The Development and Evaluation of a School-Based Programme to Promote and the Enhance Well-Being of Primary School Children

The current study was carried out to evaluate the impact of a well-being curriculum based on existing knowledge of themes within PP, which contribute to well-being. The Positive Well-Being Curriculum consists of twelve ninety minute sessions delivered weekly during a school term. The twelve well-being sessions fit into four domains: positive experience, positive emotions, positive relationships, achievement and meaning (Seligman, 2007). The objectives of the study were to test the practical implications of running a well-being curriculum, to develop a range of activities within each domain and to evaluate the impact on student well-being with regard to life satisfaction, positive affectivity and subjective happiness. A pilot was carried out as preparation for the main mixed method intervention study, which was conducted in two London primary schools. Pre and post data was collected using standardised measures, focus groups and one to one interviews. Findings from the pilot demonstrated a significant increase in well-being as demonstrated by increases in: life satisfaction, positive affect and subjective happiness. Additional information was gathered which informed the content and implementation of the curriculum in the main study. The experience of taking part in the study as evidenced through qualitative and quantitative results, indicate that the Positive Well-being Curriculum was perceived by participating teachers and children to contribute positively to the well-being of the children. These findings would be of interest to educational psychologists as there is an increasing interest by schools to include creative and validated resources to support and enhance the well-being of all children. A number of useful insights were developed about the usefulness of the curriculum for children in a variety of educational settings.

An Investigation into the Implementation of CYP-IAPT Routine Outcome Measures in their First Year of Integration into Child Psychotherapy Practice

This thesis examines the impact on child and adolescent psychotherapists within CAMHS of the introduction of routine outcome measures (ROMs) associated with the Children and Young People’s Improving access to Psychological Therapies programme (CYP-IAPT). All CAMHS therapists working within a particular NHS mental health Trust1 were required to trial CYP-IAPT ROMs as part of their everyday clinical practice from October 2013-September 2014. During this period considerable freedom was allowed as to which of the measures each therapist used and at what frequency. In order to assess the impact of CYP-IAPT ROMs on child psychotherapy, I conducted semi-structured interviews with eight psychotherapists within a particular CAMHS partnership within one NHS Trust. Each statement was coded and grouped according to whether it related to initial (generic) assessment, goal setting / monitoring, monitoring on-going progress, therapeutic alliance, or to issues concerning how data might be used or interpreted by managers and commissioners. Analysis of interviews revealed greatest concern about session-by session ROMs, as these are felt to impact most significantly on psychotherapy; therapists felt that session-by-session ROMs do not take account of negative transference relationships, they are overly repetitive and used to reward / punish the therapist. Measures used at assessment and review were viewed as most compatible with psychotherapy, although often experienced as excessively time consuming. The Goal Based Outcome Measure was generally experienced as compatible with psychotherapy so long as goals are formed collaboratively between therapist and young person. There was considerable anxiety about how data may be (mis)used and (mis)interpreted by managers and commissioners, for example to end treatment prematurely, trigger change of therapist in the face of negative ROMs data, or to damage psychotherapy. Use of ROMs for short term and generic work was experienced as less intrusive and contentious.

Meeting the challenges of globalisation in legal education

The focus of this paper is a critical review of the impact of globalisation on international higher education at my own institution, the University of East London (UEL), where I am Programme Leader for LLB (Hons) Law, an undergraduate qualifying law degree. Globalisation, along with internationalisation, has been one of the forces that have most changed the educational landscape in this country over the last two decades. Although closely related to each other, globalisation and internationalisation are usually regarded as distinct forces – the former being defined as the economic, political, and societal forces pushing twenty-first-century higher education towards greater international involvement, while the latter describes the policies and practices of higher education developed to deal with this. Whilst these phenomena have wide implications for higher education as a whole, they present opportunities and challenges that are very specific both to an institution like UEL, which has a high proportion of students from international backgrounds, and to my own discipline, law, which has an increasingly global profile in terms of both legal education and professional practice.

