This thesis explores Greek social work students' perceptions of the development of their professional values and ethics in the workplace during their professional practice placement. To accomplish its goals, the thesis includes a literature review and employs a qualitative exploratory research design with descriptive elements positioned within the constructivist paradigm. This research design allows the researcher to explore and describe a topic - social work values and ethics - that is generally under-researched in the existing literature, as well as being complex in nature and difficult to study. Data were collected using the critical incident technique (CIT). This method took the form of a written questionnaire (the CIT questionnaire) completed by 32 students between 11th and 25th October, 2010. The data were inductively analysed using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. SPSS and SPAD software packages were also used to analyse the numerical and textual data respectively. The study findings underline the vital role of the workplace as a social space for students to learn and develop their professional social work values and ethics. They also highlight the complexity of implementing social work values and ethics in the different workplace environments that students, as trainees, are placed for their professional practice due to their situation-specific nature. Further, the study reveals a number of factors that, from the students' point of view, are important in applying and upholding professional ethical standards in social work practice. These factors are associated with: a) the need to practice social work values and ethics in the workplace on a daily basis in order to keep them alive and active; b) the students' own contribution to upholding ethical standards; c) the role practice instructors/supervisors play in the transmission of social work values to students during their placements; d) the importance of ethical collaboration inside and outside the workplace to achieve the best practices for clients; e) the client's behaviour as a determinant of the ethical practice of social workers in the workplace; and f) the importance of the ethics of management (including the political affiliation of the heads of organisations) in creating and sustaining an ethical work/learning environment. The study suggests that all the factors mentioned above-to a greater or lesser degree- should be considered important elements to take into account in the planning and development of values-based social work education programmes. Special attention should be paid to workplace conditions that can hinder or support the development of values-based social work practice. As the study clearly shows, daily ethical practice in social work, students as individuals, the role of practice instructors, ethical workplace collaboration, client behaviour, and the ethics of management are crucial components for building upon the ethical skills taught in the classroom and developing ethically informed professional identities in real-life workplace situations. The thesis concludes that the critical incidents experienced by students are a valuable source of knowledge and understanding of the development of social work values and ethics in professional practice. In this study, indeed, students gained valuable insights into their ethics development process in practice contexts, from both positive and negative critical incidents alike.

The thesis focused on the field of service user and carer involvement in the assessments of social work students. It examined the positioning of service users and carers in relation to other stakeholders involved in student assessments. Participants' views on what should count as service users and carers' feedback evidence at Continuing Professional Development (CPD) level were also explored. The rationale for the study centred on the relatively limited research studies focusing on service user and carer involvements in students' assessment, in comparison to their involvement in other areas of social work education. Further, the limited studies available appeared to be under theorised. The study is situated in the qualitative research tradition and drew from narrative research methods. It was influenced by the practitioner-doctorate research paradigm (Drake and Heath 2011). The study drew from the theoretical insights of Foucault's (1972; 1980) notion of discourse and power/knowledge theory; and Bourdieu's (1990) concepts of field, capital and habitus, to analyse the dynamic power relations between those involved in the assessments of students. Following ethical clearance from the University of Sussex, a semi-structured individual interview was carried out with 21 people. The sample consisted of service users, carers, social work students, social work employers and social work educators. The voice-centred relational method of data analysis, developed by Gilligan (1982), was used to analyse the research participants' narratives about how they have experienced their involvements in social work students' assessments. Participants' narratives revealed that the field of service user and carer involvement in social work students' assessment is characterised by a complex mix of relationships, different power dynamics and power struggles. On the question of what should count as service user and carer evidence, in relation to what students are expected to demonstrate to service users and carers at CPD level, the research participants reported on qualities such as:  Professionalism, good time-keeping, reliability and honesty  Effective communication skills, such as listening, empathy and kindness  Ability to support service users and carers  Intelligence, ‘structured empathy', mastery of practice and development of practice wisdom. Although important, progressive difference in expectation at CPD level was not acknowledged. The study makes five contributions to knowledge in the field of service user and carer involvement in social work students' assessments, as follows: (1) It adds to the body of research studies looking at service user and carer involvement in social work students' assessments. (2) It sheds some light on what stakeholders involved in social work practice and education thought about the ASYE in 2010 before its implementation in 2012. (3) It contributes to knowledge on what participants feel service users and carers should comment on when assessing social work students at CPD level. (4) It offers theoretical insight into the different power relations, struggles, and power dynamic between stakeholders involved in social work students' assessments from Bourdieusian and Foucauldian perspectives. (5) Feedback of the interim findings was provided to Skills for Care to support the Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) assessment in 2011. The study concludes by arguing the case for social work and service user organisations to support service users and carers in their role as assessors of social work students.

