Search

Background: Emerging evidence indicates that poor mental health and loneliness increased in the UK population during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time media reports suggested increased public engagement with arts and culture during the lockdown period. Aim: To explore the levels of and impact of arts engagement amongst staff and students from one UK university during the first pandemic lockdown. Methods: 112 staff/students completed an online survey which asked about their arts engagement and invited them to write a haiku about their lockdown experiences. Findings: Participants engaged in a wide range of arts, cultural and creative activities; some engaged more frequently and/or in new activities. Participants reported having more time and opportunity to undertake such activities, and these activities improved their mental wellbeing and facilitated social connections. Forty-seven participants wrote a haiku, and it was evident that the haikus provided a different perspective on lockdown experiences, enabling the expression of emotions including fear, loneliness, and a lack of freedom, as well as hope and optimism. Conclusion: Haiku poetry added nuance and complexity to the themes on engagement and impact of arts, cultural and creative activities, which supported mental wellbeing and social connections through the first UK lockdown.

The COVID-19 pandemic has perpetuated the challenges faced by care leavers and increased the need for support. Online participatory research was conducted to explore care leavers’ support experiences during the pandemic. A research team of twenty-five care leavers aged sixteen to twenty-five years and support workers from six local authorities across England identified priorities and developed an online questionnaire that was completed by ninety-four care leavers aged seventeen to twenty-six years. The research team also participated in focus groups, reflected on findings and agreed recommendations. The findings focused on four overarching themes: finances and practical issues, mental health, social connection, and support from services. The recommendations suggest that corporate parent services should provide information, offer equal opportunity to access support, facilitate connection for care leavers, and proactively reach out and ensure someone is always there for them. So that support is responsive to their needs, the continued participation of care leavers in decisions that affect them is paramount, along with commitment by the government and corporate parent services to listen and take action. By using a participatory approach that involved care leavers in the research process, this research promotes their voices and strengthens the evidence for enhancing care leaver support during the pandemic and beyond.

Self-exclusion from school is a significant issue in the UK and increasingly associated with bullying. However, there is little research into this relationship and the experiences and support needs of adolescents who experience bullying leading to self-exclusion are unknown. Using participatory methodology, we worked with adolescents who had self-excluded from school and the staff supporting them, to identify key issues on experiences and support needs and design the research approach which was carried into a second phase of research involving four focus group discussions with other self-excluded young people. Fifteen adolescents were involved in total (11 female, 4 male, aged 13– 16). Data was analysed thematically and findings suggest anxiety underpins self-exclusion due to bullying, which was shaped by friendship dynamics, issues around seeking support, and institutional factors in schools. This led to gradual withdrawal from school, and eventually self-exclusion. These shared experiences, knowledge, and insight go beyond the current literature, thus providing a strong rationale for adolescents’ involvement in future research.