Critical incident analysis: reflections of a teacher educator

As a teacher educator I consider myself an advocate for research-informed education, and strongly believe that it starts with one’s own critical self-reflection and analysis of one’s own teaching practice. Critical incident analysis is a pedagogical theory developed by Tripp (1993), whose analytical approaches allow reflection on teaching situations – ‘the critical incident’ – so that teachers can develop their professional judgments and practices. This article examines the concept of critical incident analysis through a teaching situation, with the aim of improving the teaching practice of students on teacher education programmes. I conclude that although critical incident analysis is a useful tool in navigating teaching practices, often challenges need to be addressed at much broader levels than the teaching context itself.

Like a fish in water? Experiences of Muslim families in the British education system

This article summarises the explorations of two Initial Teacher Education (ITE) lecturers looking particularly at Muslim families’ sense of belonging as they encounter the British education system. The study draws on Garcia’s (2009, Alstad, 2013) view of monoglossic and heteroglossic settings, and on Cremin’s (2015) proposition of the super-diversity of inner-city experiences. Case studies of individual families are used to create a picture that reflects the complexity and shifting nature of cultures, languages and identities in present-day Britain. Video and tape interviews are used and data coded and analysed to identify prevailing themes. The families and schools taking part are active participants in the research process, giving informed and ongoing consent, and having control of the resulting findings. Parents’ and children’s perceptions and experience have evolved in complex ways across the generations, and in ways that challenge the stereotypes that dominate media portrayals. Early findings suggest that existing paradigms for discussing identity fail to capture the increasingly complex and super-diverse realities. In a world where xenophobia currently fuels rigid and stereotypical views of cultures in general and Muslim cultures in particular, it is important that the complexity of families’ identities and relationships to the existing systems is seen, heard and appreciated.

Looking at ‘both sides’ of teacher education research and policy-making: insights for the teacher education research community

Teacher education researchers appear generally not well equipped to maximise a range of dissemination strategies, and remain largely separated from the policy implications of their research. How teacher education researchers address this issue and communicate their research to a wider public audience is more important than ever to consider within a global political discourse where teacher education researchers appear frustrated that their findings should, but do not, make a difference; and where the research they produce is often marginalised. This paper seeks to disrupt the widening gap between teacher education researchers and policy-makers by looking at the issue from ‘both sides’. The paper examines policy–research tensions and the critique of teacher education researchers and then outlines some of the key findings from an Australian policy-maker study. Recommendations are offered as a way for teacher education researchers to begin to mobilise a new set of generative strategies to draw from.

Evaluation of Tottenham Thinking Space Pilot: Final Report. Research Report 11.

This reports summarises research that began in March 2014 and was completed in October 2015 by an experienced inter-disciplinary research team from the Centre for Social Justice and Change and Psycho-Social Research Group, School of Social Sciences, the University of East London (UEL) and included Dr Yang Li from the Centre for Geo-Information Studies, UEL, for the first phase of the study. Tottenham ‘Thinking Space’ (TTS) was a pilot therapeutic initiative based in local communities and delivered by the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust and funded by the London Borough of Haringey Directorate of Public Health. TTS aimed to improve mental health and enable and empower local communities. TTS was situated within a mental health agenda that was integral to Haringey’s Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2012-2015 and aimed to encourage people to help themselves and each other and develop confident communities. On the one hand TTS was well-suited to this agenda, but, on the other, participants were resistant to, and were trying to free themselves from labelling that implied ‘mental health difficulties’. A total of 243 meetings were held and 351 people attended 1,716 times. The majority of participants attended four times or less, and 33 people attended between 5 and 10 times and 39 people attended over 10 times. Attending a small number of times does not necessarily mean that the attendee was not helped. Attendees reflected the ethnic diversity of Tottenham; 29 different ethnic groups attended. The opportunity to meet with people from different cultural backgrounds in a safe space was highly valued by attendees. Similarly, participants valued the wide age range represented and felt that they benefited from listening to inter-generational experiences. The majority of participants were women (72%) and they were instrumental in initiating further Thinking Spaces, topic specific meetings, the summer programme of activities for mothers and young children and training to meet their needs. The community development worker had a key role in implementing the initiative and sustaining its growth throughout the pilot period. We observed that TTS attracted those whose life experiences were marked by personal struggle and trauma. Many participants felt safe enough to disclose mental health difficulties (85% of those who completed a questionnaire). Participants also came seeking a stronger sense of community in their local area. Key features of the meetings are that they are democratic, non-judgemental, respectful, and focussed on encouraging everyone to listen and to try to understand. We found that the therapeutic method was put in place by high quality facilitators and health and personal outcomes for participants were consistent with those predicted by the underpinning psychoanalytical and systemic theories. Outcomes included a reduction in anxieties and improved personal and social functioning; approximately two thirds of those who completed a questionnaire felt better understood, felt more motivated and more hopeful for the future. The overwhelming majority of survey respondents also felt good about contributing to their community, said that they were more able to cooperate with others and accepting of other cultures, and had made new friends. Participants typically had a better understanding of their current situation and how to take positive action; of those who completed a questionnaire, over half felt more confident to seek support for a personal issue and to contact services. Members of TTS supported each other and instilled hope and build community-mindedness that reduced social isolation.

