Suchergebnisse

"Approaches regarding safeguarding and mental health in childhood have been in constant flux. Framed within a critical realist ontology, this book provides insight into causal factors (individual, material, institutional) and social structures that impact on the continued legacy of the 'deserving/undeserving' paradigm. Drawing on historic data from children taken into care by the Waifs and Strays Society (1881-1918) and contemporary data from interviews with young care leavers and safeguarding practitioners/professionals, this book shows how at present and in the past, certain children and families miss out on support and interventions due to complex needs, financial cuts, and ever changing thresholds. It is the group of children referred to as 'victims', a term used for the most disadvantaged children who have spent time in care, have complex mental health needs and have had the most damaging pre-care family experiences, who are the focus of this book. This book shows that in an attempt to provide services where there are ever increasing thresholds for access and cuts to resources, a resurgence of the 'deserving/undeserving' paradigm reflects a contemporary justification regarding who is 'entitled' to help and who is not. This book will will be of interest to all scholars and students of social work, social policy, childhood studies, sociology and education policy"--

This book revisits key social issues and controversies in education. There are many social issues currently on political and governmental agendas, both in the UK and other countries - from safeguarding, childhood obesity, bullying and mental health, through to widening participation. Some of these issues relate to children and young people and are of concern to those working and researching in education, while others relate to Higher Education. The boundaries between the academic disciplines of politics, sociology, economics, psychology and education are porous. The contributions here illustrate how common interests and collaboration can assist in our understanding of complex social issues, the evaluation of current governmental responses, and the promotion of ideas about the way forward into the 21st century

This study seeks to build an explanation of the multiple meanings of resilience in a social work context, centralising the interplay between human agency (meaning-making, motivations and intentionality) and social structures (enduring patterns, social rules, norms and laws). Specifically, this research provides insight into how care-experienced people (aged 17–50 years old) and social workers and affiliated practitioners in England make sense of 'resilience' and 'resilient' behaviours. Critical realist informed grounded theory (CRGT) provides unique opportunities here, with critical realist's primacy of ontology as the starting point and grounded theory providing the epistemological force, contextualising research and imbedding this more firmly into practice. Drawing on the four stages of retroductive argumentation proposed by Kempster and Parry (2014) and developed by us, we identify a number of key themes, namely, 'Having/Building an Ability' – 'Rocky Road' and 'Brick Walls' – Resilience as Resistance – 'Compliance', as well as causal factors impacting upon the themes (such as traumatic life experiences, protective factors, external support systems, political agendas, structure-agency relationships and stigma, discrimination and marginalisation). The research highlights how multiple causal mechanisms, including interpretations of situations by individuals (in this case care-experienced individuals and social workers/affiliated practitioners) interact and generate multiple meaning in relation to process and outcomes of resilience. The research thus provides insight into deeply embedded interpretations of resilience, which should be viewed in light of the stratified non-linear dynamics of embodied experiences, material/institutional forces and social relationships, that co-constitute subjectivity, as well as having an ongoing influence on body–brain systems.

In this commentary the authors analyse how the concept of resilience can be and has been applied to Black, Asian and minority ethnic families and communities in ways that are biased, stigmatising and pathologising. They argue that current definitions of resilience need to be redefined and reconceptualised, particularly in settings dominated by White middle-class voices that define what 'positive emotions', 'successful traits' and 'coping mechanisms' entail. Here, through racism and flawed perceptions and interpretations of resilience and 'othering', members from ethnic minority communities are defined as in need of resilience support, whilst at the same time their experience of structural racism, e.g., in relation to mental health support, social/health care practices and school exclusions, is being erased. Instead, the authors argue that resilience can also mean 'resistance', i.e., resisting bad treatment and racism, as well as reflecting agency, identity and ownership of one's own life and choices within this. Reframing resilience thus means taking account of multifaceted and interactive effects of personal, material, institutional and political factors that impact on behaviour, wellbeing and resilience, as well as acknowledging that the way in which 'behaviour' is received is by default flawed, if this is largely informed by an oppressive White middle-class viewpoint.

This study seeks to build an explanation of the sociological, psychological, and political processes and practices involved in relationships between mothers and practitioners, as generative and causal powers that underlie and shape this. Critical realist's primacy of ontology forms the starting point, with grounded theory as the epistemological force providing critical realism's method, contextualising research, and embedding this more firmly into practice. As such, this article offers critical realist grounded theory (CRGT) as a tool for contextualising parent–practitioner relationships, drawing on retroductive argumentation, which involves moving from the level of observation and lived experiences to making (non-linear) inferences about underlying structures/mechanisms that may account for the phenomena. Thirty-four participants participated in six in-depth focus group discussions; three were with early years practitioners and three with mothers of children aged between 2 years and 4 years. Focused coding led to themes reflecting the lived experiences of mothers and practitioners, namely being valued, relationships, what happens at home, child at the centre, and when I am not there. In line with CRGT, multiple causal mechanisms (including the interpretations of each situation made by individuals) were identified that were active in the situated contexts. To improve relationships between mothers and practitioners, attention needs to be paid to the psychological, social, and political forces at play, as generative, causal, and contextual powers, that have an impact on the status and relationships of the players within this triad (mothers, practitioners, and child).

