Inventing adulthoods: a biographical approach to understanding youth citizenship

Traditionally adulthood and citizenship have been synonymous. Yet adulthood is changing. In this paper we explore how young people's evolving understandings of adulthood may contribute towards an understanding of citizenship within the broader context of increasingly extended and fragmented transitions. The paper draws on a unique qualitative longitudinal data set in which 100 young people, from contrasting social backgrounds in the United Kingdom, have been followed over a five‐year period using repeat biographical interviews. We present first the themes that emerged from a cross‐cut analysis of the first of three rounds of interviews distinguishing between relational and individualised understandings of adulthood. We then present a model we developed to capture the ways that young people sought out opportunities for competence and recognition in different fields of their lives. Finally a case study that follows a young woman through her three interviews illustrates how these themes can appear in an individual trajectory. We offer the model and case study as a way of exploring a more subjective approach to citizenship in which participation is not deferred to some distant future in which economic independence is achieved, but is understood as constantly constructed in the present.     

Factitious Illness by Proxy: Understanding Underlying Psychological Processes and Motivations

Children are put at risk of emotional and physical harm when parents seek unnecessary medical care. Understanding why parents seek medical interventions that create risk for their children requires us to consider how past experiences, and the mental representations of these experiences influence current behaviour. Past experiences of danger affect how parents interpret ‘dangerous’ situations in the present and how they organise protection of their child. This article demonstrates how the notion of mental representations (that dispose parents to act in particular ways) can assist in engaging, assessing and treating parents who display factitious illness by proxy behaviour. When classified using the Dynamic‐Maturational Method, the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) allows both assessment of implicit and explicit representations and also understanding of the developmental process through which parents have learnt to attribute meaning to information and to organise their behaviour. In this case study, psychosocial assessment of the family included an AAI with each parent. The use of this assessment tool both aided the therapy team in the process of case formulation and intervention planning, and had therapeutic value in and of itself. We argue that treatment is more likely to be effective if the parents and professionals have a shared understanding of the parents' intentions and the developmental process that led to unsafe behaviour, which requires change.     

Parenting fostered adolescents: skills and strategies

This paper discusses findings from a recently completed study of adolescent foster care, which included a detailed assessment of the parenting approaches and strategies used by the foster carers of adolescents in long‐term placements. Sixty‐eight foster carers were interviewed at two points in time. The first interview was conducted two months after the start of a new adolescent placement and the second after the placement had been continuing for a year, or at the point of disruption if this occurred earlier. The interview schedules were designed specifically for this study and were based upon well‐established techniques developed in other studies of parenting. They enabled the researchers to make summary ratings for each carer on established dimensions of parenting such as control and discipline, responsiveness and the level of engagement with the child. The researchers assessed how these strategies changed and developed in relation to the young person's behaviour and whether these approaches influenced either the likelihood of placement disruption or the quality of the placement for the child. This paper describes the parenting strategies used by the foster carers, highlighting the areas of parenting that significantly affected the placement outcomes and the corresponding implications for policy and practice.     

Engagement: A Critical Aspect of Family Therapy Practice*

Engagement must be appreciated as an integral ongoing aspect of therapy. It can provide therapists with a wealth of information about the structure and functioning of the family. Engagement/counter-engagement, assessment and interventions are essential, interdependent processes which occur throughout treatment. Ways of enhancing the engagement process are discussed.     

The truth and lie story: developing a tool for assessing child witnesses' ability to differentiate between truth and lies

Within the court arena, the credibility and competency of child witnesses often comes under scrutiny and the decision whether a child is considered to be credible or not strongly in?uences whether their evidence will be heard by the court. A child's ability to demonstrate that they understand the difference between truth and lies and the importance of telling the truth is synonymous with competency. Research suggests that many professionals undertaking the task of establishing competency ?nd it very dif?cult, especially with younger children (Aldridge and Wood, 1997, cited in Aldridge and Wood, 1998). This paper describes the process involved in developing an innovative tool for helping professionals assess whether a child understands the difference between truth and lies. The development of the tool arose from the concerns of of?cers from Northumbria Police Force (in the UK) relating to interviews following the protocol of the government's Memorandum of Good Practice (Home Of?ce and Department of Health, 1992) on interviewing child witnesses, and the need to establish whether child witnesses can differentiate between truth and lies. As an example of good practice, The Truth and Lie Story described here has now been included in the Home Of?ce (2002) guidance Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings, which is a revision of the 1992 Memorandum of Good Practice. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Success and failure in management buyouts

This paper outlines a model for examining the process of formulating a successful management buyout, taking the viewpoint of all concerned, viz., buyers, sellers, advisors, investors and employees. It arises out of the observation of, and involvement in, a number of buyout negotiations: some were completed but continue to falter; some were aborted; others are currently successful. The paper suggests that eventual success is a function of two main factors. The first is the probability of conflict, as defined by the buyout typology, and the second the decisions made, and not made, during negotiations. The latter includes such questions as, for the company: what to hive down: which management to involve; future customer relations; and for the deal: the setting of the price: the future role of investors; choosing advisors.     

Boards of directors in nonprofit organizations do they follow a life-cycle model?

In this study the authors used data from a survey of Canadian nonprofit organizations to empirically test hypotheses derived from models of nonprofit board “life cycles.” The authors suggest that while formal structural elements of board behavior change in the manner suggested by life-cycle models, the more enacted or behavioral aspects of nonprofit boards do not. The data further suggest caution in the use of life-cycle or age-dependent models to either explain or guide nonprofit board behavior.