The Role of HBD-2 and HBD-3 in Human T Cell Development

Human β-defensins (hBDs) are a family of cationic peptides able to directly kill a wide range of microorganisms including bacteria, fungi and viruses. In addition to their antimicrobial activities, defensins also contribute to the modulation of both the host innate and adaptive immunity. In this project, we demonstrate that the αCD3/28 co-stimulation of human CD4+ T cells in the presence of 10μg/ml hBD-2 or hBD-3 together causes an up-regulation in numbers of CD4+CD69+CD25+ and CD4+CD69-CD25+ T cell subsets, indicating that the treatment of hBD-2 and 3 enhances CD4+ T cell activation. Consistent with this finding, proliferation assay using CFSE suggests that hBD-2 and hBD-3 treatment in vitro induces the proliferation of CD4+ T cells following by 96hrs culture. Analysis of expression of the regulatory T cells (Tregs) specific marker, FoxP3, reveals a shift in the CD4+CD127-CD25+ Treg subset at 18hrs. However, at the later time point, we found that the percentage of FoxP3+cells decreased in the CD4+CD127-CD25+ Treg population, whereas the presence of the FoxP3+CTLA-4+ Treg subset increased. These data indicate that Treg suppressive function may be potentially defective following the co-incubation of purified T cells with either hBD-2 or hBD-3 for 42hrs in vitro due to the apparent loss of FoxP3 expression. We further characterise the role of hBD-2 and hBD-3 in driving human CD4+ T cells polarisation. Our in vitro data suggests that treatment with hBD-2 and hBD-3 can not only induces effector T cell (Teff) differentiation into RORγt+T-bet+ (Th17/Th1) cells, but can also trigger the differentiation of Treg expressing RORγt and T-bet rather than the master controller of Treg function, FoxP3. This apparent plasticity of T cell phenotype allows them to convert from Treg to Th1/17-like effector T cell phenotype following 18hrs in culture. By 42hrs in culture, treatment with hBD-2 and hBD-3 induced both Teff cell and Treg cell differentiation towards the Th17-like phenotype. Compared with the treatment with hBD-2, treatment with hBD-3 induced a more pronounced effect to increase levels of RORγt in CD4+ T cells. This elevated expression may, in turn, be responsible for the induction of higher IL-17A secretion. Consistent with this idea, it was found that treatment with hBD-3 but not hBD-2 was capable of inducing the higher level of secretion of IL-17A. Additionally, treatment with hBD-3 induced an increased expression of IL-6, which is capable of driving the differentiation of naïve T cells towards IL-17-producing Th17 cells. Functionally, using the Treg suppression assay, the data suggested that hBD-2 may dampen down Treg cell ability to induce suppression of Teff cell activity. Interestingly, co-culture with hBD-2 would also appear to increase Teff cell resistance to Treg immunoregulation in vitro. Further investigation using microarray gene analysis revealed chemokine C-C motif ligand 1 (CCL1) as potential genes responding to hBD-2 treatment. The blockade of CCL1 has been reported to inhibit Treg suppressive function. Thus, this study explored the function of these antimicrobial candidates in regulating CD4+ T cell plasticity which could result in hBD-2 and hBD-3 being able to regulate its own production, but also may regulate Treg and Teff cell development and function, thus strengthening the link between innate and adaptive immunity

What is the Role of Attachment in Contemporary Psychotherapy? A Grounded Theory Exploration of the Perspective of Experienced Psychologists