AbstractDespite considerable quantifiable data about the circumstances of care leavers in the United Kingdom, there is less qualitative data about how these circumstances are experienced. This article is underpinned by positioning theory, with a particular focus on the unfolding personal narratives of young care leavers in relation to their mental health and wellbeing and the role of a life‐skills programme in supporting them in this respect. The research illustrates that leaving care projects, such as the one in the current study, are more focused on employment and housing issues than on addressing the mental health and wellbeing needs of young people. Our analysis of interviews with young people illustrates the ambiguity of understandings of concepts such as "mental health" and "wellbeing," and the complexity of responses to questioning around this area. This illustrates one of the major problems in evaluating the outputs and outcomes of such projects in terms of simplistic targets, where mental health and wellbeing are not clearly defined or understood by young people themselves. The current research provides a more complex picture. More research is needed that involves in‐depth and longitudinal assessment of specific mental health needs of care leavers and how they can be addressed successfully.

In this study, we explore narratives in relation to 'fatness', drawing on focus group interviews with parents, early years practitioners, teachers and young people. The study is located in a larger study on bullying and resilience, with no specific focus on obesity or 'fatness'. Analysis of the interview data highlighted a recurrent focus on 'fatness' within the participants' narratives, by labelling and stigmatising the 'fat kid' and 'bigger children'. We conclude that obesity and fatness, as abnormalities, are now included in commonsense talk in relation to 'easy targets', victims and bullies.

This book revisits key social issues and controversies in education. There are many social issues currently on political and governmental agendas, both in the UK and other countries—from safeguarding, childhood obesity, bullying and mental health, through to widening participation. Some of these issues relate to children and young people and are of concern to those working and researching in education, while others relate to Higher Education. The boundaries between the academic disciplines of politics, sociology, economics, psychology and education are porous. The contributions here illustrate how common interests and collaboration can assist in our understanding of complex social issues, the evaluation of current governmental responses, and the promotion of ideas about the way forward into the 21st century.

This article presents our Family Stories model identifying self-reported change behaviours and environments by families developed from our two-phase research in an inner-city area in the south of England. The research focused on parents whose families had experienced complex issues affecting the behaviour, wellbeing, learning and/or safety of children, and who had received social care support from services that had broadly adopted a trauma-informed approach. We identified parents' self-reported change behaviours and environments, in the context of the high rate of families relapsing and returning for multiple episodes of support. We also identify key challenges to securing long-term positive change, including the barriers to nurturing a strong and successful parenting identity, in which parents are more able to sustain positive change. Our model identifies four enablers, evident in the self-reported change behaviours narrated by our participants: community, allyship, strategy and mastery.

The themes of resilience and agency in the face of adversity and at the point of transition from one stage to another recur in these reviews of recent books, each one of which has important things to say to the readers of IJEE. Bauman and Rivers celebrate the opportunities offered by the digital age while not downplaying the potential risks to the mental health of children and young people. Lamericks, Danby, Bateman and Ekberg use exciting, child-centred methods to access the experiences and perspectives on mental health of young people in a range of institutional settings. This innovative book has a wealth of information that is relevant to practitioners and researchers alike. Next, two books, one quantitative and the other qualitative, demonstrate convincingly the extreme impact of poverty on children's well-being. Evans, Ruane and Southall, members of the Radical Statistics Group, argue that powerful individuals and institutions control statistical data to serve their own ends. In fact, the authors propose, governments often mislead us through their manipulation of statistical findings. Consequently, physical and mental health difficulties, especially among poor families, are perpetuated. Kerry Hudson gives the inside view of the child growing up in poverty and the longstanding impact on her emotional and social development. Through her own determination and resilience, she not only survived but became a successful writer. However, on her return to the places of her childhood, she found that many families continue to experience dire poverty and deprivation. Her book is a moving testament to her journey and the people who helped her along the way but it is also a plea for action to be taken in the present day. In the context of higher education, Lee and LaDousa report on the continuing patterns of discrimination experienced by students from non-traditional backgrounds, not only from fellow students but also from the universities themselves. The section on the institutional lens to marginalisation gives disturbing insights into the ways in which inequalities are perpetuated. Finally, from a more theoretical perspective, Paul Downes presents the case for a spatial phenomenology in our conception of human development. Transitions between different spatial systems, according to his theory, are a means of understanding agency. He presents a powerful argument that challenges the domination of time over space by developmental psychologists. By contrast, he considers movements from one space or system to another as offering a much deeper understanding of agency and lived experience. Each book is challenging and offers us new ways of thinking about our field. I hope that you find the reviews insightful. If you would like to review books for IJEE, please write to me and let me know your areas of interest. ; N/A

AbstractComplementing studies on youth mental health that were mainly depoliticised, this article offers a discursive examination of youth mental health in an Indonesian educational context. We argue that subject positions enabled by the discourse of mental health were at odds with dominant constructions of an ideal Indonesian citizen. Drawing upon qualitative data from 22 teachers and 20 students in a junior high school in Indonesia and analyses of educational policies and textbooks, we identified three discourses underpinning the ideal(ised) constructions of young Indonesian citizen, namely, neoliberalism, (masculine) patriotism and (religious) moralism and discussed how these inhibited youth mental health.