GCPH

This briefing reports on a study that set out to investigate relationships between parents and young people in ordinary families in Scotland. Through interviews with parents and teenagers, it explored their ideas about families, what they saw as important in family life as well as the negotiation of increasing independence for young people. It also aimed to investigate the parenting styles that parents of teenagers adopted, and relate these to the styles seen as producing favourable outcomes in existing research literature. It also considered views on types of family, given the increased diversity of living arrangements in contemporary society.

The current economic situation in Glasgow is one with substantial growth in service sector employment and vacancies at a high. However, a significant number of the population remains marginalized from the labour market. Existing policies to tackle this marginalisation have attempted to remedy problems at the levels of individual skills and capacities (labour supply side) and stimulation of jobs growth (labour demand side). Successful though these approaches have been, there still remains a persistent core of the working age population who seem no nearer to finding sustained employment in the city economy.
Preliminary research by the Full Employment Areas initiative (FEA) suggested that client’s social networks could be an additional factor contributing to labour market proximity and likelihood of attaining sustained employment, particularly when the networks are confined to small geographical areas characterised by high levels of worklessness. This research explored these networks through qualitative methods and aimed to build upon and contribute new knowledge of processes underpinning client’s participation in employment. The overall aim was to offer employability agencies better understanding of how to support and advise clients in a holistic manner

Branching Out is a 12-week ecotherapy programme for clients who use mental health services within the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area. Over the course of a year 110 clients attended the programme, of whom 77 (70%) completed the course. In order to ascertain the outcomes of the programme and the elements that appeared to facilitate change, semi-structured interviews with clients (n = 28) and two focus groups with clinicians (n = 5 and n = 3) from the referring services were conducted. The data gathered therein was analyzed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA). From the results, five themes emerged as client outcomes. These were: improvements to mental well-being, improvements to physical health, provision of daily structure and routine, transferable knowledge and skill acquisition, and increased social networking and social skills development. Three themes pertaining to the service logistics (team building and social inclusion, contrast of environments and work and recognition) emerged as potential explanations for the client outcomes. There was a perception among clients and clinicians that Branching Out represented a ‘stepping stone to further community engagement’. The results reflect a recovery-oriented approach to health care. The limitations of the evaluation and implications for the future are discussed.

An exploration of how families in disadvantaged communities manage parent-child relationships.

Recent government policies in relation to child welfare, juvenile justice and area regeneration emphasise the importance of effective parenting.

Parent-focused interventions primarily affect families living in disadvantaged communities, but there has been relatively little research into the challenges of bringing up children in these environments. This report explores how families in these communities manage parent-child relationships during the middle childhood.

This report explores young adults’ decision-making around alcohol against a cultural backdrop of historically high levels of consumption, affordability and availability in the UK.

How young people drink alcohol underpins rates of harm, which
have been rising steadily in recent decades. Understanding the meaning and motivation behind young adults’ drinking habits will help predict future need. Policy-makers and health educationalists will be better informed to develop responses that make sense to younger drinkers. This report identifies the influence of both existing cultural attitudes around alcohol, and new and emergent attitudes that separate younger drinkers’ consumption from that of other age groups.

The report highlights:
• a norm for excessive alcohol consumption in young adulthood;
• how today’s young adults find it diffi cult to imagine alternatives to the excessive drinking that supports group socialising;
• how the commercial alcohol offer made to young people contributes to the narrowing of their options; and
• the influences of pricing on decision-making.

The Civic Conversation explores both the aspirations and the possibilities of living, and what is worth doing, to ensure that both Glasgow and Glaswegians flourish. The basic premise underlying this process is that the way a community talks to itself, how it forms its values, beliefs and policies ultimately influences how it behaves. It offers those with a stake in the future of the City an additional way to meet and discuss issues of strategic importance and how these might be effectively addressed. Some of these are based upon existing knowledge and concerns; others emerge through the conversation as it develops.

This paper explores how the potential advantage and disadvantage in the local networks utilised by parents in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods is understood. It does so through evidence presented by parents in communities in the West of Scotland, showing how they identify and use the
social capital inherent within their communities toward the specific end of helping their children negotiate the risks that accompany increasing independence. It adds to the development of understanding social capital by
showing how in environments in which social capital is perceived as low, adaptive parenting strategies are called for that ultimately put more pressure on less advantaged parents. Furthermore, it shows how parents and young people may be inventive in identifying community level resources in a manner
which draws a slender distinction between risk and safety. This situation leaves parents and young people in a potential double bind, where strategies to improve young people’s life-chances through engagement with the local community involve an increased exposure to potential risks.

In the last few years, the everyday word ‘resilience’ has captured the attention and imagination of an increasing number of academics and professionals. Resilience has positive connotations and entails understanding and seeking out good
outcomes for individuals or families in circumstances where problems were to be expected. Compared with the traditional study of child development, which has tended to portray ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ patterns, a resilience approach offers a
more differentiated account. In professional practice, resilience means looking for strengths and opportunities to build on, rather than (or alongside) problems and deficits to be remedied or treated.

This review considers parents’ actual and potential contributions to children’s resilience and to parental resilience, which is sometimes subsumed within ‘family resilience’. However, since most publications are concerned with resilience in relation
to children and young people, the specific role of parents often has to be inferred.

The review draws on important UK-based publications on resilience and includes more selective references to the comparatively huge American literature, as well as significant material from elsewhere.

This paper explores emergent forms of participation in relation to spiritual and related activity in order to assess the similarities and differences between traditional spiritual activity.


The exploratory research project sought to investigate whether, rather than a decline in social capital generation per se, there may be a change occurring in the places and activities that generate social capital and, if so, whether these new forms of social capital generation are more suited to current society than more traditional forms (such as traditional churches, the nuclear family and communities based around large industrial workplaces).



