Emma Larkin

Research with children: methodological issues and innovative techniques

In the past few decades, a growing body of literature examining children’s perspectives on their own lives has developed within a variety of disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, anthropology and geography. This article provides a brief up-to-date examination of methodological and ethical issues that researchers may need to consider when designing research studies involving children; and a review of some of the methods and techniques used to elicit their views. The article aims to encourage researchers to critically reflect on these methodological issues and the techniques they choose to use, since they will have implications for the data produced.

Emotionally Harmful Parenting

Emotional maltreatment tends to be overshadowed in research and in practice by other forms of maltreatment that present more obvious and explicit evidence and appear to require a more urgent response. This article aims to explore a growing body of research pointing to: (a) ways in which emotional maltreatment may adversely impact upon a childs development and functioning; (b) factors that practitioners may wish to consider when determining whether significant harm has occurred or is likely to occur in cases of emotional maltreatment; and (c) various levels of intervention that may be usefully applied to build stronger attachment and relationship with parents or carers and to reduce emotionally harmful behaviour of the carers.

Who Goes Where?: Young Children's Pathways through Care in Northern Ireland

This is one of a series of articles reporting on the large-scale Northern Ireland care pathways and outcomes study (McSherry et al, 2008). The study has been examining a population of young children (n = 374) who were in care under five years of age in Northern Ireland and followed up across a four-year period (2000–2004). It has mapped these young childrens care careers and explored factors relating to five care pathways that these children progressed along: towards adoption, long-term non-relative foster care, long-term relative foster care, residence order and return to birth parent/s. The authors, Dominic McSherry, Kerrylee Weatherall, Emma Larkin, Montse Fargas Malet and Greg Kelly, examine the childrens care pathway patterns from 2000 to 2004 and identify the background factors that have influenced their specific care pathway. These background factors relate to the age of child, length of time in care, the childs health, the childs behaviour and regional variation. The findings indicate that although the care pathway patterns were to some extent similar to those found in England and Wales, there were differences peculiar to the Northern Ireland context.