1. Executive summary\ud \ud 1.1 Background\ud In England, over 93,000 11-15 year olds are without school provision citing bullying as either a primary or secondary reason (Brown et al., 2011). However, the experiences and support needs of these young people are unknown. This study sought to find out from young people themselves, the reasons behind their own self-exclusion and the possible supports that need to be in place for other young people at mainstream school who might be suffering from bullying. \ud \ud 1.2 Participants\ud All study participants were attending a Red Balloon Learner Centre: a charity providing educational/therapeutic support to young people who self-exclude from mainstream education because of severe bullying or other trauma. Founded in 1996, Red Balloon has four Centres, based in houses in Cambridge, Norwich, Harrow and Reading. It also has an online provision called Red Balloon of the Air which is supported by three satellite Centres in Cambridge, Norfolk and Chelmsford Essex. These are places where the children receiving education and therapy online can go for community based face-to-face activities weekly.\ud Using participatory methodology, we conducted two phases of research. In phase one, we worked with young people in Chelmsford (previously in Braintree), to develop the research questions and in phase two we took these questions to the wider Red Balloon community and spoke to young people about their experiences using the focus group method. All young people provided their own consent to participate and parents/carers were made aware of the study through participant information sheets. \ud 1.3 Findings\ud Anxiety underpinned self-exclusion due to bullying but a number of factors led to this anxiety including:\ud • Young people’s perceptions of their friends:\ud “…I thought they were my friends, but they were just fake people that just wanted to hurt me…” (Female, FG1)\ud \ud • Overall support structures:\ud “The teachers don’t do anything. It even got to a point where we were complaining so much, where they would just put me in isolation as well.” (Female, FG2)\ud \ud “That was a tricky time for me because I didn’t really trust anybody else enough to tell them how I felt about certain things, and that was when I was self-harming.” (Male, FG1)\ud \ud “….and then I had, like, I think the biggest meltdown ever, I think, I’ve ever had in my life, and, yes, that’s when everything came out…” (Female, FG1)\ud \ud • Institutional and contextual factors:\ud The physical size of their schools, including the building being ‘too big’ as well as the numbers of students caused feelings of intimidation for some:\ud “…when I was in mainstream, it was just too much, because obviously you get big classes, and you get kids doing stuff with kids, and teachers just not listening, or just making you feel like you don’t want to go to a big school.” (Female, FG3)\ud \ud Young people told us it was the build-up of the above factors that led to their gradual withdrawal from school life and consequently their self-exclusion from school:\ud “...one day you’re at school, fine and then the next you’re at home, too scared to move or go in. It’s such a gradual slow thing that you don’t see it coming.” (Female FG4)\ud \ud We asked the young people about anything that would have made their life easier while they were at mainstream school and three themes emerged as recommendations:\ud \ud • Awareness of changes in behaviour:\ud In acknowledging that teachers have large demands on their time and given school size and student numbers, the young people suggested that school staff should try to notice changes in behaviour, which might indicate a student is struggling:\ud “Losing concentration in lessons… just forgetting or constantly making mistakes…” (Female, FG4) \ud \ud • Promoting a feeling of security:\ud The young people reflected that the use of ‘timeout’ rooms or ‘isolation’ was not effective in promoting a feeling of safety for bullied students. Instead, they suggested “a supervised quiet space” (Female, FG4) where anxious students could go to and feel safe.\ud \ud • Promotion of empathy among and between students. \ud Young people suggested raising feelings of safety through practical approaches including assemblies and marketing to raise bullying awareness and promote empathy and compassion.\ud “….they could find a scenario, like find a YouTube clip or something, put it on the screen. Then people will think even more, “That could happen to my friend.” Then speak up.” (Female, FG3)\ud \ud \ud 1.4 Conclusion\ud There is growing interest in understanding bullying and self-exclusion and how to tackle it. Indeed, the findings from this research demonstrate the wealth of knowledge that young people with experience of bullying and self-exclusion have to share. Their knowledge and insight goes beyond that in the current literature and provides a strong rationale for involving young people in further research into the matter in order to develop support that better fits the needs of bullied young people and reduce the incidence of self-exclusion.

Community mobilisation is a promising new strategy for preventing intimate partner violence (IPV) against women in low-income settings. However, little is known about the contextual factors (e.g. socio-economic, cultural, historical and political conditions) that enable the effective mobilisation of communities for IPV prevention. This paper draws from theoretical work of Campbell and Cornish (2010) on the relationship between context and community action in addressing HIV/AIDS to propose a framework for situating community mobilisation for IPV prevention in its surrounding symbolic, material and relational contexts. The framework is refined using empirical data from a case study of a gender-based violence (GBV) prevention intervention in Rwanda, including interviews with members of government-mandated GBV Committees and focus group discussions with members of two village communities (n=35). A thematic analysis identifies various contextual factors needed to support community mobilisation for IPV prevention, including: broad symbolic understandings of what constitutes IPV; capacity to economically support women who choose to leave violent relationships; mechanisms for addressing the silence that often surrounds IPV; support from policy and government authorities; and opportunities to effectively challenge inequitable policy and legal frameworks. This framework is useful for policy-makers and programme planners interested in IPV prevention in and by communities.