Instruments
It was decided to limit the investigation and mapping of non-
specialised services to “types” of services providing non-
specialised interventions instead of conducting a detailed mapping exercise. For this purpose, two templates for each category were created, one for the identification of the types and one for the description of identified types of services (see Table 15).
Table 15
Instruments for non-specialised services
Community-based non-specialised services (C3)
1. Template cat_3_4 Part I
Aim: Identification of types of services Content: Instructions
Identification strategies
Service types identified: type, number of services of this type in the country, Sources
Checklist for the identification procedure
Mental health services for children and adolescents (C4)
2. Template cat_3_4 Part II
Aim: Identification of types of services Content: Instructions
Identification strategies
Service types identified: type, number of services of this type in the country, Capacity, sources number, sources capacity
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Community-based non-specialised services (C3)
Appendix: Definitions of C3, C4 types Method of identification
Checklist inclusion criteria C3, C4
3. Description template C3
Aim: Description of types of services
Content: General target group of the service type General aim of the service type
Typical tasks
Information about what kind of performance is related to the needs of children of prisoners
Structural information about the service type of C3 services Further important information about service type
Examples
Appendix: Criteria for descriptions
4. Description template C4
Aim: Description of types of services
Content: General target group of the service type General aim of the service type
Typical tasks
Information about what kind of performance is related to the needs of children of prisoners
Structural information about the service type of C3 services Further important information about service type
Examples
Appendix: Criteria for descriptions
Methodology, continued Methodology, continued
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235 Data Collection
UK
Community-based specialised services
The mapping of community-based non-specialised services across the UK (England and Wales) proceeded by several stages. The
research team initially undertook Internet searches and contacted key government departments to discover whether any department held a centralised data set(s) relating to community based
specialised services. It was found that no government department held this data. Indicators from previous research projects mapping third sector service provision testified to a large number of
providers (although these varied markedly in their scope, coverage and capacity). However, the COPING service types of interest
could not be adequately identified from these data sets and
confidentiality concerns prevented release of the raw data for re- analysis. Some relevant service information was partially collected by individual local authorities and by some national third sector organisations (i.e. Barnardos, NSPCC, YoungMinds, Mind etc.), although as the local institutional geography in the UK (England and Wales) is complex (patterned by County, District and Unitary Authorities) with the distribution of functions varying according
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to the local arrangements and there being some 260 in number, a simple searching across local authorities proved problematic.
As a result of these obstacles the research team combined a strategy of Internet searches and extensive telephone liaison to corroborate service information. The team specifically targeted a number of web based ‘directories’ compiled and updated by either NGOs or local authorities which helpfully listed services available for young people, including counselling, advice or information services. Generally organisations provided these web-based directories for local services that young people could access, although such registers were not exhaustive of all services. This information was supplemented by information on capacity of statutory institutions and a number of relevant allied professions, largely derived from institutional and professional bodies (for instance, the numbers of Chartered Educational and Child Psychologists obtained from the British Psychological Society being the official professional body which provides Chartered status and maintains the Chartered Register for the UK). This approach was used to good effect and provides an estimate of community-based specialised services within England and Wales. Mental Health services for children and adolescents The mapping of mental health services for children and
adolescents proved to be a more straightforward task. Whilst
no government department held a central directory of mental health services for children and young people, the information was devolved at the Primary Care Trust level (PCT) which is an institutional unit of geography for health care provision within the UK (England and Wales). This required web-based searching and telephone liaison (where necessary) in obtaining a picture of statutory and private sector mental health services.
These results were supplemented and triangulated with information gleaned from the Royal College of Psychiatrists own web-based directory of statutory mental health services for children and adolescents (a searchable website for Child and Adolescent Inpatient Mental Health Units or high
dependency
units etc.) at Tier 4 level, focused on ‘high risk’ young people. Other high dependency independent (private) sector providers were also found within this directory, although these were fewer in number than statutory services, no doubt reflecting the considerable
costs incurred for end users. However, it should be noted that
these services are focused on ‘high risk’ young people, likely to be peripheral to our cohort.
Other information on the number of different professionals (often situated within multi-disciplinary teams) were identified
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from liaison with a range of national professional and practitioner bodies who keep directories of memberships or qualified staffs. These data sets provided a good estimate of the available mental health services for children and adolescents.
Germany
Community-based non-specialised services
Internet search (keywords, and records on the website of the
Alliance for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders) as well as the information brochure Overview on Help for Children and
Adolescents (Kocalevents & Schützwohl, 2011), an outcome of the HELP-S project on children of parents with mental disorders, was used to identify different types of community-based services. The main source for the number of services of each type was the
Federal Statistical Office’s publication Statistics of Children and Youth Help (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2006). Services not included in this report were quantified according to the websites of the
respective head association or other pertinent websites for services that
have no head organisation. For the number of relevant hotlines and online platforms a short Internet search was conducted, accounting for the fact that an effective hotline should be easily accessible.
