Vincent La Placa

Unpacking the Relationship between Parenting and Poverty: Theory, Evidence and Policy

Policy discourses around child poverty and its causes and effects on families emerged in the 1990s, culminating in the Coalition governments emphasis on the quality of couple relations in improving child outcomes and in reducing child poverty. This article reviews and updates the current evidence base around the relationship between parenting and poverty. Evidence suggests an intricate relationship between complex and mediating processes of, for instance, income, parental stress, disrupted parenting practices and neighbourhoods and environments, as opposed to a simplistic causal relationship between poverty, parenting and child outcomes. The article then proceeds to suggest responses to enhance the evidence and research. Lastly, it considers the implications for child poverty policy, arguing that current responses are too simplistic and do not sufficiently reflect the evidence base.

Social tourism and organised capitalism: research, policy and practice

Social tourism is a contested concept, practised little in the UK, but more widely throughout mainland Europe. However, limited research demonstrates its benefits to recipients. The emergence of social tourism has occurred through a historical and discursive process linked to organised capitalism and modern civil society. Social tourism has the capacity to transcend traditional and commercial concepts of tourism and challenge purely market-based tourist and leisure activities. Supporters can make the case for social tourism on the UK policy agenda through the following: more holistic research into social tourism and its benefits; the use of current government changes around the public health structure; and integration of social tourism into community needs around social capital and local health and wellbeing intervention development.

Barriers to inclusion and successful engagement of parents in mainstream services: evidence and research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the current evidence base on barriers to inclusion and successful engagement of parents in mainstream preventive services. Design/methodology/approach – Evidence was generated using a narrative review which uses different primary studies from which conclusions are produced into holistic interpretations. It provides an interpretative synthesis of findings based upon an exhaustive inclusion and exclusion criteria and systematic selection of literature. Findings – The paper identifies barriers to successful engagement as: structural; social and cultural; and suspicion and stigma. In terms of successful engagement, it identifies personal relations between staff and service users, practical issues, service culture, consultation, information and targeting, service delivery, and community development and co-production approaches. Research limitations/implications – The paper demonstrates that the evidence base is limited and not adequately theoretically grounded. ...

The contribution of qualitative research to the Healthy Foundations life-stage segmentation

This paper presents the results of the qualitative phase of Healthy Foundations, a study that groups people according to their motivations to live healthily or otherwise, their lifestyles, and the circumstances that affect this. These segments are ‘Health Conscious Realists’, ‘Balanced Compensators’, ‘Live for Todays’, ‘Unconfident Fatalists’ and ‘Hedonistic Immortals’. The aim was to explore people’s attitudes and motivations to live healthily or otherwise and the targeted healthcare interventions appropriate for each segment. The qualitative phase involved two strands: (i) focus groups and immersion in-depth interviews and (ii) video ethnographic ‘pen portraits’. It provides robust insight into the five segments’ motivations and behaviour and how these are constructed within and influenced by the wider environment. It also enabled the segments to give their views of and design appropriate interventions aligned to their individual requirements, lifestyles and structural environments. It demonstrates the usefulness of the qualitative approach to health segmentations and enhances the case for methodological pluralism, and a critical perspective, to enable development of health-related behaviour change interventions and policy more widely.