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Despite dropping crime rates and prison muster, pretrial population rates in New Zealand are growing faster than in other OECD nations, risking negative impacts on defendants and communities. Fourteen defendants and 18 stakeholders were interviewed about a bail support service's strengths and weaknesses. Officer‐training quality, communication between stakeholders and access to practical and cultural resources were crucial to success. Defendants reported that professional staff support and having access to services were the most helpful aspects. Changes were positive overall, but the programme's implementation, resources (especially lack of housing suitable for bail), and structure (within changing pretrial legislation) were of concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its 2007 curriculum, New Zealand introduced Key Competencies (KCs) that are intended to ensure students' future participation in the economy, communities, and also to introduce metacognitive and socio-emotional dimensions to learning. The KCs also have important implications for contributing to students' wellbeing and resilience. However, they are open to interpretation and have been conceptualised, implemented, and taught in different ways. This research explored students' views of the KCs. Twelve students from five secondary schools were interviewed to explore their understanding and value of the KCs and their ideas for teaching them. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Results show that participants value the KCs and interpreted them in a variety of ways, though they often failed to discuss the interconnection between the KCs or identify socio-emotional aspects of the KCs. Implications for teaching the KCs in school are discussed.

This study explores how adolescent clients construct the purpose and outcome of counselling. A narrative analysis was performed on interviews with 22 clients (aged 16--18) who had used a school-based counselling service. The aim was to identify the purpose and outcomes that participants attributed to their counselling experience. The analysis identified four narrative forms that young clients used to describe counselling. These included "transformative", "supportive", "pragmatic" and "disappointed" narratives. Each narrative form constructed a different purpose and outcome for counselling. Engaging with clients' narratives about the purpose and intended outcome of counselling may allow counsellors to better match their expectations and approach to fit with their young client or to work with them to co-construct more flexible narratives that support helpful outcomes.

Indigenous voices and perspectives are necessary in advancing applied and global sport psychology. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori sport and exercise professionals are thriving despite existing systems that devalue, discriminate and exclude Māori from fulfilling their potential. This qualitative study investigated the perspectives of ten Māori sport and exercise experts including academics, allied health professionals, athletes, coaches and Māori healers in order to develop a critical understanding of their work related experiences and analyze the diverse forms of knowledge on which they draw. Participants-collaborators were interviewed using an insider research design to facilitate discussion about their current work. Results support a "space between" model and suggest that Māori sport and exercise work enables excellence in sport performance while also meeting holistic wellbeing needs of communities. Māori exercise professionals identified that their presence in their respective fields "speaks back" to racist practices and entrenched barriers that colonize Māori success. Further, applying holistic notions of wellbeing and ancestral knowledge to sport and exercise was seen as default and ordinary; shifting the illusion that sport and exercise operates in a culture-less, timeless and physical vacuum. From an applied and Indigenous perspective, these results emphasize that Indigenous sport leadership and practices are unequaled by Western methods and science alone. Māori exercise professionals demonstrate cultural innovation and intersectionality that not only revolutionizes sport, but brings with it essential community wellbeing. Lay summary: This article explores the experiences of ten Māori exercise professionals and analyses the diverse forms of knowledge they draw on in their work. The study provides insight into how Māori exercise professionals utilize their knowledge of social contexts and culture, in turn expanding the scope of sport and exercise psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of an analysis of 7 young women's life story accounts of the experience of parental separation during adolescence. The young women took part in the Life Stories and Family Transitions Study conducted in New Zealand. The qualitative methodology used in this study allowed for an investigation of the ways that participants made sense of their experiences of parental separation within the life story. The narratives of parental separation were extracted from the interviews and analyzed for form and content. The analysis of form found that the stories progressed through a number of stages, titled 'The Early Years,' 'The Deteriorating Parental Relationship,' 'The Climax,' and 'The Aftermath.' A number of themes emerged from a process of interpretive thematic analysis. These themes were often associated with different stages of the story of separation, and were titled 'Putting Together the Pieces,' 'The Struggling Self,' and 'Self-Determination and Competency.' As participants put together the stories of separation, they considered their parents' perspectives and integrated these with their own experiences of family events, developing their own personal theories. The stories of struggle, and of personal strength and self-determination, emerge from the analysis. KEYWORDS. Divorce, offspring, young adults, narratives, adjustment to divorce

