Background: Research on men’s constructions of fatherhood has proliferated over the last three decades, but most studies have focused on middle-class men. There is a need for more research exploring how disadvantaged men conceptualise good fatherhood and relate to changing societal ideals of fatherhood. In addition, parenting interventions are particularly targeted at disadvantaged parents but little is known about how disadvantaged fathers feel about being targeted, and how best to engage them. This study set out to explore disadvantaged UK men’s constructions of fatherhood and attitudes towards parenting interventions. The THRIVE trial taking place in Glasgow, evaluating two antenatal parenting interventions for vulnerable parents, offered an opportunity to investigate these issues. Methods: Thirty-six fathers or fathers-to-be (aged 15-51) were recruited through their partner’s participation in the THRIVE trial or through community organisations working with families in economically-deprived areas. Men participated in in-depth interviews, incorporating elements of repertory grids method. Interviews focused on the men’s upbringings, current circumstances, understandings of good fatherhood, and attitudes towards parenting interventions. Findings: Socially-disadvantaged men’s constructions of good fatherhood were complex and multi-faceted. Men drew on multiple discourses in constructing fathering identities which combined ideas about ‘involved’ fathering with more ‘traditional’ ideas around provision, protection and responsibility. In doing so, these men worked hard to align themselves with socially-acceptable discourses of good fatherhood, demonstrating their awareness of, and engagement with, societally-dominant discourses of modern-day fatherhood. Barriers to the men enacting their visions of good fatherhood centred around: the legacy of their upbringings; difficult relationships with partners and ex-partners; desire to demonstrate an acceptable masculinity; and their disadvantaged circumstances, including the instability of their lives and lack of work. The majority of these men displayed positive attitudes towards attending a parenting intervention. Factors affecting their intentions to attend included: desire to support their partner and feel involved in her pregnancy, perceiving benefits for themselves and their partners, and the belief that the interventions were relevant and appropriate to their needs. Potential barriers were: fear of public scrutiny, perceived lack of information, perceived lack of ‘need’, and notions of acceptable masculinity. Conclusions: Findings suggest that disadvantaged men held normative ideas about good fatherhood but that there were significant challenges facing them in living up to these ideals. Parenting interventions targeting disadvantaged fathers should therefore: capitalise on men’s excitement and commitment to partner and baby in the antenatal period; emphasize the relevance of content to the needs of disadvantaged men; and bear in mind potential barriers such as perceived lack of ‘need’, overcoming social anxieties, and notions of acceptable masculinity.

Background: Reactive attachment disorder (RAD) has been described as one of the least researched and most poorly understood psychiatric disorders (Chaffin et al., 2006). Despite this, given what is known about maltreatment and attachment, it is likely that RAD has profound consequences for child development. Very little is known about the prevalence and stability of RAD symptoms over time. Until recently it has been difficult to investigate the presence of RAD due to limited measures for informing a diagnosis. However this study utilised a new observational tool Method: A cross sectional study design with a one-year follow-up explored RAD symptoms in maltreated infants in Scotland (n=55, age range= 16-62 months) and associated mental health and cognitive functioning. The study utilised the Rating of Inhibited Attachment Behavior Scale (Corval, et al., unpublished 2014) that has recently been developed by experts in the field along side The Disturbances of Attachment Interview (Smyke & Zeanah, 1999). Children were recruited as part of the BeST trial, whereby all infants who came in to the care of the local authority in Glasgow due to child protection concerns were invited to participate. The study sample was representative of the larger pool of data in terms of age, gender, mental health and cognitive functioning. Results: The sample was found to be representative of the population of maltreated children from which it was derived. Prevalence of RAD was found to be 7.3% (n=3, 95% CI [0.43 – 14.17]) at T1, when children are first placed in to foster care. At T2, following one year in improved care conditions, 4.3% (n=2, 95% CI [below 0 – 10.16]) met a borderline RAD diagnosis. Levels of observed RAD symptoms decreased significantly at T2 in comparison to T1 but carer reported symptoms of RAD did not. Children whose RAD symptoms did not improve were found to be significantly older and showed less prosocial behaviour. RAD was associated with some mental health and cognitive difficulties. Lower Verbal IQ and unexpectedly, prosocial behaviour were found to predict RAD symptoms. Conclusions: The preliminary findings have added to the developing understanding of RAD symptoms and associated difficulties however further exploration of RAD in larger samples would be invaluable.

Persistent school non attendance (PSNA) is a widely acknowledged problem. Outcomes for persistent absentees are poor in the long term. Children and young people (CYP) who are often absent from school are more likely than others to leave with few or no qualifications, to suffer mental health difficulties and to become criminal offenders in adult life. Family coaches work with families where a child has persistently poor or no school attendance, alongside adult unemployment or anti-social behaviour. Uniquely, their work extends across different systems: school; family; professional services and the wider community. As a team, they have extensive experience of casework, having worked with several hundred families in the local authority. This grounded theory study draws upon the unique perspective and experience of this team in order to understand what factors they perceive to induce and constrain the successful reintegration of CYP, from coaching families, to school after a period of PSNA. A theoretical framework, based upon their combined experiences, is set out in order to help inform future work within the local context and beyond. This emphasises the importance of ensuring that CYP feel safe in their family home, as the key focus of successful coaching intervention.