Mental Health services for children and adolescents The types of services follow the structure of the German public health system. The main sources for the number of services were the Federal Statistical Office’s publication Basic dates of
hospitals (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2009). Other sources were the reports of the pertinent medical and psychotherapist
associations. To evaluate the capacity of each service, experts of the relevant association of the service or health insurance
company were contacted by telephone.
Romania
Community-based non-specialised services
The identification strategies for the types of non-specialised services for the prisoners’ families have been the following: a) strategies concerning research/identification at a legislative level; research was internet-based and focused on relevant sites (www.mmspf.ro , www.copii.ro, www.das.ro, htpp://www. ghidulprimariilor.ro/ index.php, etc.); b) strategies concerning institutional organisation at a central and regional level; research is internet-based and direct-contact-based (official addresses to public specialised services through fax/fax-mail, concluding collaboration agreements, telephone). In Romania there are 41
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counties, and in each county there is a General Directorate of
Social Assistance and Child Protection (GDSACP); at the level of the country’s capital Bucharest there are six such GDSACPs which are subordinated to county councils and local councils
http://www.anph.ro/harta.php?m=harta&idc=5 (Map of
DGSACPs.), c) Strategies concerning collaboration/approval with/ from associations in this particular field.
Mental Health services for children and adolescents These kinds of services may be public or private. Much of the legislative information can be found on the National Health site
www.ms.ro, and also on the Psychologists’ College of Romania
web page www.copsi.ro. Other pieces of relevant information were obtained by contacting local institutions (online, telephone, fax). Since the public health policy is undergoing a period of change at the level of the units’ management, there is no clear evidence of the number of places/beds within these mental health services.
Sweden
Internet research starting with the most known services through to less known services was used to identify types of services in Sweden. The National Board of Health and Welfare, a government agency under the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, has
provided information via their Internet site and written reports. Aligning Interventions with Children’s Needs
A single method for evaluating the alignment of services and
interventions with children’s needs within COPING proved elusive,
despite repeated attempts to identify methods to integrate data based on the individual surveys and the country-based data on interventions. Group exercises were conducted with the research team in order to attempt a synthesis of qualitative data from the in-depth interviews and the stakeholder consultation sessions. Further to this, statistical analyses were conducted with the
purpose of achieving a holistic view of the COPING data collected.
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The tests performed were as follows:
1. The needs questions for both children and parent assessments were subjected to factor analysis in order to extract need
dimensions and compare with the theoretical framework described in the introduction.
2. Need hierarchies overall and by country were ranked for child and parent assessments.
3. SDQ and Rosenberg self-esteem variables were correlated with the existence of a parent-assessed dichotomous need variable (yes/no) by country.
4. Parent/carer well-being was assessed in relation to national norms, and compared between countries.
5. Child and parent well-being variables were entered into logistic regression models for the top three parent-assessed needs identified, in order to explore possible predictors of need. 6. Service levels in the different countries were juxtaposed with the
top three parent-assessed needs identified.
Stakeholder Consultation
In addition to the survey and in-depth interviews, a multi-method stakeholder consultation strategy was carried out with 122
professionals/groups (including face-to-face interviews, focus groups, telephone interviews and a COPING on-line questionnaire).
The process was underpinned by a set of consultation guides to encourage uniformity of practice and improve comparability of results. Supplementing the general guide were ten consultation guides, each focused on one of the stakeholder groups and including information about areas of presumed knowledge and foreseeable issues before, during and after the consultation, as well as the question schedule. The question schedules varied
slightly between stakeholder groups. The question schedules were designed to be flexible: underneath each of the 16 ‘core’ questions were supplementary or follow-up questions, which could be used to elicit more information if stakeholders were not forthcoming or did not cover issues of interest/relevance. In keeping with the semi-structured nature of the consultations, researchers were encouraged to use these questions as they saw fit, including where appropriate not asking certain ‘core’ questions.
Ten groups of stakeholders participated in this aspect of the study: caregivers; staff within children’s homes; social workers; prison staff; NGO staff; children of prisoners; imprisoned parents;
government staff involved in policy relating to children/families of prisoners; NGO staff involved in policy formulation and, school- related stakeholders.
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Stakeholder group Germany Sweden Romania UK International Overall no. of individuals consulted Children of prisoners 0 0 0 36 0 36 Imprisoned parents 0 0 0 44 0 44 Caregivers (either a parent, relative or foster-carer) 5 6 0 2 0 13 Prison staff 4 10 4 6 0 24 Social workers 1 3 3 9 0 16 Staff within institutional homes 3 3 3 1 0 10 School- related stakeholders 6 9 4 23 0 42 NGOs supporting families 10 9 3 22 4 48 NGOs involved in policy 0 0 0 2 1 3 Government staff involved in policy relating to children/families of prisoners 2 0 0 0 1 3 Overview 31 40 17 145 6 239
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Not all stakeholder groups were consulted in each country. A table is below.