Key findings of this paper are:

    * New forms of spiritual practice, while promoting health and wellbeing for individuals involved, are not yet at a stage at which they generate community level benefits.
    * New forms of spiritual practice are successful in simultaneously satisfying a need for deeper engagement with spiritual issues alongside a desire to maintain personal autonomy and be an author of one’s own belief.
    * Existing successful forms of informal voluntary activity should be recognised rather than seeking to create new structures for participation.

This book is based on the research project that explored how young people use alcohol as they transition to adulthood. As part of this study, focus groups were carried out with young people aged between 16 and 30. During these focus groups, the young people drew and created visual materials in the form of t-shirts, comic strips and speech bubbles. These have provided a rich insight into young adults' alcohol use and so this book was put together in order to showcase the young men and women's representations of alcohol, through their eyes

A doubling of alcohol related deaths in the last 15 years (ISD Scotland, 2011) indicates that action is required to reduce levels of alcohol consumption. A strong and pioneering set of polices have been laid out in the Scottish Government’s strategic document for tackling alcohol related harm; Changing Scotland’s Relationship with Alcohol. Although the evidence for the effectiveness of price and availability controls is strong at a population level, how these approaches will play-out across subgroups of the population is less well understood. Cutting beneath a national cultural relationship with alcohol are subgroup experiences where the role of alcohol is differentiated by class, gender, ethnicity and age cohort. In this report, we explore how a key population group, young adults, understand their relationship to alcohol and what influences their choices and behaviours.Further, we maintain a keen focus on a key factor which differentiates the experience of young adulthood – gender.

Objective To determine what impact reliance on self reported smoking status during pregnancy has on both the accuracy of smoking prevalence figures and access to smoking cessation services for pregnant women in Scotland. Design Retrospective, cross sectional study of cotinine measurements in stored blood samples. Participants Random sample (n=3475) of the 21029 pregnant women in the West of Scotland who opted for second trimester prenatal screening over a one year period. Main outcome measure Smoking status validated with cotinine measurement by maternal area deprivation category (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation). Results Reliance on self reported smoking status underestimated true smoking by 25% (1046/3475 (30%) from cotinine measurement v 839/3475 (24%) from self reporting, z score 8.27, P<0.001). Projected figures suggest that in Scotland more than 2400 pregnant smokers go undetected each year. A greater proportion of smokers in the least deprived areas (deprivation categories 1+2) did not report their smoking (39%) compared with women in the most deprived areas (22% in deprivation categories 4+5), but, because smoking was far more common in the most deprived areas (706 (40%) in deprived areas compared with 142 (14%) in affluent areas), projected figures for Scotland suggest that twice as many women in the most deprived areas are undetected (n=1196) than in the least deprived areas (n=642). Conclusion Reliance on self reporting to identify pregnant smokers significantly underestimates the number of pregnant smokers in Scotland and results in a failure to detect over 2400 smokers each year who are therefore not offered smoking cessation services.

Background Healthcare services often use a carbon monoxide (CO) breath test to validate self-reported smoking and to assess reductions in smoking habit. A cut-off level of ≥ 8 parts per million (p.p.m.) is used to identify smoking. This cut-off requires further validation in pregnant women. Methods Data on self-reported smoking were assessed in conjunction with breath CO levels. Subjects in the study were 2548 women attending antenatal booking during 12 months. Results 546/2584 (21.4%) women self-reported as current smokers. A cut-off of 8 ppm identified only 325/546 self-reported smokers (sensitivity 59.4%). 27/2002 self-reported non-smokers had levels greater than 8 ppm (specificity 98.7%). Sensitivity and specificity analysis revealed that CO cut-off levels of 2 or 3 p.p.m. resulted in the best sensitivity and specificity for discriminating apparent smokers and non-smokers. A cut-off of 2 p.p.m. would have identified 468/546 of self-reported smokers (sensitivity 86%). 206/2002 self-reported non-smokers had levels > 2 ppm (specificity 90 %). If all these women were 'true' smokers, the real prevalence of smoking in pregnancy was 26.5% (752/2548) and 27% of true smokers provided false answers to the self-reported question at maternity booking. Conclusion At 8 ppm, many smokers are missed and there may be gross underestimating of levels of smoking in a pregnant population. Results emphasise the need to support a lower cut-off level for the breath CO test closer to 2 or 3 p.p.m. These cut-offs may be more appropriate in the antenatal clinic setting, and are in line with recent recommendations in the non-pregnant population.

Exaggerated haemodynamic reactions to acute psychological stress have been implicated in cardiovascular disease outcomes, while lower reactions have been considered benign. This study examined, in a large cohort, the prospective associations between stress reactivity and physical disability. Blood pressure and pulse rate were measured at rest and in response to a stress task. Physical disability was assessed using the OPCS survey of disability at baseline and five years later. Heart rate reactivity was negatively associated with change in physical disability over time, such that those with lower heart rate reactivity were more likely to deteriorate over the following five years. These effects remained significant following adjustment for a number of confounding variables. These data give further support to the recent argument that for some health outcomes, lower or blunted cardiovascular stress reactivity is not necessarily protective.

OBJECTIVES. Eating problems are a common cause of concern for the parents of toddlers, but few studies have examined the correlates of eating problems or the growth patterns associated with them in a large population-based sample. Our goal was to examine the distribution of eating behaviors in a large representative sample of toddlers and their mothers' approach to feeding. In addition, we describe the prevalence of parentally perceived eating problems and how they relate to specific behaviors, food preferences, and growth in the child.