Jo Aldridge

Children caring for parents with mental illness: Perspectives of young carers, parents and professionals

Contents: Introduction Parental mental illness and young caring: research and prevalence The effects of mental illness on parents and relationships with their children Childrens experiences of caring for parents with severe and enduring mental illness The role and responsibilities of professionals: services and support for young carers and parents with mental illness Towards a systemic approach: ways forward and conclusions.

Picture this: the use of participatory photographic research methods with people with learning disabilities

It has been argued that research that employs qualitative methods among vulnerable groups, such as people with learning disabilities, must reconcile the conflict between meeting recognized academic criteria, or measures of research ‘strength’, while at the same time appropriately and effectively representing the experiences and needs of vulnerable respondents. This article explores some of the tensions that lie within these objectives and looks at the use of more appropriate, participatory research methods, in this case photographic participation and elicitation techniques, as a way of including vulnerable respondents more effectively in social research studies.

Working with vulnerable groups in social research: dilemmas by default and design

Tensions have been highlighted, particularly in disability rights research and activism discourses, between the demands of the academy, the needs of vulnerable research participants as active contributors in research and between researchers themselves who are often caught in multiple dilemmas regarding these conflicting demands. This is particularly the case in research governance and practice terms when ‘top down’ pressures (e.g. from the academy, from funders) are often at odds with the need for a ‘bottom up’ approach to vulnerable research participants who often require adaptive, more inclusive and sometimes individualistic (case-by-case) qualitative methodological approaches. These issues are the focus of this article, which draws specifically on evidence from participatory studies with vulnerable groups and participatory photographic studies, in particular, to demonstrate the need for more collaborative and democratic approaches to research praxis.

The participation of vulnerable children in photographic research

This article explores the efficacy of using photographic participatory research methods among vulnerable groups, specifically vulnerable children and young people. Innovative methods, such as visual participatory techniques can help children who might otherwise be left out of research studies that could have important consequences for their lives, and the lives of their families. The reason for their omission from such studies lies precisely in their vulnerability – their lives are often difficult and painful and, in empirical terms, these children are hard to reach and often do not have the necessary verbal skills and confidence to take part in conventional qualitative methods that use, for example, interview techniques. Drawing on photographic research evidence from children and young people themselves, this article explores the ways in which the participation of children in visual research studies can help to transform childrens life experiences.

Care farms and care gardens: horticulture as therapy in the UK

This paper describes the use of Social and Therapeutic Horticulture (STH) for vulnerable people in the UK. Around 20,000 clients attend STH ‘projects’ each week. Projects provide activities for people with mental health problems, learning difficulties, physical disabilities, black and ethnic minorities and many other vulnerabilities. The benefits of attending projects include a structured routine and the opportunity for social contact. The natural, outdoor setting is particularly valued and may act as a restorative environment within the context of environmental psychology

Participatory research: Working with vulnerable groups in research and practice

This book examines the nature of participatory research in the social sciences and its role in increasing participation among vulnerable or marginalised populations. Drawing on engaging in-depth case studies, it examines the ways in which inclusion and collaboration in research can be enhanced among vulnerable participants, such as those with profound learning difficulties, victims of abuse and trauma and multiply vulnerable children and young people, and shows how useful it can be with these groups. The book will be an invaluable resource for students, researchers and academics in many countries who want to put participatory research methods into practice.

Where are we now? Twenty-five years of research, policy and practice on young carers:

It is more than 25 years since the critical dialogue on young carers was played out in the pages of this journal (see Morris and Keith, 1995; Aldridge and Becker, 1996). Since that time, research evidence has given us a clearer picture of the extent of young caring in the UK and its consequences for children and families, including two new national studies that focus on the prevalence and impact of young caring in England. The introduction of the Care Act, 2014 and the Children and Families Act, 2014 also places new duties on professionals to identify and support young carers and their families. However, this increased focus, not only in policy and practice but also in terms of public awareness, has created a number of dilemmas and challenges for health and social care professionals, whose duty it is to identify and support young carers. These challenges, to a large extent, both mirror and advance issues raised in the original dialogue on young carers in the mid-1990s. They centre on the drive to generate data on the numbers of young carers to support policy directives and service delivery and, some have argued – in the current climate of serious fiscal retrenchment and cuts to youth services – on promoting the needs of one group of vulnerable children and young people over other groups of children in need. This article considers some of these challenges and dilemmas.

Advancing participatory research

There are both advantages and challenges in conducting research with vulnerable or marginalised populations – people with learning disabilities and mental health problems, children and young people, for example – and it is critical to identify ways of working with these participant groups that promote and enhance their active and meaningful participation. This means ensuring that the methods used in research are genuinely participatory and that are flexible and designed with the needs of participants in mind. It is therefore important that researchers (and practitioners) work with recognised and tried and tested models of participation that advance the rights and needs of vulnerable participants and, more broadly, the PR field. This paper considers the advantages and challenges in conducting participatory research (PR) with vulnerable or marginalised populations, and discusses the utility of a PR model that has been designed specifically for research with participant groups who may be (and, in the past, often have been) overlooked in studies that use conventional methods.

With us and about us: Participatory methods in research with "vulnerable" or marginalized groups.

In much health and social scientific research that includes “vulnerable,” “hard-to-reach” or marginalized groups, claims are often made about participatory methods and techniques that enhance participant engagement and “voice.” In many cases, however, the validity of these claims remains unclear – the nature and extent of participant involvement in such studies is not always defined and the value and efficacy, as well as the challenges, of using participatory methods are often misunderstood. In many respects, these oversights can be explained by the lack of cognate and applicable participatory models or frameworks that can help researchers work more effectively with marginalized participants. This chapter explores these issues drawing on the author’s own extensive research with marginalized groups and participatory models of working that both promote and enhance participant engagement and emancipation in research processes. Such approaches see “vulnerable,” marginalized, or socially excluded research participants in transformative roles in research, including as co-researchers, co-analysts, and designers and producers of their own research agendas and projects.