Table 16
Stakeholders
Analysis
Where possible, consultations were recorded, transcribed and translated into English, however in some countries only extracts of interviews were transcribed and in other instances where recording was not possible consultation summaries were
produced. The translated transcripts or extracts were then coded using the software package NVivo and a single set of NVivo ‘nodes’ (coding categories) were developed for use across all the countries. Development of Recommendations
An awareness of the need to develop recommendations was embedded in the COPING Project from the outset. Emphasis was placed on identifying the ‘action implications’ stemming from the research findings. This has to be seen very much as a judgement about how far the research had highlighted an unmet need, a practice that needs to change, a perception that needs to be addressed or anything else that needs to be remedied. These ‘areas for improvement in policy and practice’ emerged by comparing findings from different Work Packages, paying particular attention to where needs, challenges and opportunities identified in one Work Package were corroborated and reinforced by the results from other Work Packages. An example of this would be where issues flagged up in interviews with children of prisoners
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and their carers (e.g. around impact of witnessing parental arrest on children, the quality of prison visits) were identified in the
consultations with key stakeholders, practitioners and policy makers and were also evident from the research literature and through the mapping of services and interventions. A systematic approach was developed to produce COPING’s recommendations. This involved a three stage process that comprised:
1. The holding of Research Findings Workshops by each partner at different points in time during the final year of the project
2. The convening of Recommendation Workshops at COPING Consortium meetings and less formally, within each partner country, to distil potential recommendations from the research findings
3. The completion of a common template, the ‘Development of Recommendations Form’. The latter was designed to inject consistency in the way in which recommendations were drafted, presented, discussed and categorised. Comprehensive guidance was produced for each stage.
Taken together, the workshops, Consortium meeting discussions and completion of the Development of Recommendations Form represented a structured way in which learning from the COPING project could be articulated and thereafter, translated into a clearly stated agenda for policy development and reform.
Ethics
An Ethical Protocol was developed as a definitive and authoritative statement and record of the ethical principles and procedures
adopted in the COPING research. It also served two other purposes:
1) to capture any necessary differences between countries in their ethical principles and procedures; and
2) to collate any amendments that might be required in ethical principles and procedures as the research progressed and unanticipated situations arose. The ethical principles and procedures fell into one of eight broad areas, each of which covered a number of specific principles and
procedures which are standard within social sciences research.
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Table 17
Outline of the ethical principles and procedures covered in the Ethical Protocol
Broad area Specific ethical principle or procedure
1. Permissions and approvals
1. Permissions and approvals should be obtained from all relevant organisations.
2. Consent 2. Consent should be obtained from all individuals taking part in the research.
3. Consent should be obtained from parents/carers for their children to take part in the research.
4. Individuals should be fully informed as to the nature of the research prior to giving their consent.
5. Individuals should be given an information sheet outlining all key aspects of the research.
6. Individuals should be asked to sign a consent form. 7. Individuals should be given assurances concerning their
involvement in the research.
3. Confidentiality 8. Individuals should be given a guarantee that all the information they provide will be treated in confidence, but with one or two exceptions (one relating to children’s safety and the other concerning either prison security or previously unreported crimes).
4. Anonymity 9. All individuals and organisations taking part in the research should remain anonymous in any report emanating from the study.
10. The need for anonymity should be seen as especially important.
5. Support 11. All individuals taking part in the research should be given the contact details of organisations that might be able to provide them with support as a result of any issues that arise for them as a result of their participation in the research.
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Broad area Specific ethical principle or procedure
6. Research staff 12. All staff involved in fieldwork should be given training in research ethics that are applicable to the COPING project. 13. All research staff should abide by the data protection
legislation that is pertinent to their country.
14. All staff involved in fieldwork should be police checked. 7. External scrutiny 15. Research teams in each country should seek and obtain
ethical approval from a relevant ethics committee. 16. A risk analysis should be carried out in each country to
ensure that risks to participants and research staff are minimised and acceptable.
8. Review 17. The ethical principles and procedures pursued in this research should be kept under review and should be modified where necessary (as new situations arise).
There were two minor differences between countries in terms of the ethical principles and procedures they adopted. The first of these related to confidentiality. There was clear agreement between researchers in all countries that the information
provided by participants should be treated in confidence. There was, though, also a consensus that confidentiality should be breached in certain, exceptional circumstances. Researchers in all countries agreed that if they were to receive information