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1 – 10 of 251Jacob Ellis, Susannah Fairweather, Mark Scott and Laura Griffiths
In total, 90,000 of the 1.26 million people applying for asylum in the EU in 2015 were unaccompanied children. The Dublin III Regulations provided a unique legal situation where…
Abstract
Purpose
In total, 90,000 of the 1.26 million people applying for asylum in the EU in 2015 were unaccompanied children. The Dublin III Regulations provided a unique legal situation where unaccompanied young people in the Calais Jungle potentially had the right to be reunited with family in the UK. The purpose of this paper is to explore the substantial challenges presented by carrying out medico-legal assessment of this group in the Calais Jungle.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors consider the refugee crisis from a mental health and legal perspective. The authors provide two case examples to contextualise and describe the work. The authors draw from the observations and the literature to discuss the impact of living in the Calais Jungle on young people, the challenges the authors overcame to carry out the assessments and the needs of refugees following settling in the UK.
Findings
The authors conclude that the Calais Jungle was a toxic environment not suitable for young refugees’ continued emotional development or recovery from trauma. The current legal process to relocate a young person to the UK is time consuming and labour intensive. The authors note that these concerns are not unique to the Jungle, nor have they ended with its demolition. The difficulties young refugees face with mental illness continues following their arrival to the UK.
Originality/value
This was the first successful attempt since the Dublin III Regulations to seek a legal route to bring unaccompanied refugee minors from France to the UK. This paper was co-written by both the legal and mental health professionals involved in the cases providing a broad opinion across both disciplines.
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Christopher Alan Griffiths and Laura Jayne Griffiths
The NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme provides access to psychotherapy in England through a stepped care approach for adults with depression and…
Abstract
Purpose
The NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme provides access to psychotherapy in England through a stepped care approach for adults with depression and anxiety disorders. This evaluation sought to investigate IAPT recovery and reliable change rates of those who scored severe on depression (PHQ-9), anxiety (GAD-7) or impaired functioning (WASA). The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
This evaluation employed a within groups design: a single case evaluation follow-up. Routine service data (from services set-up in 2008-2009 to February 2012) from 25,034 patients treated at four IAPT services was analysed.
Findings
The analysis revealed that 29 per cent (n=7,059) of patients were assessed as being in the WASA severe range, 41 per cent (n=10,208) in the PHQ severe range, and 57 per cent (n=14,612) in the GAD-7 severe range; with 14 per cent (n=3,548) in the severe range on all three measures combined. There were significant falls on all three measures and a large effect size. The percentage of patients who recovered to a point below the recovery threshold was 30 per cent for depression, 34 per cent for anxiety, 18 per cent for impaired functioning, and for those presenting severe on all measures: recovery rates were 21 per cent for anxiety, 26 per cent for depression, and 15 per cent for impaired functioning. Reliable change for anxiety was found to be greater than IAPT patients overall.
Originality/value
The results show that IAPT enables approximately a third of people scoring severe to recover, lower than IAPT recovery rates overall. Reliable change may be a more effective measure of patient progress.
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The purpose of this paper is to describe the perceptions which senior health and social care leaders have of their own organisations and of partner agencies, illustrating a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the perceptions which senior health and social care leaders have of their own organisations and of partner agencies, illustrating a possible method for beginning to think and talk about organisational and professional culture in settings.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a practical case study, with a group of senior leaders from across the health and social care system.
Findings
Different groups were often more critical of their own organisations than of others, but could still identify certain characteristics that they associated with partner agencies. While there is much that we admire about ourself and others, we seldom get chance to share this positive feedback. Equally, we rarely have the scope to give each other more challenging feedback and this – when carefully facilitated – can help build stronger relationships in the longer term.
Research limitations/implications
Inter-agency working is often influenced by the implicit assumptions and stereotypes we hold about each other’s professional culture. Surfacing these in a safe, facilitated setting can help to explore and challenge such assumptions (where appropriate), reflect on how we see others and better understand how others see us.