Since 2003, Children’s Services have sought to promote more consolidated work by professionals of different disciplinary backgrounds who might otherwise follow independent forms of practice. This is believed to enhance efficacy and reduce inequality in providing for vulnerable children (Boddy, Potts, & Statham, 2006; DCSF, 2003). Evidence that this improves child outcomes is mixed, however. Professionals may have difficulties working together effectively, for example Anning, Cottrell, Frost, Green, & Robinson (2006) and Sloper (2004). This research presents a qualitative study into the decision-making processes of a Children’s Services multi-disciplinary team (MDT) of educational, health and social care professionals. The study explores which aspects of the MDT strengthen and undermine collaborative work, and how this influences child assessment outcomes. The study was exploratory, using Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) analysis of the recorded discussions of professionals concerning six preschool child cases. All six children were referred with neurodevelopment difficulties. The transcripts revealed a fragmentary MDT with a singular, medical model approach to practice, which in this particular situation, averted collaborative working. The established context for the operation of decision-making was in the professionals’ referral system, whereby a Child Assessment ‘pathway’ functioned. Decision-making comprised System routines, Weighing-up significance, Expediency including Centralisation and Convenience, Continuation of Function, and Avoidance of Difficulty/Unpleasantness. Use of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) cut-off score to diagnose autism spectrum disorders (ASD) was an outcome of the decision-making process. Discussions revealed that once such decisions were made, they remained unchanged. Psychoanalytically informed concepts (Hollway, 2011) were used in analyses. This enabled a framework of understanding for professionals’ work, as well as for promoting organisational development and change.

This thesis inquires over the process through which public servants construct an identity during the organisation of bureaucratic work. Using a qualitative approach, this process is observed empirically in the case of the Chilean State, where the implementation of neoliberal policies is commanded by policy-makers. In particular, drawing from a Lacanian theoretical framework, this study analyses the inconsistent fashion in which identification unfolds discursively. On the one hand, public servant subjectivity is viewed as articulating and enacting cohesive self-meanings during the conscious coordination with bureaucratic objects. On the other hand, however, the experience of public servants during the articulation of their identity is seen as driven unconsciously towards achieving excessive amounts of embodied, affective satisfaction or what Lacan calls jouissance. Overall, from this standpoint, the construction of identity within the bureaucratic realm is appreciated as a paradoxical and un-determined project, featuring interrupted yet sustained narrations of self and/or distorted yet committed narratives on workplace reality. The main finding of this study is that public servants develop a strong affective attachment to bureaucratic labour while attributing contradictory and inconsistent meanings to their own professional self and to the experience of ‘translating’ policy into bureaucratic work. In short, public servants enjoy their commitment to policy-commanded-bureaucracy, even though and precisely because they cannot articulate why consistently. In some instances experience is narrated as promising in its effectivity yet fragile and hindered, while in others it narrated as self-developing yet at the same time wearing and insufficiently effective. The main contribution of this study is to introduce a gendered, critical understanding of the ethos and vocation sustaining subjectivation and work within public sector bureaucracy, one that needs but at the same time subverts assumptions about the primacy of rational reflexivity in subjective self-experience and about the hegemonization of State administration by neoliberal, entrepreneurial discourses or ‘governmentalities’.

This thesis addresses a gap in research on collaborative creativity. Prior research has investigated how groups of professionals, young people and children work together to co-create work, but the distinctive contribution of this thesis is a socioculturally framed understanding of undergraduates’ interdisciplinary practices over an extended period. Guided by a socioculturally framed theory of creativity, this thesis observed 4 students creating a 10 minute performance piece, and presents a longitudinal analysis of the co-creation process which occurred through a total of 28 meetings recorded over the course of a twelve-week term (24 hours of recordings in total). Specific episodes were selected from the full set of recordings, constituting 2 hours of recordings for in-depth analysis. Sociocultural discourse analysis was used to examine how social and cultural contexts constituted an ecology of undergraduate practice in interdisciplinary creative collaboration. Offering a new methodology, this discursive approach for studying context (Arvaja, 2008) was combined with interaction analysis (Kumpulainen & Wray, 2002; Scott, Mortimer & Aguiar, 2006) to analyse how moment-by-moment creative developments and contexts were resourced and constituted through dialogue, artifacts and physical settings. With implications for theory and practice, the analysis showed how the students’ collaborative contexts were constituted through dialogue, and how their emerging co- creative practice was mediated through multiple social and physical settings. It further evidenced how common knowledge was constructed through the process of collaboration, the value of peer feedback for fostering confidence, and students’ need for ‘silent witnessing’; for space to reflect and contribute to a long-term cumulative conversation. The thesis also discusses how resourceful the students were, in terms of negotiating unfamiliar and unpredictable co-creating activities. Evidence is provided for the collaborative value of creating and appropriating new tools to develop common knowledge, and for the significance of imagination as a psychological resource for building common knowledge about hypothetical future activities, showing how technology-mediated co-creating can be seen as a complex interactional accomplishment.