Following the Munro Review of Child Protection in England in 2011, the appointment of a Principal Child and Family Social Worker was recommended to provide practice leadership across child protection social work with children and families. Since this time, the experience of local authorities has varied greatly in the interpretation and implementation of the role. Using a multi-method qualitative approach, this study considered the views and perspectives of Senior Managers in the conception and implementation, and the experience of PCFSWs in undertaking the role, to interrogate the following research questions: - How has the role of PCFSW been implemented? - What does the implementation tell about management, leadership and professional status? - What does the implementation reveal about boundary spanning, organisational change, and complexity? - What are the implications for future policy development? The wider context of continuing changes in legislation, policy, regulation, and DfE lead reform was considered. Building on the systems approach advocated by Munro, this research was conceptualised with reference to boundary spanning and complexity theory. The findings suggest that current policy and practice in child protection social work has evolved in a closed system, where compliance and the features of managerialism prevail. In contrast, frontline practitioners more readily operate in a complex system. Tensions between the two perspectives continue such that the aspirations for reform instigated by Munro and articulated by the participants in this study have not been fully achieved. Such aspirations may not be achievable when one part of the wider system needs to be open and adaptive, while the authority in the system seeks to be controllable, and hence closed. These tensions are reflected in current DfE policy initiatives. Given this, it is unlikely that one role, the PCFSW, can singularly effect such change within the organisation or the wider system.

Psychiatric diagnosis has become a pervasive aspect of modern culture, exerting an increasing influence on forms of personhood, identity practices, and modes of self-governing. Debates surrounding the classification of psychiatric disorders are also prevalent, with particular disputes surrounding the relative merits of ‘biomedical’ vs ‘psychosocial’ understandings of mental health difficulties. There is arguably a need for further empirical exploration into the social and cultural implications of psychiatric classification and categorising practices within mental health service interactions. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted within several UK mental health settings, this thesis considers the role of diagnosis in constituting patient identities and in shaping professional categorisation practices, with a particular focus on bipolar disorder. Observations were conducted within sites where diagnostic identities are particularly salient: Psychiatric diagnostic and screening assessments, and a psychoeducation programme for bipolar disorder. Focusing on the formal and informal categorisation practices of service users and professionals, this study highlights the way in which psychiatric classifications can be negotiated, ascribed, and withheld in order to legitimate and contest particular kinds of suffering; in particular, it explores the way in which diagnostic categories – in particular bipolar disorder - can be used to interpret and medicalise morally problematic forms of experience and behaviour. Whilst diagnosis itself can function to medicalise aspects of moral life, its ability to perform this function is also shown to depend upon its conceptualisation as a biomedical disease entity. Findings suggest that bipolar disorder gives rise to particularly somatic concepts of personhood; its conceptualisation as an essentialised and reified illness category, with its cause located within the brain, enables a legitimisation of psychiatric ‘symptoms’ for both patients and professionals. In seeking access to more specialised mental health services with limited resources, potential patients can face trivialisation and deligitimisation of their problems by professionals, which at times manifests in the withholding of diagnosis. This is particularly the case within a mental health policy context which has increasingly moved towards the prioritisation of those with ‘severe mental illness’. As such, the study shows how the legitimising function of diagnoses such as bipolar disorder, can lead to a tendency for it to be both sought after by patients, but contested by professionals and amongst patients. In light of the apparent advantages conferred by this diagnosis, the moral and personal consequences of diagnostic membership, exclusion, and uncertainty are considered; in particular, the potential for this essentialised category to create divides between those considered to ‘have’ the disorder and those who are not, is contemplated.

The 2008 financial crisis has meant for the West a much wider social, political and economic questioning of its underpinnings. This delicate contingency combines with an increasingly evident ecologic crisis, indissolubly related to the capitalist, post-industrial, consumer economy that cracked in 2008. As the latter is proving unsustainable on all these levels, there is space for challenging this economic system and its underpinnings: development, industrialism and infinite growth (via consumption). Governments are putting in place measures that aim at environmental change mitigation, but with too little effect. With my study, I investigate the potentiality of the everyday as a site of ecological resistance, difference and creation. As a way of pursuing this, I designed a multimodal and multimedia participant observation study, focusing on energy use in everyday life. The locale is a town in the North-East of Italy, Vittorio Veneto, an interesting example of a formerly affluent area strongly hit by the recession. As a contribution to existent literature in this field, I draw and expand upon recent reflections that seek to go beyond the limitations of constructionism as the guiding approach to critical qualitative social sciences investigations. This “post-qualitative” literature calls for more attention to the ways in which language and discourses are co-emerging with, and co-constitutive of, the material, affective and non-representational qualities of experience. In line with this, I give special attention to the desiring and unconscious dimensions of energy use and everyday life more generally. Nonetheless, these are not conceptualised as subjective, interior or personal – but rather as trans-human flows that traverse and shape the social world. In this sense, focussing on desire is also a way to address the political and power-ridden aspects of energy use, little addressed in current research. Inspired above all by the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze (also with Félix Guattari), I look at the ways in which (collective) desire shapes the energy “assemblages” that we live through in ordinary life. If the dominant (libidinal) economy gears towards hyper-consumption and intensive energy practices, are molecular desires being mobilised that evade such hegemony? To what extent are they capable of a radical creation of more ecologically sensitive, life affirmative, assemblages? By making treasure of the different affordances of multi-media representation of the field, in my thesis I map contemporary everyday energy assemblages as they are territorialised and deterritorialised along lines of (ecological) becoming. I bring attention not only to the chances, but also to the risks and contradictions of emerging “lines of flight” from our unsustainable economy. This critical reflection is also applied to the theory informing my own study and its potential pitfalls. Finally, I reflect on the politics and ethics of social sciences in participating to draw lines of transitions towards sustainability.

