Adolescent Substance abuse among young people excluded from school in Belfast

The lifestyles of young people excluded from school have received much attention recently, particularly in relation to illicit drug use. Commentators have acknowledged that they constitute a high-risk group to social disaffection and substance abuse. This paper reports on a group of 48 young people living in Belfast aged 13�14 years who are considered to be at a particularly high risk to substance abuse because they are excluded from school. The evidence in this paper suggests that many are already exhibiting potentially high-risk behaviours to problem drug use compared with their contemporaries in mainstream education. This paper examines the evidence within the context of a limited existing literature base on this group of young people. It suggests that a more focused approach is required for the development of appropriate drug-prevention strategies to meet their needs.

Are rural development programmes socially inclusive? Social inclusion, civic engagement, participation, and social capital: Exploring the differences

Considerable importance is attached to social exclusion/inclusion in recent EU rural development programmes. At the national/regional operation of these programmes groups of people who are not participating are often identified as ‘socially excluded groups’. This article contends that rural development programmes are misinterpreting the social processes of participation and consequently labelling some groups as socially excluded when they are not. This is partly because of the interchangeable and confused use of the concepts social inclusion, social capital and civic engagement, and partly because of the presumption that to participate is the default position. Three groups identified as socially excluded groups in Northern Ireland are considered. It is argued that a more careful analysis of what social inclusion means, what civic engagement means, and why participation is presumed to be the norm, leads to a different conclusion about who is excluded. This has both theoretical and policy relevance for the much used concept of social inclusion.

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.

New Perspectives on the Role of Cultural Intermediaries in Social Inclusion in the UK

Based on interviews with arts administrators responsible for addressing targeted groups labelled “socially excluded,” this paper highlights new understandings of the term “cultural intermediary” (Featherstone 1991; Bourdieu 2000) within art galleries and art centres. It considers the unique role of such figures in crossing the exclusion/inclusion boundary within the arts and developing more personal approaches to marketing activities in their institutions through relationship building. While it is acknowledged here that such workers find themselves in a privileged position in being able to shape questions of taste and particular consumerist dispositions to understanding the art world, little, if not no, effort has been made to understand this process. As such, there remains a void between the cultural policy‐oriented conception of social inclusion, which implies a version of repairing the “flawed consumer” (Bauman 2005), and the way in which such policy is played out on the ground.

Exploring the needs of socially excluded young men

In recent years, social exclusion has gained the attention of governments around the world. This paper reports on a qualitative study involving 27 young men aged 14-19 years experiencing particular forms of exclusion in the context of Northern Irish society. The study used a focus group methodology to elicit their views with the aim of exploring both emotional and psychological needs and the structural factors that may contribute to their experiences of social exclusion. The findings reveal a range of unmet social and psychological needs, the impact of sectarianism and segregation, and a paucity of support systems in place. The paper concludes by making recommendations about how policy-makers and practitioners could find more imaginative ways of engaging such vulnerable young men to reduce social exclusion.