A partir d’une analyse des conditions historiques qui ont favorisé l’émergence du travail social laïc, la dominante des femmes dans ce champ professionnel prend un autre sens. Le traitement séparé de la question de la solidarité entre intervention politique d’une part et intervention dans un quotidien de vie d’autre part apparaît et devient une clé de lecture de cette institutionnalisation.Cette scission se comprend en considérant simultanément l’emprise du genre dans la construction de cette action publique, et la mise à l’écart de la vulnérabilité comme condition intrinsèque des vies humaines. De ce fait, la solidarité comme loi organique d’interdépendance est malmenée, l’exercice de la citoyenneté politique occultée et la dimension collective du travail social empêchée.Cette compréhension éclaire les questions contemporaines mises en débat : action collective, développement social, solidarités actives, participation des personnes accompagnées. Elle contribue à enrichir le travail de refondation en cours au-delà des questions dévolues aux temps et espaces de formations des professionnel.le.s concerné.e.s pour impacter toute la chaîne des politiques de solidarité aux différentes échelles de compétences. / Through an analysis of historical conditions that contributed to the emergence of secular social work, the predominance of women in this area of professional activity takes on a different significance. Treating separately the question of solidarity between political intervention on the one hand, and intervention in daily life on the other becomes apparent and provides a key to understanding this institutionalisation. This division can be understood by examining simultaneously the influence of gender in the construction of this public action, and the marginalisation of vulnerability as an intrinsic condition of human life.  As a consequence, solidarity as an organisational principle of interrelationship is undermined, exercise of political citizenship is suppressed and the collective dimension of social work is impeded. This understanding clarifies the contemporary issues under debate : collective action, social development, active solidarity, participation of supported individuals.  It contributes to enriching and expanding the ongoing reform beyond the questions of times and venues for training the professionals (m/f) concerned, impacting the chain of solidarity policies at the different levels of competence.

À la croisée de la sociologie de l’enseignement supérieur, de la sociologie des professions et de la socialisation, cette thèse a pour objectif d’interroger la sociogenèse du corps professionnel des assistantes de service social (ou, plus communément, des assistantes sociales) au prisme de sa formation et selon une approche comparative. Formations initiales, continues, professionnelles ou universitaires, ces curricula sont, dans les deux pays, structurées autour de la tension entre forme scolaire et apprentissage professionnel. Cette recherche sur la fabrique des assistances sociales explore cette tension à partir d’une sociologie des étudiantes et des institutions qui les (con)forment. Le dispositif d’enquête combine méthodes qualitatives et quantitatives : entretiens, questionnaires et observations ethnographiques au sein de quatre instituts de formation. Dans la perspective d’une sociologie comparée d’espaces disciplinaires et par suivi longitudinal des étudiantes, de l’entrée à la sortie des formations, on a essayé d’éclairer les mécanismes de socialisation en service social. Dans une première partie, par une socio-histoire des deux espaces nationaux de formation en service social, il s’est agi de s’intéresser à la genèse de ces curricula. En France, cette formation se construit à l’écart de l’enseignement supérieur (à l’exception de certains parcours en IUT), alors qu’en Italie, après être longtemps demeurée à l’extérieur du champ universitaire, elle y a été intégrée au cours des années 1990 et 2000. Explorer les luttes et les échecs dans l’institutionnalisation de cette formation, permet de dessiner des parallèles entre l’universitarisation de cette filière et l’injonction à la professionnalisation dans l’espace de l’enseignement supérieur. Dans une deuxième partie, on a porté notre attention sur les aspirations et les orientations dans le service social. En resituant d’abord chaque choix scolaire dans la hiérarchie des filières du supérieur national, on a identifié trois types d’orientation étudiante dans les deux contextes nationaux en fonction des parcours scolaires, des appartenances de classe et des discours mis en avant par les étudiantes enquêtées. D’une typologie statistique aux récits de vie, on a montré les conditions sociales, individuelles et collectives des raisons d’agir et des parcours socio-scolaires des étudiantes qui s’orientent vers ces formations. À l’aide d’une analyse comparée et transversale de dix trajectoires, on a pu repérer pour certaines une continuité socio-scolaire, pour d’autres un réajustement professionnel