Linda Cusworth

Multi‐agency transition services: greater collaboration needed to meet the priorities of young disabled people with complex needs as they move into adulthood

Purpose – Drawing on a wider study about the effectiveness and costs of different models of multi‐agency transition services, this paper aims to present new evidence on the ways in which such services meet the priorities and concerns of young people identified in previous research.Design/methodology/approach – The evidence is based on qualitative interviews with 130 managers and staff in five transition services across England, and a quantitative survey of parents and young people receiving these services (pre‐transition), or having received the services in the last‐two years (post‐transition). In total, 110 pre‐transition and 33 post‐transition parents, and 73 pre‐transition and 24 post‐transition young people, completed questionnaires. Statistical analysis included calculating frequencies and mean values for the responses that measured met and unmet need, and qualitative results were analysed thematically. The consequence of, and reasons for, the low response rate to the family survey are also discussed...

The impact of parental employment : young people, well-being and educational achievement

In this groundbreaking study, Linda Cusworth explores the impact of parental employment or unemployment on the educational and emotional well-being of their children using a case study from the British Household Panel Study. The increase in maternal employment and lone parenthood in the last few decades will make this a key volume for social policy, public policy and sociology academics and policy makers wishing to know more about the implications on our children.

Care closer to home for children and young people who are ill: developing and testing a model of service delivery and organization

AIMS To report findings of a national survey of care closer to home services for children and young people and a typology based on these findings. BACKGROUND Providing care closer to home for children is a policy and practice aspiration internationally. While the main model of such services is childrens community nursing, other models have also developed. Past research has proposed a relatively static typology of services, determined by where they are based, whether they are generic or specialist and whether they provide short- or longer-term input. As services develop, however, this typology needs further elaboration. METHODS A two-stage national survey of all primary care and hospital trusts in England, in mid-2008. RESULTS In all, 67% of trusts responded to the screening questionnaire and 75% of relevant services to the main stage questionnaire. Thirteen distinct types of services were identified initially. Cluster analysis of delivery and organization characteristics then identified a three-model typology: hospital-based, condition-specific services (36%); childrens community nurses and other community services (45%) and other (mainly therapy-based) services (19%). The models differed in staffing, costs, functions, type of care provided and geographical coverage. Only a third of nurses in teams were paediatric-trained. CONCLUSION Care closer to home services are an established part of care for children and young people who are ill. They deal with complex and technical care and can prevent or reduce the length of acute hospital admission. Lack of readily available information about caseloads, case mix and costs may hamper their further development.

Mind-mindedness in parents of looked after children

The studies reported here aimed to test the proposal that mind-mindedness is a quality of personal relationships by assessing mind-mindedness in caregiver–child dyads in which the relationship has not spanned the child’s life or in which the relationship has been judged dysfunctional. Studies 1 and 2 investigated differences in mind-mindedness between adoptive parents (ns = 89, 36) and biological parents from the general population (ns = 54, 114). Both studies found lower mind-mindedness in adoptive compared with biological parents. The results of Study 2 showed that this group difference was independent of parental mental health and could not fully be explained in terms of children’s behavioral difficulties. Study 3 investigated differences in mind-mindedness in foster carers (n = 122), parents whose children had been the subject of a child protection plan (n = 172), and a community sample of biological parents (n = 128). The level of mind-mindedness in foster carers and parents who were involved with child protection services was identical and lower than that in the community sample; children’s behavioral difficulties could not account for the difference between the 2 groups of biological parents. In all 3 studies, nonbiological carers’ tendency to describe their children with reference to preadoption or placement experiences was negatively related to mind-mindedness. These findings are in line with mind-mindedness being a relational construct.