Since Bowlby devised his theory of attachment, originally for clinical purposes, refinements and extensions have developed its clinical utility. The research question asked how experienced contemporary clinicians now perceive the role of attachment in the formulation and treatment of distress by reference to their clinical work. Using grounded theory methodology, underpinned by a relativist, moderate social constructionist epistemology, initial sampling consisted of 16 in-depth interviews with experienced clinicians. The tentative theoretical categories that emerged were then developed in theoretical sampling in further interviews with 5 of the initial interviewees. The final theoretical categories to emerge concerned the prevalence of caregiver-related problems, the provision of safety together with the prioritisation of the relationship with self as attachment-related treatment strategies, and attachment theory’s provision of understanding in problem formulation. Whilst this suggests that attachment-related ideas are integrated in contemporary practice, it also suggests that the clinical utility now offered by attachment theory, as established in the literature, has not found broad appeal amongst clinicians despite the commonness of attachment-related presenting problems. The implications of this are manifold. To begin with, attachment theorists have largely failed to bring the potential now offered by attachment-related therapeutic interventions to the market. This situation makes it incumbent on the next generation of attachment researchers to more clearly articulate techniques with which clinicians, of whatever theoretical orientation, can better leverage attachment-related knowledge in their clinical work. In this enterprise, perhaps the knowledge and experience of expert clinicians could be harvested, as this research has done. Moreover, researchers must expand the evidence base that such interventions actually work. Beyond the implications for clinical utility and efficacy, the findings strengthen counselling psychology’s influence on society’s perception and treatment of attachment-related problems.

Towards Empowerment: Narrative Study of Counselling Psychology Trainees and How They Make Sense of Their Personal and Professional Development in the Context of Their Past Experiences

The discipline of counselling psychology continues to grow and change in response to social, economic and political pressures. It has been argued that its quest for a coherent and distinct identity, which emphasises the possibility of the coexistence of multiple approaches, creates an inherently uncertain and dilemmatic training environment that may hinder the development of trainees’ professional identities. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the issue at hand, the aim was to explore how final year trainees and newly qualified counselling psychologists constructed and made sense of their emerging professional identities and what experiences, past and present, they drew upon in the context of their training to shape those identities. Applying narrative inquiry to analyse eight open-ended interviews, eight preliminary themes were originally identified in participants’ narratives, which with further refinements lead to stories of struggle and marginalisation, growth and discovery, and power and resilience. Participants’ stories of struggle and marginalisation emerged in reference to early family dynamics and stressful life experiences, which seemed to also foster a strong identification with the counselling psychology profession, while stories of growth and discovery focused on the importance of having supportive figures, who helped to instill a sense of security and create an atmosphere of openness. It was in this learning environment that participants felt it was possible to develop a more resilient, empowered professional self, which allowed them to shed an earlier sense of struggle and vulnerability. However, where more of an emphasis was placed on power and resilience, there seemed to be less room for participants to express other feelings that came into conflict with their preferred sense of professional self. While there seems to be a need for a ‘safer’ climate, in which trainees could voice and acknowledge anxieties, vulnerabilities and limitations, addressing concerns around power and vulnerability that may be contributing to the silencing of particular voices and identities may be equally important if trainees are to develop coherent and distinct counselling psychologist identities.

A Comparison of Audio Recordings and Therapist's Process Notes in Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Therapistsʼ process notes - written descriptions of a session produced shortly afterwards from memory - hold a significant role in child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapy. They are central in training, in supervision, and in developing oneʼs understanding through selfsupervision and forms of psychotherapy research. This thesis examines such process notes through a comparison with audio recordings of the same sessions. In so doing, it aims to generate theory that might illuminate the causes of significantly patterned discrepancies between the notes and recordings, in order to understand more about the processes at work in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and to explore the nature of process notes, their values and limitations. The literature searches conducted revealed limited relevant studies. All identified studies that compare process notes with recordings of sessions seek to quantify the differences between the two forms of recording. Unlike these, this thesis explores the meaning of the differences between process notes and recordings through qualitative data analysis. Using psychoanalytically informed grounded theory, in total nine sets of process notes and recordings from three different psychoanalytic psychotherapists are analysed. The analysis identifies eight core categories of findings. Initial theories are developed from these categories, most significantly concerning the role and influence of a ʻcore transference dynamicʼ between therapist and patient. Further theory is developed on the nature and function of process notes as a means for the therapistʼs conscious and unconscious processing of the session, as well as on the nature of the influence of the relationships – both internal and external – within which they are written. In the light of the findings, a proposal is made for a new approach for learning about the patient and clinical work, ʻthe comparison methodʼ (supervision involving a comparison of process notes and recordings), and, in particular, for its inclusion within the training of psychoanalytic psychotherapists. Further recommendations for research are also made.

