A high and increasing proportion of people in the United Kingdom are living with a long-term condition (DH, 2005a). The National Health Service is facing the challenge of increased pressure on its service provision. Government Policy has placed emphasis on supporting individuals to self-care (Department of Health, 2005a, c). However, there are specific challenges associated with living with a long-term condition, and in particular the psychosocial aspects of illness when set alongside a clinical approach to care (Gabe et al, 2004, Bury et al, 2005) It has been argued that disclosure of illness may in itself be a self-care strategy (Munir et al, 2005). However, to date individuals‟ experiences of disclosure of long-term conditions are neither clearly defined nor its role in managing a long-term condition fully understood. The aims of the study were to explore the role of disclosure in the management of a long-term health condition. The study drew on constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) undertaking thirty-five in-depth qualitative interviews (fifteen people living with epilepsy, and twenty people living with type 1 diabetes) recruited from patient support groups and clinical nurse specialist‟s clinics. This study identified that strategies of disclosure are not necessarily fixed but may be subject to change over time. “Learning about disclosure” is an integral part of living with a long-term condition. Three key disclosure roles were identified: (1) access to self-care and social support, (2) non-disclosure (concealment) of the condition to protect one‟s identity from stigma. (3) redressing myths about the condition in advance: to avoid perceived stigma. The findings provide important insights that could enable health care professionals to develop more of an emphasis on including disclosure as an issue when talking to patients about managing type 1 diabetes and epilepsy and this is also relevant to a broad spectrum of long-term conditions.

This thesis concerns young people in the Midlands area of the United Kingdom and the services they receive from children’s rights workers and social workers. Previous research has highlighted difficulties in the implementation of local advocacy for young people in the ‘care system’ but has not explored in detail the impact of relationships between these young people and their professional workers and of differing approaches to the work. This is a qualitative study, based primarily on semi-structured interviews with twenty young people, their rights workers and their social workers. The young people ranged in age from twelve to twenty and most had been in residential or foster care. The study aimed to explore the participants’ views and experiences of social work and advocacy with young people, the professionals’ approaches to the work and their attitudes to, and relationships with, young people. Relational theory, particularly from ethics of care feminist scholarship, has been used to examine the concepts of care and rights in the principles and practice of the professional workers. The study found that young people wanted professional workers who cared about them as individuals and who focused on the process of the work, but they were also concerned about the consequences of rights work. The study suggests that rights workers had a strong care ethic in their individual work with young people, whilst social workers were concerned about managing young people’s care rather than engaging with them individually. The rights workers faced a number of dilemmas in upholding rights principles in practice. The study concludes that polarised principles of rights and care in practice could be unhelpful to work with young people. Consideration of elements of a care ethic alongside rights in both social work and children’s rights work could lead to a more unified discourse that would benefit practice with young people. This would entail a more sophisticated understanding of advocacy and bring care back into social workers’ individual work with young people.

This study, undertaken from a feminist and children’s rights perspective, emerged from the growing body of literature on children’s experiences of domestic abuse, the challenges of childhood studies and the opportunities arising out of the changed socio-political landscape of Scotland since devolution. It examines, with children and young people experiencing domestic abuse, their own solutions to improve help for children and young people, their perspectives on real and tokenistic participation in Scotland’s policy-making and, their self-defined ethical and participatory standards to make sustained participation possible. Combining innovation in methodology and co-production of new knowledge with children and young people, the researcher contributes the three E’s of Enjoyment, Empowerment and Emancipation to ethical principles focussing on safety, and recommends a new ethical approach to consent that recognises children’s agency in their own lives and in deciding their own best interests. A Participatory Action Research Process over five years with 9 of the 48 young people, resulted in young people themselves becoming change agents to begin to tackle the issues that emerged from the wider study’s qualitative first part, also action-orientated through children’s political activism. For example, the lack of help, awareness and stigma attached to domestic abuse was tackled through their production of a public online awareness raising campaign and film; their critique of the previously most revered of services, Women's Aid specialist support, resulted in a multi-million fund and their analysis became the conditions of grant; the lack of respect for and inclusion of young people in policy-making they challenged through defining their terms of engagement which are explored here, sanctioned and legitimised by their emerging 'critical friendship' with Ministers. Unusually the young people participating in the study made a significant impact on Scotland’s domestic abuse policy and practice, as well as repositioning children and young people in the democratic process.

