Psychological Change in Looked After Children
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Psychological Change In Looked After Children: The Perceptions of Clinicians and Young People
IRAS ID
130603
Contact name
Lauren T McPartlan
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of East London
Research summary
There has been no research exploring Looked After Children’s (LAC) understanding of their psychological difficulties and what they feel meaningful change would be. This is also the case for professionals working clinically with LAC. Furthermore, it has been argued that the outcome measures that are currently used to assess looked after children’s psychological well-being are not appropriate, as they do not capture the complexity of the difficulties this young group of people experience. This study aims to explore clinicians’ and young people’s understanding of the psychological needs of Looked After Children in order to gain a more in-depth understanding of the complexity of this group. To do this, the proposed research will take a qualitative methodological approach, using Thematic Analysis to explore the data from semi-structured interviews with young people in foster care and clinicians who work with them. It is hope this will highlight their understanding of LAC’s psychological difficulties and what they think would be meaningful psychological change. Furthermore, it is hoped that this information will help facilitate the development of more appropriate outcome measures for this client group.
REC name
London - Fulham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/LO/0763
Date of REC Opinion
14 Jun 2013
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion