Jane Akister

Leaving care and mental health: outcomes for children in out-of-home care during the transition to adulthood

There were 59,500 Children in out-of-home care in England in 2008. Research into this population points to poor health and quality of life outcomes over the transition to adult independence. This undesirable outcome applies to mental health, education and employment. This lack of wellbeing for the individual is a burden for health and social care services, suggesting limitations in the current policy approaches regarding the transitional pathway from care to adult independence. Although the precise reasons for these poor outcomes are unclear long term outcomes from national birth cohorts suggest that mental health could be a key predictor for subsequent psychosocial adjustment.Researching the wellbeing of children in out-of-home care has proven difficult due to the range and complexity of the factors leading to being placed in care and the different methods used internationally for recording information. This paper delineates the estimated prevalence of mental health problems for adolescents in the care system, organisational factors, influencing service provision, and pathways through the transition from adolescence to independent young adult life. The extent to which being taken into care as a child moderates adult wellbeing outcomes remains unknown. Whether the care system enhances, reduces or has a null effect on wellbeing and specifically mental health cannot be determined from the current literature. Nonetheless a substantial proportion of young people display resilience and experience successful quality of life outcomes including mental capital. A current and retrospective study of young people transitioning to adult life is proposed to identify factors that have promoted successful outcomes and which would be used to inform policy developments and future longitudinal studies.

Attachment theory and systemic practice: research update

Attachment theory offers a way of thinking about the dyadic relationships within the family system. Family systems theory and therapy can contribute to attachment theory, as dyadic relationships do not exist in isolation but within the context of other relationships. Research at the interface between systemic practice and attachment theory is reviewed with examination of the central role they may play together in the developing understanding of family relationships.

What Does ‘Supporting Parents’ Mean?—Parents’ Views

This paper reports on the views of a community sample of 428 parents with primary school-aged children. In a previous study parents had identified that they needed ‘support’. This study was designed to try to understand what types of support parents already have and what support they think needs to be available to them. Most parents use informal support of family and friends and have limited awareness of what is available to them in the way of locally based services. They propose services which are already available, like Parentline, but of which they are unaware. There seems to be a need for universal, non-stigmatising services which design their programmes with parents and can refer to more specialised services, e.g. Social Services or Family Centres. These services need to be located in agencies which parents frequent and are comfortable with, such as schools and health settings.

The Parenting Task: Parent's Concerns and Where They Would Seek Help

ABSTRACT Governments are concerned to promote positive parenting but it is difficult to know how and where to target the necessary support. How should we listen to the concerns expressed by parents themselves? Social work and health care professionals and those involved in developing parenting programmes tend to base their interventions on their experiences with families already in crisis. This paper reports on a survey of the views of two groups of parents: a community sample and a small group of parents involved in a young parents project. Issues, which concern the parents, are identified as well as consideration of which agencies might be best placed to address these. Parents were most likely to approach their childrens school or doctor for information, advice, or support. Parents were found to be reluctant to approach social work agencies.

Designing and using a Patchwork Text to assess social work students undertaking a module in family therapy

The Patchwork Text is an assessment strategy whereby students produce and share pieces of work during their programme. They then use these pieces as the basis of a final integrated text. This paper reports on the experience of using this strategy in a modular course structure. The idea was to try to provide formative feedback for the students who traditionally complain that all the assessment occurs at the end of the module. A surprising side-effect of the process was that students were clearly studying earlier in the module which improved the knowledge base of the classroom discussions.

Who are the young people who are not in education, employment or training? An application of the risk factors to a rural area in the UK

Young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) are a focus of government attention in the UK. For social service professionals the mechanisms underpinning the individual experience of NEET are critical to designing effective interventions. International comparisons point to similar experiences at the level of the individual family. This article examines the factors that may contribute to a young person becoming NEET and applies these to the demographics of a rural area in England. Poor educational attainment and low socio-economic status are key factors, with the mental well-being of young people as a proposed underpinning mechanism.

Protecting Children: The Central Role of Knowledge

Following the deaths of Victoria Climbié and of Peter Connelly (Baby P) the media has raged about social work competence, the public have expressed dismay and the government has responded with proposals designed to alter practice procedures. Altering procedures gives the appearance of change without necessarily improving practice. Do social workers have sufficient knowledge to make the decisions that they are responsible for? This paper examines whether a restricted knowledge base contributes to social workers missing or misjudging signs of maltreatment. The paper also looks at evidence suggesting that social workers are resistant to developing new ways of working. A more positive approach to developing expert knowledge and engagement with the inter-professional knowledge base is proposed.

Learning from the Patchwork Text process – a retrospective discussion

After about two years of work with the Patchwork Text process in our different contexts, and after writing our individual case studies, we decided we would like to put together a ‘joint statement’ about what we had learned. Given the quite different directions in which each of us had taken the original general idea, this was itself necessarily conceived as a sort of Patchwork. We decided we would individually prepare a statement of specific ideas that had emerged from our own work, but present them in a spoken forum, so that discussion of points of difference and overlap could take place. The occasion was tape-recorded and transcribed, and the transcription was then edited, to convert the inevitable vagaries of speech into a readable text.

Editorial: The Future of Social Work

Social Work strives to balance both a management and a welfare function. In January, the British Association of Social Workers held a day conference: ‘Talking about the future of Social Work’. Rogowski (2015) noted that ‘practitioners have become increasingly embroiled in bureaucracy and subjected to managerial constraints aimed at rationing resources and assessing/managing risk, rather than meeting need’. A conversation about the future of social work is critical in a rapidly changing environment where social work is being opened up to privatisation, there is an increase in rationing for adult services, social work education is altering with an emphasis on fast-track training and accreditation is being shaped by the government and not by the profession. The articles in this edition point to the place for social work practice to be rooted in professional commitment developed through practitioner research, and partnerships promoting knowledge exchange between social work academics and practitioners. In line with these concerns, Stewart Collins writes about ‘The Commitment of Social Workers in the UK: Committed to the Profession, the Organisation and Service Users?’ He argues that there are clear benefits derived from the commitment of social workers, which are associated with effort, productivity and high retention and low turnover rates. An individual may have a high commitment to their profession, but not to their organisation. Research suggests that in order to encourage commitment, social work organisations should focus on respecting, recognising and valuing the positive contributions of social workers, maximising their time for caring, ongoing work with service users, provide good salaries, appropriate working conditions and manageable workloads. MacRae, Smith and Cree in their article, ‘The Role of Practitioner Research in Developing Cultures of Learning in Children and Families Social Work’, report on a knowledge exchange project between a Scottish university and local authorities implementing practitioner research projects. To optimise the potential of knowledge exchange activities they identify the need to work with managers as well as practitioners, to implement learning and incorporate it