ou encore une réorientation sociale. La troisième partie s’intéresse aux mécanismes de sélection, à l’entrée et tout au long du cursus, aux contenus et aux savoirs transmis au sein des quatre centres de formation des deux pays. La sélection, axée selon les structures sur une distance, partielle ou revendiquée, avec les connaissances scolaires, permet de cibler des étudiantes aux profils spécifiques, relevant d’origines et d’expériences sociales distinctives. Tandis que les instituts identifiés comme relevant du pôle scolaire visent davantage des étudiantes d’origines populaires, plus conformes à l’institution scolaire, les instituts du pôle professionnel ciblent les dispositions interactionnelles et une adaptabilité aux conditions professionnelles qui concernent davantage des élèves plus dotées en capitaux. Au final, les instituts de formation participent à un tri progressif des populations, toutes les étudiantes n’arrivant pas jusqu’au diplôme. Entre docilité sociale et adaptabilité au marché de l’emploi, l’apprentissage progressif du métier d’assistante sociale passe par des ajustements, des résistances et des réappropriations d’un ethos singulier, au sein d’un espace professionnel en constante redéfinition. / The goal of this dissertation is to question the social origins of social service assistants (or social workers) in France and Italy. Based on a cross-national comparative design focusing on social workers’ training trajectories, this research combines approaches from the sociology of higher education, sociology of professions and theories of socialization. While social workers’ curricula in the two countries vary across forms of “pre-service”, “in-service”, vocational as well as university training, they generally stem from the tension existing between academic and professional educational systems. This study addresses this tension, focusing on the interplay between students’ social background and the logics of education in social assistance. The research design combines qualitative and quantitative methods, including face-to-face interviews, questionnaires and ethnographic observation at four educational institutions. By comparing the configuration of the disciplinary field in the two countries, and by following students longitudinally from entry to graduation, hence, this study aims to shed light on the process of socialization in social work education.The first section offers a social history of training in social service, investigating the background of the different types of curricula in the two national contexts. While social work training in France generally takes place outside of the high education system, in Italy it was ultimately integrated in the university field throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Exploring the more or less successful process of institutionalization of this specific form of training, allows elaborating on the academization of the social service sector in light of the progressive professionalization of higher education. The second section focuses on aspirations and orientations among social service students. By classifying students’ choices hierarchically in the two national higher education sectors, we identify three main types of orientation, which have to do with a student’s educational trajectory, their class membership, as well as her preferred justification.Based on a statistical typology of students’ life stories, we illustrate the social and academic background, as well as the individual and collective conditions, in which students embarking in this type of education are embedded. The comparative, cross-sectional analysis of ten individual trajectories, in fact, shows that while some students display socio-academic continuity, others experience professional readjustment or even social reorientation.The third section addresses selection mechanisms at entry and throughout the educative path in the two countries, while also focusing on the content and skills within the curricula of the four training institutes under study. It shows that, albeit often claiming otherwise, institutes do not select students based on their school background (previous school experience), but rather target candidates with specific profiles stemming from distinctive social origins and experiences. While institutes belonging to the school cluster target primarily students of working class background in line with the tradition of school institutions, those of the professional cluster target specific interactional predispositions as well as adaptability to professional conditions, which are more frequent among students that are better off in terms of cultural capital. Furthermore, all institutes put forth a progressive selection, as not all of the students ultimately get a diploma. Learning social work takes place at the crossroads between social docility and adaptability to the job market, which implies adjustments, resistances and re-appropriations of the singular ethos of a professional space in constant redefinition.