The Political Economy of Reproduction: Motherhood, Work and the Home in Neoliberal Britain

This thesis investigates how the processes and practices of reproduction have been transformed not only by the ascendant political rationality of neoliberalism but also by women’s struggles that have reconfigured motherhood, the domestic home and the gendered organisation of employment. Through exploring both the 1970s feminist demand for “free 24- hour nurseries” and the contemporary provision of extended, overnight and flexible childcare, care that is often referred to as “24-hour childcare”, the research contributes to feminist understandings of the gendered and racialised class dynamics inside and outside the home and the wage. The research repositions the ‘Woman Question’ as, yet again unavoidable and necessary for comprehending and intervening in the brutalising consequences of capitalist accumulation. Situated within the Marxist feminist tradition, the work of reproduction is understood as a cluster of tasks, affective relations and employment that have historically been constructed and experienced as ‘women’s work’. The interrelation between the subjectivity of motherhood and the political economy of reproduction is analysed through a feminist genealogy of 24-hour childcare in Britain. Using ethnographic encounters, archival research and interview data with mothers and childcare workers, the research tells a story about the women who have worked both inside and outside the home, raised children, cooked and cleaned, and who, both historically and in the present, continue to create an immense amount of wealth and value. As women's labour market participation has steadily increased over the last 40 years, the discourse of reproduction has shifted to one in which motherhood is increasingly constructed as a choice. Within neoliberal discourse the decision to have a child is constructed as a private matter for which individuals bear the costs and responsibility. The thesis argues that, as a result of motherhood being constructed more and more as something that is chosen, the spaces of resistance and opposition towards motherhood have been limited and resistance has been individuated and privatised.

Challenges Facing Long Term Foster Carers: Exploration of the Nature of Psychoanalytic Parent/Carer Support

This research study investigates the role and impact of psychoanalytically-informed short-term parent work with long-term foster carers of looked-after children, in support of the foster placement. The study reflects on the data gathered from four child assessments and five foster families seen by a psychoanalytic child psychotherapist for four sessions each. It draws on psychoanalytic ideas from a range of theoretical traditions, exploring such concepts as trauma, defences, compulsion to repeat, psychological-mindedness, ‘container/contained’ (Bion) and ‘holding environment’ (Winnicott). One distinctive contribution of this research is what it adds to our already existing understanding of the defences (or responses) aroused in the carer when faced with the intense and distressing affect associated with the child’s early trauma; and the impact of this legacy of trauma on the child, on the carer and on the wider Social Services system. Applying Grounded Theory and psychoanalytically-informed clinical case study methodology to the research material, the study breaks down the data analysis into seven stages of coding, from the initial reading of the data to the eventual development of two key hypotheses. One of the predominant themes that emerged from the analysis was the carer’s capacity to remain focused on the child’s emotional needs and how this in turn was linked to the direction of the therapist’s focus. The successive analyses of the data culminated in the hypothesis that the more the therapist focused on the carer and the carer’s emotional states in the course of the parent work, the more the carer was enabled to focus on the child’s emotional needs. As the system of categories emerged according to the themes exemplified in the sessions, a particular focus of analysis became the concept of psychologicalmindedness, considered under several sub-categories: displaying insightful comments; awareness of the child’s bodily states; awareness of the child’s affect; the carer’s ability to recognize the child’s defences; and the carer’s ability to make links between the child’s current difficulties and the child’s past experiences. Through this analysis it became apparent that degree of psychological-mindedness was closely linked to the individual carer’s capacity to metabolize the child’s distressed and distressing communication. This in turn led to a deeper exploration of the situations that were particularly challenging for the carers: i.e., instances when the child was compelled to repeat past traumatic emotional states and as a result was communicating intense distress. This exploration eventually generated the second hypothesis: that in reaction to the child’s distress, the response of each carer could be plotted somewhere along a spectrum, from either distancing themselves from the child’s emotional state to seeking excessive closeness with the child (merging). The next stage of the analysis developed four new categories of carer responses to the distressed child: identification and distancing from the child; identification and merging with the child; the category that describes the carer’s psychologicalmindedness as being ‘impaired’; and ‘good enough’ caring. This then led to an exploration of the carer’s own defences at these most challenging times. This research demonstrates clearly that even within the short space of four sessions of weekly psychoanalytic parent work, it is possible to achieve significant improvement in a carer’s capacity to bear the child’s compulsion to repeat early traumas, and to help the carers become more emotionally available to provide the child with effective psychological parenting at such difficult and challenging times. Key words: looked-after children; long-term foster carers; psychoanalytic short-term parent work; trauma; compulsion to repeat; psychological-mindedness; empathy; defences; psychoanalytically-informed clinical case study research methodology; Grounded Theory research methodology.

