Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Introduction and Overview -- 1 Children in Trouble - Historical, Theoretical and Conceptual Perspectives -- Childhood and Trouble -- Residential and Community Options for Children in Trouble -- Children, Behaviour and Schooling -- Understanding Children's Behaviour -- Social Control -- Risk, Protection and Resilience -- Problem Construction -- 2 Children in Trouble - Contemporary Perspectives -- Contemporary Debates -- Joined-up Government, Joined-up Service Delivery? -- Poverty and Social Exclusion -- Victims and Perpetrators -- Populist Punitiveness -- Risk and Fear -- Crime, Disorder and the New Youth Justice -- Extending Controls on Anti-social Behaviour -- Every Child Matters and Youth Matters Too -- Children's Rights -- Children as Investments, Children as Threats and Children as Victims -- 3 Children in Trouble - What Kind of Trouble? -- Estimating the Number and Proportion of Different Types of 'Trouble' -- Youth Crime and Victimisation -- Problem Behaviour in School -- Children in Trouble at Home -- Mental Health -- Reviewing the Evidence -- 4 Families and Children in Trouble -- The Importance of Families and Parenting -- Children 'Looked After' by the State -- A Local Sure Start Partnership - What Do the Parents Think? -- Families as the Solution? Family Group Conferences -- Living Away from Home and Locality: Why Are Some Children in 'Out-of-Area' Placements? -- Changes in Who Cares and Family Forms -- 5 Children in Trouble at School -- 'In Trouble' in School -- Behaviour in Schools -- Early Intervention: Working with Parents and Primary Schools -- Behaviour Management Training in Schools: An Example -- Schools and Their Role in Preventing, Reducing and Responding to Troublesome Behaviour -- 6 Children in Trouble in the Community (with M. Johns).

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on offending behaviour and children in residential care. The paper considers whether children's residential care is a 'criminogenic' environment, i.e. whether this type of care environment helps to provide the conditions that produce crime or criminality. The paper draws on the findings from recently completed research on 10 children's homes in a large county local authority in England. This paper focuses on the patterns shown in trend data collected on problematic and offending data across these homes over a 7‐year period (2001–2007) and a 1‐year cohort study of 46 young people. Interviews with care staff and young people are used to contextualize these patterns. The data provide evidence of an environment where conflict and offending behaviour are common. It is argued that the residential care environment, particularly for older teenagers, often presents a set of risks that tend to reinforce offending behaviour and that this is in part due to its 'last resort' status.

ABSTRACTThis paper reports on research into personal education plans (PEPs) for 'looked after' children (children in care) in one large county local authority in England. PEPs were introduced by guidance from the Department for Education and Employment and Department of Health in 2000. The fieldwork for this research began two years after this guidance was published. The research findings show that although social services staff and teachers are critical of specific aspects of PEPs, they have helped to raise the profile of the educational needs of looked after children in the local authority studied. They have provided a forum for social work and education professionals to meet in the interests of particular children. Key problems relate to practical issues: ensuring social workers and teachers feel able to fulfil their expected roles in relation to the education of looked after children; making the system focus on meeting the needs of children as well as practitioners; difficulty in meeting specified timescales; more meaningful, constructive and sensitive involvement of children in the process of producing and reviewing PEPs. The broader issue, however, is about the ability to plan the education of looked after children. Additional barriers to planning were particularly apparent in residential care and specifically within secure accommodation.

SUMMARY: Exclusion from school is only one of a number of sometimes complicated and often inter‐related reasons why children are not attending school Much of the focus of research and debate about exclusions has been about secondary age pupils. This paper begins to raise some of the issues that may make primary age exclusions a particular focus of concern and one that should reach and be addressed by a variety of agencies. The paper draws on research recently completed at the SSRIU (Social Services Research and Information Unit), University of Portsmouth, and is informed by an ESRC funded project in progress, which is investigating primary age exclusions at a national level.

With the growth in the use of restorative justice and restorative approaches, this book takes an in-depth look at their applicability in the environment of children's residential care homes.

AbstractChildren who spend time in care are more likely to have an official record of offending behaviour than the general population. However, there is a lack of longitudinal research on the timing, severity, and volume of offending in relation to time spent in and out of care. Furthermore, differences in patterns of offending by identifiable groups in care are rarely a focus of research. This study is both longitudinal and identifies 8 groups within the care population with different volumes of recorded offending: ranging from a mean of 41.75 (prolific) to 1.60 (low). Substance misuse, gender, and reasons for referral to care were associated with different patterns of offending in and out of care. The study is primarily based on a subsample of 64 children who had offended whilst in care. The subsample represents 38.5% of a cohort of children who had been in care or were taken into care over a particular period (2008–2011) in one local authority. The placements and recorded offences of the 64 children were tracked for a further 2 years (2011–2013). The study highlights future areas of research and the need for more tailored responses to different groups within the care system.

AbstractChildren taken into care and custody are arguably the most vulnerable and problematic groups within the wider debate and responses developing to the 'troubled families' agenda in England. They represent what the state most wants to avoid when it intervenes in the life of a family. This paper is based on an analysis of the service involvement and needs of the 196 children taken into care or custody over a 3‐year period (2008–2011) in one city local authority in England. The research was undertaken to inform the response to prevention of entry into care and custody which was the original focus of the most intensive part of the troubled families programme in the city. Interviews with 10 senior professionals from a range of agencies involved in setting up this local programme, explored the way the emerging troubled families agenda was shaping ideas about the understanding of and response to the needs of these children and their families. Key findings of the study illustrate the range and complexity of need as well as the sequence and amount of agency involvement. Professionals were often critical of the thinking behind the troubled families agenda, but were positive and creative about new ways of working with these families.

Evidence-based policy making presents challenges for researchers as the pragmatic imperative of delivering `the right information, at the right time, for the right people' can appear to compromise traditional academic roles and responsibilities. Using the recent evaluation of the UK Cabinet Office-led `Better Government for Older People' programme as a case study, we discuss attempts to meet these challenges in practice. Our experience confirms that there has been a shift from the assumption of rational models (i.e. that evidence will be used as part of a linear planning process) to a more `realistic' perspective in which evidence from research requires advocates to promote its potential contribution. In turn, this suggests that it is in the interest of the research community to try to understand the policy-making process, and so design, undertake and disseminate their research in a way that maximizes the likelihood of its use in actively contributing to policy development.