<b>Background:</b> Defined by their mechanisms, social and psychological interventions are those interventions that work through mental processes and social phenomena. They are often complex and challenging to evaluate, so understanding randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of these interventions requires detailed reports of the interventions tested and the methods used to assess them. However, reports of these RCTs often omit important information. Poor reporting hinders critical appraisal and synthesis of RCTs in systematic reviews, thereby impeding the effective transfer of research evidence to policy and practice. The Consolidated Standards for Reporting Trials (CONSORT) Statement is a reporting guideline that has contributed to improvements in the quality of RCT manuscripts in journals publishing medical research. However, studies have shown persistent deficiencies in the reporting quality of social and psychological intervention trials. A new CONSORT extension for these interventions may be needed given their distinct and complex features. This DPhil thesis reports on a project to develop and disseminate an official CONSORT Extension for Social and Psychological Interventions: CONSORT-SPI. <b>Structure:</b> Following a preface, this DPhil thesis includes eight chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the conceptual rationale that prompted the CONSORT-SPI project. Chapter 2 details the project protocol, which consists of a five-phase methodology that follows current best practices for reporting guideline development and dissemination. Chapter 3 discusses systematic literature reviews to assess reporting guidelines for and the reporting quality of publications of social and psychological intervention RCTs. Chapter 4 discusses an online, international Delphi process to generate a prioritised list of possible items to include in the CONSORT-SPI extension. Chapter 5 discusses a formal consensus meeting to select reporting items to add to or modify for the CONSORT-SPI Extension checklist. Chapter 6 involves drafts of the CONSORT-SPI checklist as well as a template for the Explanation and Elaboration (E&E) document providing detailed advice and examples of good reporting for each checklist item. These drafts have not yet been circulated to co-authors or other members of the project team; their purpose in this thesis is to give an indication of how previous project phases have led into initial prototypes of the checklist and E&E, which will undergo further development and revision by the project team before publication. Chapter 7 proposes a coordinated dissemination and implementation strategy informed by theoretical frameworks and tools used to guide the implementation of clinical guidelines and empirically-supported interventions. The final chapter summarises the information gained from the CONSORT-SPI project to date, assesses strengths and limitations of the project methodology, and discusses implications for future research. <b>Conclusion:</b> A CONSORT-SPI Extension could improve the reporting quality of social and psychological intervention RCTs. This extension could also facilitate better critical appraisal of this body of research and its use in evidence-based decision-making. With successful dissemination and implementation, the guideline will hopefully contribute to the improvement of intervention evaluations—as well as the methodology underpinning these studies—within the social and behavioural sciences.