Eyewitnesses‘ descriptions of suspects often refer to distinctive facial features, such as tattoos or scars, and the police have to decide how best to create fair lineups in these circumstances. This issue, despite its importance, has attracted insufficient attention in the eyewitness identification literature. Informed by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act code of practice and current police practice, I conducted an empirical evaluation of the different lineup techniques that investigators currently use for suspects with distinctive features. To ensure that a suspect does not stand out because of his distinctive feature, and also to extract more information from the eyewitness, the police either replicate the distinctive feature across all foils in the lineup or conceal the distinctive feature on the face of the suspect. These techniques were tested either in a crossover recognition-memory paradigm (Study 1), or in a lineup-identification paradigm (Studies 2, 3, and 4), either in computer-based laboratory experiments or real-world field experiments using both target-present and target-absent lineups. The results showed that replication is a better technique than concealment. Compared to concealment, replication increases target identifications in target present lineups—in some cases by decreasing foil identifications in target-absent lineups. The hybrid-similarity (HS) model of face recognition was used to assess whether it could be applied in this domain. Across seven experiments (Studies 1, 2, and 3) and three paradigms, the HS model was able to model the qualitative pattern of results. The purpose of this experimental work was to demonstrate the importance of constructing fair lineups for people with distinctive features and to provide results that will have practical implications for legal contexts and will improve our understanding of face recognition and recognition memory in general.

This thesis sets out to attack beliefs that caring is women's work, to examine the reasons for the resistance to changing conventions about sex roles and health work and, in view of coming changes in British demographic and socio-economic structures, to urge people to consider the question, who cares for us? The paradox of men caring makes its impact precisely because of the history and culture of women caring. The force of the image is as great as the contrast which makes it: men look like misfits in the caring role because women have been typecast for it. It is the extraordinary contrast of men carers and nurses talking about their caring feelings that forces the paradox. In this study, the men and women nurses and carers who were interviewed discuss their feelings as the very reason for their caring work, including emotion work and dirty work. The thesis argues that the men and women share the same caring values but their caring roles are conflicted by beliefs about sexual identity. Men's caring act is culturally constructed whereas women's caring act is directed by biological and cultural beliefs that help to perpetuate women's structured dependency in caring roles. The feminisation of caring designates the swamp of unthinking about women, feelings and bodies that breeds wrong beliefs about health work and sex roles and subverts the moral order of caring values. This is feminist methodology, characterised by being reflexive, political and experimental. The resulting exploratory study combines qualitive fieldwork with theoretical inquiry. It is a deconstuction of sex roles and health work, exploring the feminisation of caring through the language of care and the history of nursing, the difficulties with current social theory that genders caring and ignores feelings, most importantly, the stories of men and women nurses and carers who talk about their caring feelings, their work and their beliefs about caring sex roles, and finally the context of caring in the UK today. In conclusion, current beliefs about sex roles and health work undermine the moral order of caring values at a time when the task of caring for elderly people is increasing. What is required is the political will to begin the public debate on who should care for vulnerable kith and kin and who should pay for the work to be done?