The PhD is driven by a need to analyse what Scottish planning has come to represent in practice. It does this through a focus on how Scottish planning reform (Planning etc. Scotland Act, 2006) has been used to respond to the key public policy issues of achieving ‘sustainable growth’ and particularly planning for housing in growth- pressured city-regions. In England, Allmendinger’s (2016) recent critical consideration of the current state of planning despondently sees ‘neoliberal spatial governance’ where planning is focussed on ‘facilitating growth,’ through ‘post political’ process and driven by ‘narrow sectional interests’. This thesis analyses the extent to which such critique is a relevant way of understanding Scottish planning and how planning has come to be criticised from some perspectives as a tool for rolling out growth, while for others planning is still perceived as a drag on growth. It does this by analysing planning practice in two city regions – Aberdeen and Edinburgh - which have faced pressures for growth, particularly housing growth. Both have used the reformed Scottish planning system to deal with these pressures. In Aberdeen, it reveals why an ambitious growth agenda easily emerged, where planning actors utilised the reformed Scottish planning system to advocate an ‘ambitious strategy’. In Edinburgh, it reveals why, despite utilising the same planning system, a more complex and conflictual relationship around planning and housing growth has remained in place, as the city-region struggled to realise a spatial strategy that adapts to existing local political tensions. In each case the role of global and local structuring economic conditions are foregrounded. This qualitative comparative case study analyses the operation of Scottish planning in the period (2007-2016) in two growth-pressured Scottish city-regions. It involves 48 interviews conducted in the period 2013-2015 with public sector officers, councillors, developer interests and community and special interest groups and the analysis of documents associated with planning strategies. It has been conducted by a planner who has worked ‘in the field’ in the public and private sectors in both cases. It applies a broadly Gramscian analysis, utilising a Strategic Relational Approach, where planning actors pursue differing agendas and attempt to address wider and competing public policy concerns while operating within evolving structural conditions. It demonstrates the ways in which planning is a means by which particular interests can formalise their ambitions for growth but can equally be used to constrain and defer decisions around growth. However, both cases reveal planning as a form of ‘neoliberal spatial governance’ where the contradictions of current state-market relations mean Scottish planning is unlikely to meet its complex objective of delivering ‘sustainable economic growth’.

This study concerns the lived experience of participants in 50+ exercise groups (mainly women) that are taught by the researcher who is herself 50+. Activities comprise Exercise to Music, Pilates and Tai Chi for Arthritis and most classes are run under the auspices of an Adult Learning scheme. The research explores the meanings which people attach to the processes of ageing and how these relate to their engagements with exercise. The work was stimulated by a desire to understand the factors that encourage the participants to engage in and adhere to exercise and, in so doing, to make useful recommendations for health promotion and service provision with the intention that others might avoid the dangers of sedentary behaviour. This ethnographic case study spans approximately four years beginning in the spring of 2013. It draws on data collected in five semi-structured interviews and ten focus groups that were recorded and transcribed and five shorter telephone interviews which were noted at the time. Also included are data from numerous short vox pops and interviews 'on the move'. Altogether 56 individuals contributed verbal comment that has been recorded in some way. The data are reinforced by participant observation and access to enrolment documents. All of this is supported by a field journal which creates an audit trail and traces the evolution of the study. The originality of the study lies in the ability of the researcher to open up the 'black box' of the exercise class to reveal what matters most to older adults when they engage in exercise and how the contents of the box are socially constructed. Drawing on her own life experience as an exerciser and as an educator, the researcher is in a unique position to relate to the participants both as a peer and as a professional. The study situates perceptions of ageing in the context of identity formation. It explores elements across the life course which have shaped those perceptions and how such perceptions intersect with values and beliefs about exercise and, furthermore, how they continue to do so. Through unpacking the 'black box' of the exercise class, findings demonstrate the existence of a 'package' of elements that individuals require in their iv exercise: some essential, others desirable and yet others totally unacceptable. Factors which are considered essential vary with the choice of exercise but there remains an overwhelming sense of agreement that whatever is chosen should be pleasurable and co-constructed in partnership with other people. How this occurs forms the major contribution to knowledge which may be valuable in its application to provision, instructor recruitment and training for older adult exercise classes. Though the knowledge arises specifically from the participants of this case study it has relevance in informing exercise provision for similar groups of people.