Through the theoretical lens of Foucault's archaeological method, this thesis undertakes a discourse analysis to examine how old age and ageing are strategically positioned as forms of governmentality in New Labour social care policy documents. It is argued that these discourses are not directed purely at the older generation, but at everyone, at all stages of life, encompassing all aspects of everyday living. Old age thus becomes a strategy of governing the population through individual everyday lives. This hints at the way ageing is prefigured, anticipated and lived in advance. An analytical method is developed by weaving together Foucault's notions of archaeology and governmentality; the latter is utilised both as an analytical perspective and to provide an understanding of how people primarily act and interact in contemporary Western societies. This analytical perspective is initially applied to an exploration of how the form and function of social policy enable ordinary practices of life to become targets of political government, making both possible and desirable the government of everyday living: governing how we ought to live in every aspect of life from work and finances to health, to personal relationships and leisure activities. The thesis progresses to explore this in more detail through a practical application of governmentality and focused discourse analysis of eight New Labour social care policy texts. The aim of the analysis is to explore what subjectivities and forms of life are possible within these discourses and therefore what these policies actually do, as distinguished from what they claim to be doing. It is argued that the discourses that emerge in these policies act to limit and subjectify, by attempting to contain and stabilise the multitude of possibilities for practices of living. By ostensibly aiming to create social inclusion the policies make possible vast areas of exclusion that become prime spaces of government. Thus many ways of living, ageing, and being old become untenable due to their inherent contradiction with the social values and rationalities upon which these discourses are based. Whilst governmentality analyses have been brought to many other policy areas, this thesis makes an original contribution by: developing a governmental analysis of social policy as a form of biopolitics; by applying this analysis to the social care field; and by using policy discourses of old age and ageing to draw out significant aspects of a governmental society. In particular it explores the dispersion of many traditional boundaries, leading to the rearrangement of relations, responsibilities and subjectivities.

This submission is based on a critical analytical literature review of the moral paradigm of virtue ethics and a specific application of this to social work value discourse in search of lost identity. It echoes the philosophical academy's paradigmatic wars between 'act' and 'agent' appraisals in moral theory. Act appraisal theories focus on a person's act as the primary source of moral value whereas agent appraisal theories - whether 'agentprior' or stricter 'agent-based' versions - focus on a person's disposition to act morally. This generates a philosophical debate about which type of appraisal should take precedence in making an overall evaluation of a person's moral performance. My starting point is that at core social work is an altruistic activity entailing a deep commitment, a 'moral impulse', towards the distressed 'other'. This should privilege dispositional models of value that stress character and good motivation correctly applied - in effect making for an ethical career built upon the requisite moral virtues. However, the neo-liberal and neo-conservative state hegemony has all but vanquished the moral impulse and its correct application. In virtue ethical language, we live in 'vicious' times. I claim that social work's adherence to act appraisal Kantian and Utilitarian models is implicated in this loss. Kantian 'deontic' theory stresses inviolable moral principle to be obeyed irrespective of outcome: Utilitarian 'consequentualist' theory calculates the best moral outcome measured against principle. The withering of social work as a morally active profession has culminated in the state regulator's Code of Practice. This makes for a conformity of behaviour which I call 'proto-ethical' to distinguish it from 'ethics proper'. The Code demands that de-moralised practitioners dutifully follow policy, rules, procedures and targets - ersatz, piecemeal and simplistic forms of deontic and consequentualist act appraisals. Numerous inquiries into social work failures indict practitioners for such behaviour. I draw upon mainstream virtue ethical theory and the emergent social work counter discourse to get beyond both code and the simplified under-theoretisation of social work value. I defend a thesis regarding an identity-defining cluster of social work specific virtues. I propose two modules: 'righteous indignation' to capture the heartfelt moral impulse, and 'just generosity' to mindfully delineate the scope and legitimacy of the former. Their operation generates an exchange relationship with the client whereby the social worker builds 'surplus value' to give back more than must be taken in the transaction. I construct a social work specific minimal-maximal 'stability standard' to anchor the morally correct expression of these two modules and the estimation of surplus value. In satisficing terms, the standard describes what is good enough but is also potentially expansive. A derivative social work practice of moral value is embedded