Building Family Emotional Resilience: Understanding the needs of families with children attending Special Schools in Northern Ireland

This report outlines a small-scale consultation with families of children attending Special Schools, in order to understand their unmet needs in terms of family emotional wellbeing. The research was commissioned by a consortium of organisations that provide emotional wellbeing services:
1. Niamh (Northern Ireland Association for Mental Health);
2. Barnardo’s NI ‘Time 4 Me’ school counselling service; and
3. TakeTen Limited.

Anglo-Irish relations in the framework of the EEC and Northern Ireland, 1969-1975

This thesis will analyse Anglo-Irish relations between 1969 and 1975, when two topics dominated the relationship: Northern Ireland and the entry of Britain and Ireland into the European Economic Community (hereafter EEC). In 1969 entry to the EEC was still only a possibility and awaited political developments, while the Northern Ireland problem had yet to escalate. 1975 on the other hand confirmed that Ireland would remain in the EEC even if Britain left while Direct Rule for Northern Ireland was confirmed as the British policy for the foreseeable future. These dates are significant because they encompass firstly pre and post entry to the EEC and how this transformed Anglo-Irish relations. Secondly they contain the commencement and then deterioration of the Northern Ireland problem and the attempts to resolve it that finally led to direct rule by Westminster. The study will examine the fluctuating nature of the relationship between Britain and Ireland. Special regard will be devoted to the demands of internal British politics and how such demands affected the relationship. Overall, the study will demonstrate how the bilateral relationship evolved under the pressure of events in Northern Ireland and adapted to the multilateral context of the EEC. It will compare the dynamics of the states’ interactions in two extremely different areas. The thesis will demonstrate how entry to the EEC transformed the unequal Anglo-Irish economic relationship and created one of partners within the EEC. It will also analyse how the developing Northern Ireland problem caused changes to British policy. In particular, it will examine how the British Government came to recognise the beneficial role that the Republic of Ireland might play in resolving the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland:Democratizing for Development

This introductory article does three things. First, it indicates the general purpose of this special edition an d outlines the structure an d intention of the four main articles that follow. Secondly, it elaborates the arguments and theoretical discourse underpinning the articles, and thirdly, it locates these concerns and development initiatives not only in the specifiŽc regional context of Northern Ireland, but also in the wider framework of a new global econom y.

No War, No Peace: Northern Ireland after the Agreement

In 1998 a historic agreement, commonly known as the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement, formed the basis of a negotiated settlement for the future of Northern Ireland. Since that time the level of violence in Northern Ireland has reduced but many problematic issues related to governance, sectarianism, and community relations remain on the political agenda and have destabilized the post-peace accord environment. Many of these issues can be viewed as either causes or consequences of the protracted conflict in Northern Ireland. This special issue examines some of these issues from a political psychology perspective. Economic, political, social, and psychological factors that have supported and hindered progress towards peace and stability are considered. While the paramilitary ceasefires have remained intact and certain aspects of life in Northern Ireland have been transformed, the road to peace has been hindered by both political and psychological intransigence. This paper offers an opportunity to reevaluate conceptualisations of conflict and its management in chronic situations, where divisions are deeply embedded within societal structures and relationships, and consider factors that may act as barriers to the development of a lasting peace.

A Census-based longitudinal study of variations in survival amongst residents of nursing and residential homes in Northern Ireland

Background: despite the intensive services provided to residents of care homes, information on death rates is not routinely available for this population in the UK. Objective: to quantify mortality rates across the care home population of Northern Ireland, and assess variation by type of care home and resident characteristics. Design: a prospective, Census-based cohort study, with 5-year follow-up. Participants: all 9,072 residents of care homes for people aged 65 and over at the time of the 2001 census with a special emphasis on the 2,112 residents admitted during the year preceding census day. Measurements: age, sex, self-reported health, marital status, residence (not in care home, residential home, dual registered home, nursing home), elderly mentally infirm care provision. Results: the median survival among nursing home residents was 2.33 years (95% CI 2.25–2.59), for dual registered homes 2.75 (95% CI 2.42–3.17) and for residential homes 4.51 (95% CI 3.92–4.92) years. Age, sex and self-reported health showed weaker associations in the sicker populations in nursing homes compared to those in residential care or among the non-institutionalised. Conclusions: the high mortality in care homes indicates that places in care homes are reserved for the most severely ill and dependent. Death rates may not be an appropriate care quality measure for this population, but may serve as a useful adjunct for clinical staff and the planning of care home provision.

