards in the neighbourhood, in the built environment; the ensuring of children’s safety and access to facilities by community organisations and those that work in the area; and the value of local informal networks of support for children and families. The thesis concludes by reflecting on the methodological, sociological and policy implications of these messages.

This thesis uses a Foucauldian approach to explore how lay people construct child neglect in England. The concept of child neglect developed after the Industrial Revolution in conjunction with the construction of ‘normal’ childhood. Both depend on developmental models of childhood produced by psy-complex discourse. However, the knowledge producing the ‘normal’ family and the disciplinary institutions producing and protecting the ‘normal’ childhood have been challenged by late modernity, with a potential impact on what can be considered ‘abnormal’ and therefore neglectful. Recent years have seen an increasing professional and political focus on both the importance of child neglect, and the role of lay people in child protection – ‘everybody’s business’. It is unclear how lay people construct child neglect, a category that properly results from political and moral choices made by society. To analyse how lay people construct child neglect, data was collected from focus group discussions between 46 self-defined ‘lay’ people. Children were constructed as having developmental needs during childhood, which, if unmet, could cause long term problems for child and society. Four clusters of needs were identified: physical, emotional, training and supervisory. If these needs were unmet, children could be seen as Deprived, Unloved, Uncontrolled or Escaping. However, this did not mean they were positioned as neglected. Neglect required some abnormal adult/parent behaviour. The normal parent was non-neglectful although sometimes temporarily Overburdened, the abnormal parent was neglectful, categorised as Clueless, Underinvested or Unsuitable. Lay people were constructed as having a responsibility to support parents and families within their midst. However the forces of late modernity, particularly globalisation, challenged the normal/abnormal family binary, leaving lay people unclear about where society and/or child protection professionals draw the line between normal and neglectful childhoods. The implications of these constructions for children, parents, state, professionals and lay people are examined and recommendations made.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, 15-19 year-olds account for a large segment for the growing population. The region has the world's highest rates of early child-bearing, with more than 50 percent giving birth before the age of 20. Adolescents who become pregnant must drop out of school. Health problems, lack of education and the responsibilities of parenthood combine to further restrict their life options. Sierra, Leone, being a Sub-Saharan country does not only perpetuate the same problems, but the situation is exacerbated by her adverse economy, political instability, endemic corruption, inequalities to access resources and the generally very low literacy rates to which females contribute the most. In this thesis, the author's argument is that despite the government's intention to improve female education in particular, administrative inequalities and financial constraints experienced all over the country will prove inhibitive, as girls will continue to be excluded from enrolment ratios as well as drop out from the school system. A field study was undertaken to investigate whether teenagers who drop out of the system because of pregnancy or related issues would welcome the continuation of formal education to achieve their desired goals. Questionnaires for In-school and Out-of-school Respondents were used to investigate perceptions and actualities. Problems encountered included limitations to the field study caused by the war which was current. Lack of proper and concise data in the country constituted a great obstacle to the researcher's work progress. The findings revealed that researches into education for young women who drop out of school needs to be given more attention by the government and academics, for the development of a structured approach which would be integrated into the education system. Education is central to social progress and national developmental and unless education is provided in its entirety, the country's development will continue to stagnate