The purpose of this study is to illustrate the extent to which colonial welfare ideas and practices shaped social welfare in Malaysia, with particular reference to child welfare services. In particular, the study explores the scope in which social welfare services was established and developed by the colonial government, the degree of the colonial government's intervention in child welfare services, and the guidelines used by the colonial officials to resolve child welfare issues during the period of 1946-1957. Midgley's Social Welfare Models considers the role of diffusion of colonial welfare ideas and practices, and the residual conception in the approach to welfare within the context of colonialism. The study has employed archival materials on British colonial administration in Malaya kept in the UK National Archive and the Malaysian National Archive to illuminate Midgley's Social Welfare Model. Interviews with Malaysian ex-welfare officers who had personal experience of working at the Department of Social Work (OSW) during the British colonial period were also carried out. The study indicates that, as a contribution to historical and sociological knowledge, children welfare services in Malaya were first organized for immigrant labourers to ensure a regular and reliable supply of healthy workforce. This denotes that the focus of the colonial government was on the exploitation of Malaya's economy, and social welfare issues were peripheral. This standpoint taken by the British colonial government has indeed conformed to the abovementioned welfare model. The study has also revealed that during the period of 1946-1957, the British made efforts to provide welfare for the people of Malaya with the establishment of DSW in 1946. However, the DSW faced complexity of handling welfare issues, such as children welfare, within a multiethnic society because of the different cultures, values and beliefs that existed. The study also suggests that the needs of Europeans and key workers were the prime concerns of the colonial government for their commercial interests. The study has shown that ideas on welfare from the host country were instituted, although, on some occasions, the government made attempts to adapt these ideas to suit the local circumstances. The study concludes that Malayan welfare policy enacted by the British colonial officials followed British welfare ideas and accepted the role of voluntary bodies in the provision of welfare to children. Thus, the government took a residual approach to welfare in which welfare services were provided for the needy and the government played a minimalist role in welfare provision. Although the colonial government contributed to the development of child welfare services in Malaya during the period of 1946-1957, the implementation of the services did. not follow any specific welfare model and no definite child welfare policy was particularly drawn up for Malaya.

There are two main foci in this research. The first has to do with police officers' management of psychiatric referrals, using their powers under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act, the second with interprofessional relations between the police and psychiatrists. A Section 136 case is defined so as to include all referrals where a mental health disposal is initiated by the police as opposed to a court or other mental health professional. The research is an attempt to describe police officers involvement with psychiatric referrals and the nature of and reasons behind the decisions they make, and to understand the nature of professional relationships that exist between police officers and psychiatrists in applying this part of the Mental Health Act. The concepts used, and theoretical underpinnings of the research are in the main derived from the sociology of 'mental illness'. Use, has been made of the theory of professional dominance to analyse police action and interaction with psychiatrists. Both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis have been used. Primacy has not been given to one or other approach, rather an attempt has been made to integrate both, so as to present as full a picture as possible of the issues under investigation. Data was primarily collected by means of interviews with police officers from 11 different police stations in the North East Metropolitan Police area. This was supplemented by the use of participant observation at one police station, interviews with psychiatrists at two hospitals and analysis of police documents and administrative records. The study has been divided into three sections: preparing for and carrying out the research (Chapters 1-4); the analysis and presentation of findings (Chapters 5-8); discussion and implications of the results and re-examining the theory (Chapter 9-10). It was rare for officers to initiate referrals themselves, it was mainly as a response to others that they became involved. Officers were generally unaware that they were responding to a mental health emergency prior to arriving at an incident, and decisions to apprehend were made for policing rather than psychiatric reasons. Officers did not always use Section 136 as an authority for arrest where a psychiatric disposal was subsequently sought. A combination of physical restraint and verbal strategies were used to manage referrals. Officers tended not to treat these differently to other suspects, whilst on the streets, but treated them less punitively than other detainees once at the station. It was found that there was a tendency to exclude other forms of deviancy in identifying mental disorder. Most referrals could have been charged with a criminal offence and officers' reasons for not preferring charges were examined, of which external considerations, (such as the policy of the courts) were found to be important. Police and psychiatrists generally shared the same perceptions about their client group in terms of the latter's appropriateness to be dealt with by the psychiatric services. With the exception of police ability to diagnose mental disorder, there was agreement about the nature of officer's role in relation to Section 136. Interprofessional contact and perceptions of one another were characterised by distance and indifference. At the hospital, psychiatrists assumed a superordinate role over the police officers. However, police officers exercised considerable autonomy over decision making at the police station which acted to threaten the psychiatrists gatekeeping powers.