in an historic 'care and control' dialectic. The uncomfortable landscape is one of moral ambiguity and paradoxicality, to be navigated well in virtue terms. I argue that it is incongruous to speak of charactereological social worker virtues and vices and then not to employ the same paradigm to the client's moral world. This invites a functional analysis of virtue. The telos of social work - our moral impulse at work - directs us to scrutiny of the unsafe household. Our mandate is the well-being of the putative client within, discoursed in terms of functional life-stage virtues and vicious circumstance. I employ the allegorical device of a personal ethical journey from interested lay person to committed social worker, tracking the character-building moral peregrinations. I focus on two criticisms of virtue ethics - a philosophical fork. It is said that virtue ethical theory cannot of itself generate any reliable, independently validated action guidance. In so far as it does, the theory will endorse an as-given, even reactionary, criterion of right action, making 'virtue and vice' talk the bastion of the establishment power holders who control knowledge. I seek to repudiate these claims. Given that this demands a new approach to moral pedagogy, the practical implications for the suitability and training of social workers are discussed.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the development of integrated child welfare services through an exploration of how professionals providing such services make sense of children's rights and interpret their understandings in their approach to practice. The study focuses on professionals providing services for children between 5 and 13 years old within the Every Child Matters initiative, designed to support the assessment and provision of integrated child and family preventive services in England. The aims were to explore professional understandings of, and engagement with children's rights, provide a description and analysis of the empirical data, and develop a theorised understanding of the factors influencing sense-making and their implications for professionals' interpretations of their role. Areas of interest included similarities and differences in professionals' understandings and how these matched the understandings of service users and those evident in legal and policy texts. It was anticipated that professionals' understandings and engagement would draw on a complex mix of variable knowledge and embedded assumptions and practices, contested and negotiated in relation to welfare structures, texts and professional identities. The study was designed to explore whether this was borne out. A post-modernist theoretical approach was used, drawing on Bourdieu's theories of structured inequalities and influenced by Actor Network Theory's perspectives on networks. Using qualitative methodologies a case study was undertaken within one local area, linking a range of elements in an iterative process, with data from one phase interwoven in the next. Thirty-nine semi-structured interviews with professionals from social work, education and health settings drew on material developed from focus group discussions with child and parent service users and were supplemented by analysis of legal and policy texts and of 30 case records and site-based observations. Initial findings were discussed in parent and professional focus groups. In a second stage analysis of a subset of the data, these findings were explored further and situated within research and academic debate on professional practices and theories of childhood and of rights. Three broad configurations emerged from the data, reflecting differing professionals' constructions and practice interpretations of children's rights. Some participants interpreted children's rights as an essential ‘golden thread' underpinning their practice; others took a more selective ‘pick and mix' approach; and in a third perspective, children's rights were positioned as ‘uncomfortable accommodations' in relation to interpretations of professional role and of family life. These varying dispositions and related interpretations of professionals' regulated liberties were associated with perspectives on childhood, rights knowledge, professional setting, personal dispositions and relational practices. The findings are necessarily tentative and a causal relationship cannot be inferred. Three overarching themes emerged across these configurations. These related to: a common rights language and framework; children's longer-term welfare rights; and conceptualisations of the role of rights within relationships. The absence of a common rights framework to support professional and interprofessional discussions of children's rights was evident across all settings, as was a professional focus on the immediate and lack of attention to children's longer-term welfare, civil and social rights. Participants indicated that providing information about children's rights and exploring rights-based relationships in work with parents and carers was very rare and often avoided. The study proposes that in order to address children's rights in a more consistent and holistic way professionals need opportunities to explore theories of human and children's rights using a broad common framework such as the UNCRC. In integrating children's rights within professional practice increased attention is needed to children's longer-term welfare and development rights and to providing children and adults with information about, positive modelling of and opportunities to explore the place of rights in children's key relationships.

