This thesis is concerned with children as familial caregivers. To date 'young carers' have received limited attention from researchers, and the current body of literature has mainly developed from the social welfare field. This is in contrast to a vast body of research, which has established the psychological impact of care giving on adults. The first paper critically reviews the concept and research on 'parentification'. This is a systemic/dynamic perspective on the psychological and developmental implications of children's involvement in caring roles. It has been submitted to the Journal of Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry (see Appendix A for instructions to authors for all papers). The brief paper is a qualitative study employing focus groups and individual interviews to consider the views of twenty young carers. The aim was to gain an insight into their perceptions of the caring experience and to provide data which might be helpful in developing a measure of 'young carer stress' to be used in the main study. This paper has been prepared for the journal 'Qualitative Health Research'. The main research focused upon the application of a stress- coping model to a study of 108 adolescent young carers. It was found that those children who felt devalued in their caring role, overloaded, and used avoidant coping styles to manage their stress were most at risk of suffering from psychological distress. The results are considered in the context of the adolescent stress-coping literature and implications for prevention and intervention are discussed. Papers are prepared in accordance with the instructions to authors, although small changes to the formatting have been made to ensure consistency across all the papers. The whole thesis is less than 20,000 words (excluding references, and tables).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:369012 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Earley, Louise |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/89666/ |
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