Life-story interviews were conducted with 40 young adults, aged between 19 and 29 years, living in New Zealand. The participants were from a range of cultural background and had experienced parental separation/divorce as children or adolescents. Previous studies have found that the negative effects of divorce can carry through into adulthood with adult offspring experiencing more mental health problems, difficulty in intimate relationships and increased rates of divorce; whilst other studies have found that young adults of divorce function as well as those from non-divorced families. This paper examines the participants' own views of the impact of parental divorce on themselves and their lives. Whilst a minority of them were positive about their parents' decision to separate, the majority of participants considered that they had experienced or were currently experiencing negative effects related to the divorce and associated events. These included problems in their own functioning in every day life, perceived problems in intimate relationships, and problems in relationships with other family members, especially parent/s. It is argued that cognitive-processing models are likely to be useful in understanding the problems that face young adult offspring of divorce. Implications for counseling approaches are briefly discussed. KEYWORDS. Divorce, adult well-being, relationships, offspring of divorce, adult children of divorce

This current study investigates adolescents' and young adults' expectations of parenting by mothers following remarriage. Based on an earlier qualitative study of parent-child relationships, it was hypothesized that young people expect parents to maintain parenting responsibilities, including warmth/support and discipline behaviors, towards children following remarriage. It was also hypothesized that adolescents and young adults expect parents to give them priority relative to the stepparent. Sixty-five participants between the ages of 18 and 25 completed a questionnaire that included a stepfamily vignette and 4 questions designed to elicit expectations of how mothers behave following remarriage. The results partially support each of the hypotheses. The majority of participants saw the mother as having primary responsibility for disciplining children. Approximately half of the participants thought that the mother ought to give priority to children, while the other half thought that she ought to give priority to both the children and her partner. The participants also confirmed that warmth and support roles are important following remarriage, suggesting that children will want love, reassurance, support, time, and attention from the mother. The results suggest that young people may hold a conservative view of family relations following remarriage, expecting the biological parent to maintain primary responsibility for the children and the stepparent to play a more minor role. KEYWORDS. Stepfamily, remarried, parenting, expectations, cognitive processing

Stepfamily relationship research has focused on step-relationships with particular emphasis on stepparent-stepchild relationships, despite increasing evidence that residential bioparent-child relationships can be negatively impacted through remarriage and stepfamily living. In this project, 9 stepfamily therapists were interviewed about their experiences of the bioparent-child dyad in stepfamilies. A number of themes emerged from these interviews around parental responses and stepfamily processes that were observed by the therapists to be hurtful or helpful for children and adolescents. These included loss of time and attention; differences in meaning of remarriage for children and parents; problems around discipline, and loyalty issues; the ongoing psychological significance of the original family; and interparental conflict. Implications for models of stepfamily adjustment are discussed. KEYWORDS. Remarriage, stepfamily, parent-child relationships, stepfamily Adjustment

Stepfamily relationship research has emphasized the step-parent role and relationships between stepparents and stepchildren, neglecting the study of bioparent-child relationships in stepfamily households. In this study, 28 young adults from stepfamilies participated in group interviews, that focussed on their perceptions of parental responses in childhood stepfamily situations. A number of themes emerged around parental responses experienced as hurtful or helpful. These included the importance for children of parental attention and communication, perceptions of loyalty, discipline issues, parental decisions related to transitions and the ongoing relationship with the non-resident parent. It is argued that the bioparent-child relationship may be more important to child wellbeing than the stepparent-stepchild relationship; and that increased research emphasis on this biological dyad will contribute significantly to an understanding of healthy stepfamily adjustment. KEYWORDS. Remarriage, stepfamily, parent-child relationships, stepfamily adjustment