This project is an extended case study design investigating the mentoring programme of Kids Company, an innovative and controversial organisation that closed during fieldwork. The study considers the programme both as a case of the larger category of ‘youth mentoring' as well as a case in itself – of a unique and situated intervention. Methods employed included participant observation and interviews with professional staff, as well as the analysis of a sample of mentoring records documenting the one-year relationship of six mentoring pairs from the perspective of the mentor. Plans to interview mentoring pairs were curtailed by the unexpected demise of the organisation, but the data set includes interviews with five new mentors and mentees. The project has developed from a collaborative studentship aimed at understanding the mentoring programme, to include a post mortem of an organisation in crisis. Thus, documentation by and about Kids Company during this very public downfall also forms part of the data set. The thesis organises its findings into three chapters with insights on the model of mentoring employed by Kids Company and the reliance of popularised ideas from attachment theory and neuroscience; insights into the mentoring relationships themselves, including the value of a middle stage of everyday ‘being there'; and critical insights into how Kids Company's approach to young people and communities simultaneously takes on representations of race and class, yet elides them. The thesis draws together critical social policy and childhood studies literature on the history of child saving interventions and representations of the child in need within society, and psychology literature on youth mentoring initiatives, in order to make the argument that mentoring must be understood as an intervention situated in time and place. The messiness, complexity, and variety of youth mentoring experiences needs to be recognised. Nevertheless, youth mentoring also has potential to be powerful and productive for all involved and the thesis reflects on both the strengths and weaknesses of the Kids Company approach to make suggestions for good practice.

What does it mean to be an adult? What makes a person an adult? How have the circumstances of the lives of the six young women in my study shaped their understanding and perceptions of adulthood? These are the research questions at the heart of this thesis. I wanted to know more about the experiences of the young women that I worked with as a carer at a residential centre for young people with epilepsy and the influences that their experiences have had on how they perceive the world. This thesis begins with a puzzle in the form of fictional fieldnotes and concludes with an obligation. It charts the journey of the research from origins in a particular cultural setting to its conclusion as the beginning for the next stage, providing an opening chapter for the work that will grow from this study. The puzzle at the beginning of this thesis relates to the neurological functioning of a young woman, Evie (21). As soon revealed, Evie is a fictional character whose story has been told to represent themes from the research. Telling her story was also a way to use ‘writing as a method of inquiry' (Richardson, 2003). The methodological approach taken in this research sits within a phenomenological tradition by way of its modern guise as Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) as developed primarily by Jonathan Smith, Paul Flowers and Michael Larkin. The use of this methodology reflects a concern with the meaning my participants take from their experiences (Smith et al. 2009). I focused on the transition to adulthood as this was the ‘common phenomenon' that my participants seemed to hold as a central concern in their lives. Five themes emerged from the analysis: · Alcohol = Adulthood · Adulthood is - independence · Adulthood is - domestic competence · Adulthood is - a ‘code of behaviour' · Adulthood is - an achievement The findings from the phenomenological analysis have been juxtaposed with an account of the research findings written as ethnographic fiction. ‘Evie/I' is a story that includes reflections on the relationships I have had with young people in my care and the one which developed when I took on a researcher identity. It relates how knowledge of past histories shaped how I interpreted what the participants in my study revealed to me and the development of a reflexive stance as a researcher. It is my intention that the juxtaposition of these related but different accounts of the findings should enhance the reader's understanding of both. Central to this thesis are Bourdieu's concepts of species of capital, habitus and field theory and they have been used as a theoretical framework. A conceptual model has been created to map the themes developed as they fit into the ‘code of behaviour' my participants seem hold central to the achievement of adult status. The epilepsy centre where this research was conducted is a ‘field' with certain characteristics. This has been considered in relation to the ‘habitus' my participants have developed as young women in this particular situation. Feminist theory has also influenced the way in which this research was conducted. Research relating to people with epilepsy seldom includes the voices of those with the condition and qualitative research approaches are relatively scarce (Andermann, 2000). The young women in this study also have learning disabilities and this factor likewise lessens the likelihood that their views will be represented in the research literature (Walmsley, 2001; Atkinson, 2005). The rationale behind the research relates to the need to address this omission. The obligation that concludes this thesis concerns the need for further research that includes the perceptions and voices of young people such as those in my study.