This thesis details a comprehensive empirical evaluation of the implications of a minimum wage increase in the Mexican labour market, estimating the impact on real wages, the distribution of earnings, employment, and informal employment. It uses, as a natural experiment the 2012 partial harmonization of Mexico's regional minimum wages, in which one out of the three minimum wage zones experienced an unexpected minimum wage rise. Using Difference in Differences regressions, we fmd no evidence of adverse employment effects in the labour market. Instead, the estimates suggest positive effects on real hourly wages, employment, and occupation in the formal sector. These results can be taken as evidence for the existence of monopsonistic labour markets in Mexico. Synthetic Control Method procedures demonstrate that the employment findings are robust to the choice of estimation method and to the level of aggregation in the data, corroborating non-negative effects on employment. In addition, Unconditional Quantile Regressions for the distributional wage effects suggest a small improvement in wages for the targeted lowest income workers, although, due to positive spillover effects, the relative increase in wages for the upper percentiles is even greater. This has the net effect of actually widening dispersion of wages.

No description available.

Several investigations have concluded that there is a quantitative deficit within the social sciences in the UK (Fonow and Cook, 1991; Lincoln and Denzin, 2003; Payne et al., 2004; Williams, et al., 2008; MacInnes, 2009; Platt, 2012; Payne, 2014; Williams et al., 2015). Reasons for this are potentially rooted within the societal negative attitudes towards mathematics. Societal negative attitudes towards mathematics could be a product of the traditional teaching approaches of mathematics education. In particular, teaching methods have potentially contributed to the subject identity as being right or wrong, perceived as a difficult discipline (Porkess, 2013; Donaldson, 2015). Significant changes have been made to mathematics education (years 7-13) more recently to encourage greater student uptake post-16, within England and Wales (Porkess, 2013; Donaldson, 2015). Statistics has gained an increasingly important voice within mathematics education. Statistics also cuts across many disciplines, becoming a core subject. In addition, employers are increasingly requesting employees acquire data analysis skills, underpinned by statistical and scientific principles. In relation to the quantitative deficit, the Q-Step initiative was created across 15 British universities to develop a range of undergraduate social science degree courses to improve quantitative methods skills. The Q-Step centre within Cardiff University invested in the development of a range of school and further education activities, to highlight the importance of these quantitative skills. The development of a QCF level 3 course in Social Analytics (investigation of social processes using statistical analysis and techniques) involved the creation of the Pilot Scheme in Social Analytics (SA). This course was developed with a group of secondary school teachers and FE lecturers, delivered over a series of 21 weeks to a mixture of year 12 and 13 students in Cardiff in 2014/15 (44 students) and 2015/16 (29 students). To investigate the effectiveness of the Pilot Scheme in SA, a series of research questions were developed. A quasi-experimental design was used to operationalise these research questions to measure the impacts on student attitudes and attainment in statistics (in year 12 and 13) on an experimental group who received a contextualised statistics course in 2015/16 (Pilot Scheme in SA), compared to two control groups. Results suggest the course did lead to changes in the students’ attitudes, becoming more positive. In addition, their statistical abilities also seem to have improved, in comparison to the two control groups. Although the positive impacts of the course are somewhat tentative, and in places it is difficult to make unequivocal inferences, there is no evidence to suggest the course had a negative impact on the experimental group. In comparison, students in both control groups who didn’t receive the treatment, showed negative differences in their attitudes and abilities with respect to mathematics and statistics. In light of the findings and discussion, recommendations have been made with reference to professional practice and also future research. These include expanding the Pilot Scheme in SA to be made available for more schools in Wales and developing teacher training support to deliver these courses.

This thesis consists of three self-contained research articles that empirically examine the ethnic and spatial patterning of health outcomes in England today. Health is defined here as a multidimensional concept encompassing physical and mental health and wellbeing, in line with the Public Health White Paper ‘Healthy Lives, Healthy People’ (HM Government, 2010). Each chapter utilises data from Understanding Society, a nationally representative panel study, which provides detailed information about the social and economic situations of people living in the UK.

Background: The rise of the Internet in recent decades, along with social media and communication platforms, has created an opportunity for transgender individuals to seek out a common alternative identity that may reduce the societal pressure of fitting into a particular gender role dictated by biological sex. The developmental period that adolescents go through is accompanied by an array of challenges, more so for a young person whose biological sex is incongruent to their felt gendered sense. Research in social media use within the trans population is still developing, given the growing interest in how social media impacts on our sense of identity. Given the importance of identity development in adolescence, this highlights the need for research into this specific population. This study thus aims to contribute to the existing literature by exploring the experiences of transgender adolescents in using social media. Method: A qualitative research methodology was employed, using a thematic analysis approach. A total of 11 participants between the ages of 15 to 18 were interviewed. Recruitment took place at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation trust as well as using snowballing sampling. Results: Participants described using a varied range of social media platforms. A total of 3 main themes were developed from the data, with participants describing how social media played an initial role in helping them explore their trans identity, how they find themselves aligning with particular trans narratives on social media and lastly how participants make use of social media to present an image of themselves to others. Discussion: The participants’ experiences on social media mirror and intersect with the transitional journey many of them take in changing their gender and this has implications for how clinicians can take into account social media influences when working with young trans individuals.