My research explores the cultural practices and identities of the descendants of an estimated 100,000 children who were despatched to Canada, unaccompanied by their parents, and under the auspices of a number of British charities, between 1869 and the late 1940s. It investigates the relationship between the descendants' individual and collective projects of recovery and commemoration and wider issues of postcolonial nationhood, ethnicity, and culture. It also focuses on the relationships between personal, family, national, and transnational identities, and on the ways in which the so called Home Children are being commemorated in contemporary Canada amongst competing cultural and political agendas. During two extended trips to Canada, I conducted fifty nine in-depth interviews and two group interviews that allowed me to obtain an insight into the identities, experiences and attitudes of the descendants of Home Children. In this thesis I will discuss the findings of this research. I will report on the ways in which personal and wider senses of identity, ethnicity, and nationhood are produced and expressed through the activities of descendants who are attempting to research and recover unknown family histories and places of origin of ancestors.

This thesis takes a rare and exploratory look at the experience of positive emotions in work settings, examining their causes and consequences. It begins by reviewing and offering a critique of previous organisational research related to this topic, which has tended to focus on the rather narrow concept of job satisfaction. In line with a recent theory of workplace affect (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), it is argued that a more in-depth look at positive emotions as momentary reactions to events may improve our understanding of how workplace positive affect is linked to various organisational outcomes. A two-part study was carried out within a sample of home care workers for older people. In the first part, a qualitative diary study (n = 9) was conducted to explore in real-time the types of events that produce positive emotions at work on a day-to-day basis, and to explore the cognitive and behavioural outcomes of these emotions. Based on the findings of this study, a larger scale quantitative diary study (n = 77) was designed and conducted with the aim of examining the patterns of relationships between these variables. It was found that the most common sources of positive emotions in care workers were related to social interactions with clients and, to a lesser extent, to task performance; a number of dispositional factors were found to influence the intensity of positive emotional experiences. Positive emotions were in turn found to predict the likelihood of a wide range of beneficial individual and organisational outcomes (including increased motivation, creative insights and favourable attitudes towards the job). In the light of the findings, it is tentatively argued that we may be able to meaningfully distinguish between socially-oriented and task-oriented positive emotional experiences at work. This thesis reaches the conclusion that differentiating between positive emotions (as temporary states) and job satisfaction (as a relatively stable attitude) may improve the specific predictive power of each of the two separate sets of constructs. It is argued that this research, although directed at a specific occupational population, may to some extent apply to other occupations.

The study aims to explore young disabled peoples I concerns about independent living, and how they view the source of that independence. The transition to adulthood poses particular problems for young physically disabled adults and independent living is a widely shared goal. The independent living movement has spearheaded an increasing awareness amongst disabled people of their rights as human beings and citizens and has brought together ideas on independent living and ways of achieving it. The philosophy of independent living is based on four assumptions: that all human life is of value; that anyone, regardless of their impairment, is capable of exerting choices; that people who are disabled by society's reaction to physical, intellectual and sensory impairment and to emotional distress have a right to have control over their lives, with whatever assistance they need to do so; and that disabled people have the right to participate fully in society. Government policy is consonant with the aims of the independent living movement: to keep individuals in the community and to address their needs more appropriately. This study, which is based upon data from 42 young physically disabled adults uses qualitative methods which were inspired by the ideals of the Emancipatory Research Paradigm. Interviews were in-depth and informal and focussed on the periods before, during, and after transition. The work was conducted from the standpoint of the seven fundamental needs outlined in the social model of disability. To what extent had the young people achieved independent living? None of the sample had achieved independent living in its fullest sense in terms of employment, independent housing, financial and personal control of assistance, life style, relationships, educational qualifications or transport. A minority had achieved some of these. The majority had low self-esteem and had received inadequate support from families and the education system and had poor employment prospects. Most were reliant on benefits which were insufficient to meet the extra costs associated with disability and few had received support from social services. Most appeared destined for a life on the margins of society.