Anatomy and facies association of a drumlin in Co. Down, Northern Ireland, from seismic and electrical resistivity surveys

Seismic refraction and electrical resistivity geophysical techniques were used to reconstruct the internal architecture of a drumlin in Co. Down, Northern Ireland. Geophysical results were both validated and complemented by borehole drilling, ground water flow modelling, and geologic mapping. The geophysical anatomy of the drumlin consists of five successive layers with depth including; topsoil, partially saturated and saturated glacial tills, and weathered and more competent greywacke bedrock. There are numerous, often extensive inclusions of clay, sand, gravel, cobbles, and boulders within the topsoil and the till units. Together geophysical and geotechnical findings imply that the drumlin is part of the subglacial lodgement, melt-out, debris flow, sheet flow facies described by previous authors, and formed by re-sedimentation and streamlining of pre-existing sediments during deglaciation of the Late Devensian ice sheet. Seismic refraction imaging is particularly well suited to delineating layering within the drumlin, and is able to reconstruct depths to interfaces to within ± 0.5 m accuracy. Refraction imaging ascertained that the weathered bedrock layer is continuous and of substantial thickness, so that it acts as a basal aquifer which underdrains the bulk of the drumlin. Electrical resistivity imaging was found to be capable of delineating relative spatial changes in the moisture content of the till units, as well as mapping sedimentary inclusions within the till. The moisture content appeared to be elevated near the margins of the drumlin, which may infer a weakening of the drumlin slopes. Our findings advocate the use of seismic refraction and electrical resistivity methods in future sedimentological and geotechnical studies of internal drumlin architecture and drumlin formation, owing particularly to the superior, 3- D spatial coverage of these methods.

Archiving Qualitative Data in the Context of a Society Coming out of Conflict: Some Lessons from Northern Ireland.

ARK (‘Access Research Knowledge’) was set up with a single goal: to make social science information on Northern Ireland available to the widest possible audience. The most well-known and widely used part of the ARK resource is CAIN (Conflict Archive on the INternet), which is one of the largest on-line collections of source material and information and about the Northern Ireland conflict. The compilation of CAIN's new Remembering: Victims, Survivors and Commemoration section raised issues related to the sensitivity of the material, as it feeds into the fundamental debate on the legacy of the Northern Ireland conflict. It also fundamentally raises the question to what extent archiving is a neutral or political activity and necessitates a discourse on responsibility and ethics among social researchers. Experiences from the establishment of the Northern Ireland Qualitative Archive (NIQA) shed light on future possibilities with regard to qualitative archives on the Northern Ireland conflict.

Assessing length of stay and associated characteristics of geriatric patients in Northern Ireland

The effective provision of care for the elderly is becoming increasingly more difficult. This is due to the rising proportion of elderly in the population, increasing demands placed on the health services and the financial strain placed on an already stretched economy. The research presented in this paper uses three different models to represent the length of stay distribution of geriatric patients admitted to one of the six key acute hospitals in Northern Ireland and various patient characteristics associated with their respective length of stay. The accurate modelling of bed usage within wards would enable hospital managers to prepare patient discharge packages and rehabilitation services in advance. The models presented within the paper include a Cox proportional hazards model, a Bayesian network with a discrete variable to represent length of stay and a special conditional phase-type model (C-Ph) with a connecting outcome node. This research demonstrates the new efficient fitting algorithm employed for Coxian phase-type distributions while updating C-Ph models for recent elderly patient data.

The Crowned Harp: Policing Northern Ireland (reprint 2006, 2010)

The Crowned Harp provides a detailed analysis of policing in Northern Ireland. Tracing its history from 1922, Ellison and Smyth portray the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) as an organisation burdened by its past as a colonial police force. They analyse its perceived close relationship with unionism and why, for many nationalists, the RUC embodied the problem of the legitimacy of Northern Ireland, arguing that decisions made on the organisation, composition and ideology of policing in the early years of the state had consequences which went beyond the everyday practice of policing.

The authors provide an extended discussion of policing after the outbreak of civil unrest in 1969, ask why policing was cast in a paramilitary mould, and look at the use of special constabularies and the way in which the police dealt with social unrest which threatened to break down sectarian divisions. Examining the reorganisations of the RUC in the 1970s and 1980s, Ellison and Smyth focus on the various structural, legal and ideological components, the professionalisation of the force and the development of a coherent, if contradictory, ideology. The analysis of the RUC during this period sheds light on the problematic nature of using the police as a counter insurgency force in a divided society. Perceptions of the police, and the opinions of rank and file members are examined and an assessment is made of the various alternative models of policing, such as community policing and local control. This book offers important lessons about the nature of policing in divided societies.

Understanding Racial Tensions in Northern Ireland: Threat, Paranoia and the Fear of Loss

This paper will explore the development of increased group tensions in Northern Ireland
over the past decade with a special emphasis being placed upon rising racial tensions in cities such
as Belfast and Lisburn. The paper will analyse why Northern Ireland has been described as the new
race-hate capital of Europe and, through a case-study of Loyalism, will argue that if this growth in
racist sentiment is to be prevented, more needs to be done to understand the causes of such feeling,
particularly within loyalist working-class areas. I will argue that society as a whole needs to address
the fears and anxieties of those that perceive themselves to be under threat from the recent increase
in immigration or else we risk creating a new cause célèbre for those that would seek to extend the
lifetime of our paramilitary organisations. Moreover, at a time when loyalist communities feel politically
alienated and lacking representation, there is a real danger of British far-right groups exploiting the
situation and making long-term political capital.