Young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) are a focus of government attention in the UK. For social service professionals the mechanisms underpinning the individual experience of NEET are critical to designing effective interventions. International comparisons point to similar experiences at the level of the individual family. This article examines the factors that may contribute to a young person becoming NEET and applies these to the demographics of a rural area in England. Poor educational attainment and low socio-economic status are key factors, with the mental well-being of young people as a proposed underpinning mechanism.

There were 59,500 Children in out-of-home care in England in 2008. Research into this population points to poor health and quality of life outcomes over the transition to adult independence. This undesirable outcome applies to mental health, education and employment. This lack of wellbeing for the individual is a burden for health and social care services, suggesting limitations in the current policy approaches regarding the transitional pathway from care to adult independence. Although the precise reasons for these poor outcomes are unclear long term outcomes from national birth cohorts suggest that mental health could be a key predictor for subsequent psychosocial adjustment.Researching the wellbeing of children in out-of-home care has proven difficult due to the range and complexity of the factors leading to being placed in care and the different methods used internationally for recording information. This paper delineates the estimated prevalence of mental health problems for adolescents in the care system, organisational factors, influencing service provision, and pathways through the transition from adolescence to independent young adult life. The extent to which being taken into care as a child moderates adult wellbeing outcomes remains unknown. Whether the care system enhances, reduces or has a null effect on wellbeing and specifically mental health cannot be determined from the current literature. Nonetheless a substantial proportion of young people display resilience and experience successful quality of life outcomes including mental capital. A current and retrospective study of young people transitioning to adult life is proposed to identify factors that have promoted successful outcomes and which would be used to inform policy developments and future longitudinal studies.

The Family Assessment Device (FAD) was given to a community sample of intact families with young children. Responses by mothers and fathers were analysed with a view to providing ways of indicating which families might benefit from preventive intervention.Mother/father agreement was significant on five of the seven scales, with a failure to reach significance on Affective Involvement and General Functioning. The highest correlation between mothers and fathers was on the Roles scale ( r = 0.53). However, mothers' means for Roles were significantly higher than fathers', indicating that mothers were less satisfied with family functioning in this area.In addition to a family mean score greater than a cut-off value as an indicator of unhealthy functioning, present results suggest including those families whose respondents strongly disagree (indicated by scores lying on either side of the cut-off and a difference of more than two standard deviations). With this double criterion, Roles and Affective Involvement were the dimensions most frequently scored as unhealthy. Seventeen per cent of the families scored in the unhealthy range on four or more of the seven dimensions.This paper considers how to decide where family intervention might be helpful and raises the question of whether screening families might be more widely undertaken, for example by health visitors, to identify those families who are at risk of family dysfunction.

The McMaster Model of Family Functioning defines seven dimensions, which may be assessed either by an observer applying a Clinical Rating Scale (CRS) to a semi-structured interview of the family and/or by family members completing a questionnaire, the Family Assessment Device (FAD). The present article applied both methods of assessment, as well as the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS), to a nonclinical sample (N = 105). Interobserver reliability on the CRS was highly significant. Parent (FAD) vs. observer (CRS) agreement was also highly significant, except for Affective Responsiveness and Behavior Control, for which agreement was barely significant. When families were labeled as "healthy" or "unhealthy" according to cut-offs, agreement between observers and parents was high (87%), and disagreements illuminated dynamics of individual families. Finally, the DAS (completed by mothers) was significantly correlated with both the CRS and the FAD, particularly for General Functioning.

Background: Successful research is frequently hampered by poor study recruitment, especially in community settings and with participants who are women and their children. Health visitors (HVs) and community midwives (CMs) are well placed to invite young families, and pregnant and postnatal women to take part in such research, but little is known about how best to support these health professionals to do this effectively. Aim: This study uses the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) to explore the factors that influence whether HVs and CMs invite eligible patients to take part in research opportunities. Method: HVs (n = 39) and CMs (n = 22) working in four NHS Trusts and one community partnership in England completed an anonymous, online survey with open-ended questions about their experiences of asking eligible patients to take part in the research. Qualitative data were analysed using directed content analysis and inductive coding to identify specific barriers and enablers to patient recruitment within each of the 14 theoretical domains. Findings: Six key TDF domains accounted for 81% of all coded responses. These were (a) environmental context and resources; (b) beliefs about capabilities; (c) social/professional role and identity; (d) social influences; (e) goals; (f) knowledge. Key barriers to approaching patients to participate in the research were time and resource constraints, perceived role conflict, conflicting priorities, and particularly for HVs, negative social influences from patients and researchers. Enablers included feeling confident to approach patients, positive influence from peers, managers and researchers, beliefs in the relevance of this behaviour to health care and practice and good knowledge about the study procedures, its rationale and the research topic. The findings suggest that to improve research recruitment involving HVs and CMs, a package of interventions is needed to address the barriers and leverage the enablers to participant approach.