Family support, social capital, resilience and adolescent coping

All too often young people are excluded in practice from the general policy and professional consensus that partnership and participation should underpin work with children, young people and their families. If working with troubled and troublesome young people is to be based on family support, it will require not only the clear statement of that policy but also demonstration that it can be applied in practice. Achieving that involves setting out a plausible theory of change that can be rigorously evaluated. This paper suggests a conceptual model that draws on social support theory to harness the ideas of social capital and resilience in a way that can link formal family support interventions to adolescent coping. Research with young people attending three community-based projects for marginalized youth is used to illustrate how validated tools can be used to measure and document the detail of support, resilience, social capital and coping in young people's lives. It is also suggested that there is sufficient fit between the findings emerging from the study and the model to justify the model being more rigorously tested.

Mental health needs of children and youth with learning disabilities:Overview of a community needs assessment

The purpose of the present report is to describe a community needs assessment that puts the process and choice of a suitable approach into a context. The study examined the mental health needs of children and youth with learning disabilities and their families and how they fit within the continuum of services in Metropolitan Toronto. A series of recommendations was developed for the Ministry of Community and Social Services. The recommendations emphasize: prevention, training and consultation, and research. The study illustrates the importance of involving relevant constituencies in both the planning of a needs assessment and the formulation and implementation of recommendations based on the investigation.

Learning, development, and support needs of community palliative care clinical nurse specialists

Background: The palliative care clinical nurse specialist (PC-CNS) is a core member of the specialist palliative care team. According to professional policy, the role has four specific components: clinical practice, education, research, and leadership and management. Little is known about how to support staff in this role. Aim: The aim of this study was to explore what learning, development, and support PC-CNSs in one hospice need to enable them to fulfil all components of their role. Design: Using a descriptive exploratory approach, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with a purposive sample of community PC-CNSs from a hospice in Northern Ireland. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and thematically analysed. Findings: Seventeen interviews were analysed and three themes identified: influence of organisational culture, influence of the individual, and learning and development solutions. Conclusions: Participants reported that the PC-CNS role was stressful. They identified that the organisational culture and indeed individuals themselves influenced the learning and development support available to help them fulfil the four components of the role. Working relationships and stability within teams affected how supported individuals felt and had implications for managers in meeting the needs of staff while balancing the needs of the service.

Emotional insecurity in the family and community and youth delinquency in Northern Ireland: A person-oriented analysis across five-waves

Background: Over one billion children are exposed worldwide to political violence and armed conflict. Currently, conclusions about bases for adjustment problems are qualified by limited longitudinal research from a process-oriented, social-ecological perspective. In this study, we examined a theoretically-based model for the impact of multiple levels of the social ecology (family, community) on adolescent delinquency. Specifically, this study explored the impact of children’s emotional insecurity about both the family and community on youth delinquency in Northern Ireland. Methods: In the context of a five-wave longitudinal research design, participants included 999 mother-child dyads in Belfast (482 boys, 517 girls), drawn from socially-deprived, ethnically-homogenous areas that had experienced political violence. Youth ranged in age from 10 to 20 and were 12.18 (SD = 1.82) years old on average at Time 1. Findings: The longitudinal analyses were conducted in hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), allowing for the modeling of inter-individual differences in intra-individual change. Intra-individual trajectories of emotional insecurity about the family related to children’s delinquency. Greater insecurity about the community worsened the impact of family conflict on youth’s insecurity about the family, consistent with the notion that youth’s insecurity about the community sensitizes them to exposure to family conflict in the home. Conclusions: The results suggest that ameliorating children’s insecurity about family and community in contexts of political violence is an important goal toward improving adolescents’ well-being, including reduced risk for delinquency.