Live Work: The Impact of Direct Encounters in Statutory Child and Family Social Wor

The aim of this research project was to examine the impact of direct work on practitioners in the field of statutory child protection. The author’s premise was that this work was anything but straightforward and that surprisingly, given the intense scrutiny on Children’s Services following a child death, there was little research into the day-to-day practice of front line staff. The aim was to explore whether psychoanalytic theory could be useful in understanding and making sense of the social work task. Data was collected through observation and semi-structured interviews in one Local Authority Child in Need team over a period of six months. The findings indicated that practitioners experienced direct work with some individuals and families as profoundly disturbing and that this affected them physiologically as well as psychologically. These effects persisted over time and appeared very difficult for the workers to process or articulate. This could be expressed through embodied or non-verbal communication in the interview. Practitioners appeared to be ‘inhabited’ by particular clients, suggesting phenomena such as projective identification were in operation. The intensity and persistence of the impact on the practitioners appears to be directly related to the quality, nature and intensity of the psychic defences functioning for the particular client. Significantly, the research indicated that when practitioners were dealing with the negative and disturbing projections from the (adult) clients it seemed from the data that the focus on the child would slip so that the child appeared to recede from view. Symptoms experienced by the practitioners were akin to trauma and research and theory on primary and secondary trauma were considered. Other issues raised included shame, which affects the clients, practitioners and the organisation and the meaning and implications of this are explored. Links between neuroscience and projective identification are addressed as well as the role of the organisation, particularly as a container for these toxic and disturbing encounters.

Exploring the Impact of a Difficult Breastfeeding Experience on Maternal Identity: A Narrative Analysis

Introduction: Due to the implied health benefits for mother and baby, breastfeeding has become a key public health issue. Literature reviewed highlighted the ‘medical’ and ‘natural’ mother discourse which surrounds motherhood and impacts on women’s decisions to breastfeed. Whilst the emotional and physical strains of a difficult experience have been explored, it is unclear how these experiences impact on women’s identities as mothers and in what ways women are able to narrate and share their embodied experiences. Methods: Seven first time mothers who described themselves as having had a difficult breastfeeding experience were interviewed to gather data pertaining to how mothers construct narratives of breastfeeding and the impact of these narratives on their identity as mothers. An interest in both socio-political discourse and embodiment theory derived from the literature review led to the use of visual methods in eliciting narratives and the employment of a critical narrative analysis in exploring the data gathered. Findings: The participants’ narratives drew from ‘medical’ and ‘natural’ mother discourses and were found to constrain subjective experience and leave participants with feelings of guilt, frustration and loss. A prevailing assumption that unruly, excessive bodies must be controlled by a rational ‘mind’ led to the body becoming a site for control and resistance for participants as they attempted to conform to norms of motherhood and breastfeeding. Discussion: Results identified the ways in which women as mothers can see their subjective experiences diminished and their voices silenced due to a lack of available discourse and entrenched ideologies surrounding the ‘good’ mother. It is suggested that adopting a social justice agenda within therapeutic practice might prevent the internalisation of oppressive discourse which can lead to mothers’ psychological distress. Moreover, it is suggested that exploring the body in therapy might resist a mind/body dualism and lead to increasingly compassionate and accepting relationships with our bodies; in turn increasing awareness of subjective experience.