Originality/value
Policy debates about integrated care too often focus on structural “solutions” and arguably pay insufficient attention to the importance of culture. While work with front-line practitioners often tries to explore different perceptions of each other, it is less common for such an approach to be attempted with senior leaders.
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Scott deLahunta and Jordan Beth Vincent
This article aims to bring together and demonstrate overlaps in three different areas of reflexive research concerned variously with audiences for contemporary dance. These are…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to bring together and demonstrate overlaps in three different areas of reflexive research concerned variously with audiences for contemporary dance. These are: 1) artists reflecting on their own creative process and engaging other researchers in doing so, generating new insights and language as a result; 2) humanities-based dance studies and a small number of dance scholars reflecting on this “process turn” in dance; and 3) the field of empirical audience studies, drawing on a single study specifically interested in access to creative process. The goal is to propose how these areas might coexist and mutually inform each other.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach develops a three-fold framework where the multiple definitions and examples of reflexive research in dance-making processes coexist. It draws systematically on a detailed example of one self-reflective study conducted by a dance company into creative process, on new scholarly writing on the “process turn” in dance research and written analysis of a unique audience research project as well as related literature.
Findings
In conclusion, the article suggests that in whatever combination of different research approaches, empirical evidence is increasingly important. This risks tipping the balance towards a more utilitarian understanding, particularly in the area of audience studies. It is possible to counterbalance this with approaches from artists and scholars interested in understanding arrived at through reflexive study of creative practice.
Originality/value
The original contribution is to bring these three areas together for the first time to expose difference and overlaps and suggest that challenges of understanding (in a non-utilitarian form) could be mitigated through more systematic dialogue between them, such as presented here.
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Helen Ruth Hodges, Lucy J. Griffiths, Laura Elizabeth Cowley, Michael Jeanne Childs and Jonathan Scourfield
Linked data can provide unique insights into both the need for social care services and the outcomes of intervention. Crucially, these insights will be based on much more…
Abstract
Purpose
Linked data can provide unique insights into both the need for social care services and the outcomes of intervention. Crucially, these insights will be based on much more representative coverage of the population of people receiving social care than is achieved by surveys and they are not subject to the reporting bias that can arise in relation to stigmatised services.
Design/methodology/approach
The opportunities are expanding for linking together routine administrative data from different public services, e.g. health care, social care, education and criminal justice. These linked data can be used for research in trusted research environments which are very secure and where no researcher can identify individuals. Work is rapidly developing using children’s social care data.
Findings
Much of the data linkage research using children’s social care data is being conducted by data scientists and medical researchers without knowledge of the sector, and very few social care or social work specialists who have that knowledge are involved in these studies.
Originality/value
This viewpoint piece argues the need for social care and social work research to embrace data linkage. What is needed is an integration of methods expertise in linked data and substantive knowledge of children’s social care work. The arguments are illustrated with reference to some recent research in Wales.
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Anatomy of a Murder, a beloved, highly influential, seemingly liberal 1959 classic law-film seems to appropriate some of the fading western genre’s features and social functions…
Abstract
Anatomy of a Murder, a beloved, highly influential, seemingly liberal 1959 classic law-film seems to appropriate some of the fading western genre’s features and social functions, intertwining the professional-plot western formula with a hero-lawyer variation on the classic western hero character, America’s 19th century archetypal True Man. In so doing, Anatomy revives the western genre’s honor code, embracing it into the hero-lawyer law-film. Concurrently, it accommodates the development of cinematic imagery of the emerging, professional elite groups, offering the public the notion of the professional super-lawyer, integrating legal professionalism with natural justice. In the course of establishing its Herculean lawyer, the film constitutes its female protagonist as a potential threat, subjecting her to a cinematic judgment of her sexual character and reinforcing the honor-based notion of woman’s sexual-guilt.
Laura Rachel Freeman, Michelle Waldman, Judith Storey, Marie Williams, Claire Griffiths, Kevin Hopkins, Elizabeth Beer, Lily Bidmead and Jason Davies
The purpose of this paper is to outline the work of a service provider, service user and carer group created to develop a strategy for service user and carer co-production.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to outline the work of a service provider, service user and carer group created to develop a strategy for service user and carer co-production.
Design/methodology/approach
A reflective narrative account is given of the process through which the group formed and began to develop a working model aimed at shaping a cultural shift towards more co-produced services. The paper has been co-produced and includes the collaborative voices of service users, carers, multi-disciplinary staff, third-sector representatives, managers and colleagues from associated services.
Findings
The model developed outlines three stages for services to work through in order to achieve meaningful and sustainable co-produced services. The importance of developing associated policies related to such areas as recruitment, payment, support and training is also outlined. Challenges to co-production are noted along with suggested approaches to overcoming these.
Originality/value
The ethos of co-production is relatively new in the UK and so knowledge of the process and model may help guide others undertaking similar work.
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Charlotte Laura Clarke, Mike Titterton, Jane Wilcockson, Jane Reed, Wendy Moyle, Barbara Klein, Sandra Marais and Glenda Cook
The purpose of this paper is to explore the experience of older people and their sense of developing wellbeing, including consideration of the strategies they employ to respond to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the experience of older people and their sense of developing wellbeing, including consideration of the strategies they employ to respond to perceived risk.
Design/methodology/approach
An Appreciative Inquiry study was used, which collected data with 58 participants in focus group and individual interviews. Interviews focussed on ways in which older people in South Africa, Australia, Germany and the UK understand and seek to maintain wellbeing.
Findings
The changing time horizons of older people lead to perceptions of risk and concerns that embrace societal as well as individual concerns. Often, this leads to a sense of societal responsibility and desire for social change, which is frustrated by a perceived exclusion from participation in society.
Social implications
In mental health practice and education, it is imperative to embrace the shift from ageist concerns (with later life viewed as risky and tragic in itself) towards a greater sensitivity for older people’s resilience, the strategies they deploy to maintain this, and their desire for more control and respect for their potential to contribute to society.
Originality/value
Variation in time horizons leads to changes in temporal accounting, which may be under-utilised by society. Consequently, societies may not recognise and support the resilience of older people to the detriment of older people as individuals and to the wider society.
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Laura Struthers and Adam Mahoney
Suicide and suicide-related incidents have increased within women’s prisons in the UK. This paper aims to synthesise the findings of qualitative literature, to gain a deeper…
Abstract
Purpose
Suicide and suicide-related incidents have increased within women’s prisons in the UK. This paper aims to synthesise the findings of qualitative literature, to gain a deeper understanding of the how women and staff in English prisons experience and explain the causes of their suicidal behaviours.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic search of five electronic databases, namely, MEDLINE, APA Psychological Information Database (Psycinfo), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (with full text – CINAHL), Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection and APA PsycArticles, was completed in January 2023. This study’s search strategy returned 1,714 articles, 7 of which were included for review. To identify relevant themes within the data, Thomas and Harden’s (2008) framework was applied. Quality appraisal was conducted by using Joanna Briggs’ Institute Checklist for Qualitative Research (Joanna Briggs Institute, 2021).
Findings
Four themes were determined, which describe the causes of suicidal behaviours in women’s prisons in England; mental health and trauma, lack of support from services and staff, contact with family and self-harm as a coping strategy. Important sub-themes were also identified including the prison environment and poor relationships with staff.
Practical implications
Further qualitative research is needed, however, the findings suggest greater support is required to aid positive mental health, including the provision of trauma informed coping strategies and improved staff training.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors knowledge, this is the first systematic review conducted on the factors contributing to women’s suicide in English prisons using qualitative literature.
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