Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore how substance use practitioners intervene with ethnically and culturally diverse groups of young people in contact with the youth justice system.

Telephone, face-to-face interviews and a focus group were conducted. Data were analysed thematically using a frame-reflective theoretical approach.

Practitioners tended to offer individualised interventions to young people in place of culturally specific approaches partly due to a lack of knowledge, training or understanding of diverse cultural needs, and for practical and resource reasons.

Practitioners reject the official narrative of BAME youth in the justice system as dangerous and in need of control, viewing them instead as vulnerable and in need of support, but report they lack experience, and sufficient resources, in delivering interventions to diverse groups.

There is little information regarding how practitioners respond to diversity in their daily practice. This paper is an exploration of how diversity is framed and responded to in the context of youth substance use and criminal justice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the shifting roles of medical professionals as stakeholders in opioid substitution treatment (OST) policies and practices in Denmark and the UK within the past 15 years.

The paper is based on literature reviews, documentary analyses and key informant interviews with a range of stakeholders involved in OST and policy in Denmark and UK. The study is part of the EU-funded project: Addictions and Lifestyles in Contemporary Europe: Reframing Addictions Project.

Denmark and the UK are amongst those few European countries that have long traditions and elaborate systems for providing OST to heroin users. The UK has a history of dominance of medical professionals in drugs treatment, although this has been recently challenged by the recovery movement. In Denmark, a social problem approach has historically dominated the field, but a recent trend towards medicalisation can be traced. As in all kinds of policy changes, multiple factors are at play when shifts occur. We examine how both countries’ developments around drugs treatment policy and practice relate to broader societal, economic and political changes, how such divergent developments emerge and how medical professionals as stakeholders enhanced their roles as experts in the field through a variety of tactics, including the production and use of “evidence”, which became a key tool to promote specific stakeholder’s perspectives in these processes.

The paper contributes to current policy and practice debates by providing comparative analyses of drug policies and examination of stakeholder influences on policy processes.

The purpose of this paper is to map research communities related to heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) and the scientific network they are part of to determine their structure and content.

Co-authorship as the basis for conducting social network analysis with regard to degree, weighted degree, betweenness centrality, and edge betweenness centrality.

A number of central researchers were identified on the basis of the number of their collaborative relations. Central actors were also identified on the basis of their position in the research network. In total, 11 research communities were constructed with different scientific content. HAT research communities are closely connected to medical, psychiatric, and epidemiological research and very loosely connected to social research.

The first mapping of the collaborative network HAT researchers using social network methodology.

This paper starts from the familiar premise of evidence-based policy, and examines the active role that researchers play in policy development processes. The interactive nature of much research translation immediately suggests the need to consider the dynamic way in which problems come to be understood, which is explored in this paper. Furthermore, the integration of research knowledge with the knowledges of “ordinary” citizens is a key challenge. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper represents a synthesis of recent studies conducted by the author and her colleagues along with other drug policy literature.

The interactive and dialogic processes that researchers engage with, whether as knowledge brokers or participants in elite policy development forums, have implications for how policy problems (and solutions) come to be constituted. Four perspectives and theoretical approaches are briefly outlined: research design; policy processes; problematization; and critical social sciences analyses. These offer different ways of seeing, understanding and analyzing the relationship between problems, policy solutions and the policy processes. Yet all have lessons for the ways in which research evidence and researchers constitute policy. This needs to sit alongside the role of other drug policy stakeholders – notably the “ordinary” citizen. It is argued that the elite role of research can be tempered with engagement of ordinary citizens. While it can be challenging to reconcile general public views about drugs with the evidence-base, deliberative democracy approaches may hold some promise.

This paper draws together a number of central themes for drug policy processes research: where the evidence-based policy paradigm intersects with participatory democracy; how problems are constituted; and the privileged role of research and researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an outline of the origins, rationale and ways of working of the Danish schools, social services, police (SSP) system.

Narrative account of origins and contexts and discussion of implications for other nations and contribution to knowledge of prevention work.

The SSP system represents an involvement by Danish state institutions in the welfare and development of young people. Practice indicates its broad acceptance by parents, young people and professionals. Recent extension of SSP work is demonstrating some of the limitations of the approach in working with alienated young people.

The present SSP system relies on local evaluation and assessment. Wider national and longitudinal evaluation needs further consideration.

The need for a career structure and continuing and nationally consistent professional development opportunities was identified in a previous evaluation.

SSP enjoys broad acceptance amongst parents, young people and professionals in that it provides a universal input into young people’s well-being and social integration. It is proving less successful in work in some urban areas with high levels of alienation amongst older young people. There is also a need for re-statement of confidentiality aspects.

The paper provides an insight into and overview of a cross-disciplinary approach to young people’s development and well-being where the state plays a key and accepted role. The rationale is equally relevant to the UK and other countries.

On-premise trading hours are generally decided at the local level. The purpose of this paper is to identify relevant advocacy coalitions and to assess to what extent and how these coalitions used research in the alcohol policy-making process concerning changes in on-premise trading hours in Norway.

Theory-driven content analyses were conducted, applying data from city council documents (24 Norwegian cities) and Norwegian newspaper articles and broadcast interviews (n=138) in 2011-2012.

Two advocacy coalitions with conflicting views and values were identified. Both coalitions used research quite extensively – in the public debate and in the formal decision-making process – but in different ways. The restrictive coalition, favouring restricted trading hours and emphasising public health/safety, included the police and temperance movements and embraced research demonstrating the beneficial health/safety effects of restricting trading hours. The liberal coalition of conservative politicians and hospitality industry emphasised individual freedom and industry interests and promoted research demonstrating negative effects on hospitality industry turnover. This coalition also actively discredited the research demonstrating the beneficial health/safety effects of restricting trading hours.

Little is known about how local alcohol policy-making processes are informed by research-based knowledge. This study is the first to analyse how advocacy coalitions use research to influence local alcohol policy-making.

The purpose of this paper is to present a discussion of one element of a principal preparation graduate program that uses visualization as a technique to practice decision making.

The author analyzed information collected from participants who created personal case studies using a visualization technique. Data also were collected through interviews and reflections of the new principals.

A description of the use of visualization is offered including two examples of case studies using visualization. In the examples, new principals learned to make strong decisions about challenges and felt they developed problem‐solving skills that they would use in the future.

The study was limited to case scenarios of two new principals. There is a need for a greater connection between university preparation programs and the daily reality of principals' work.

The suitability of the content of existing principal preparation programs warrants closer examination.

This report contributes to the understanding of possible strategies for use in principal preparation programs that develop capacity and decision making.

A safe environment is critical for adolescents’ well-being. The purpose of this photovoice study is to explore reasons that make adolescents feel safe in their community.

This study was conducted in Florida through both online and in-person recruitment. After a training session on the ethical and technical use of cameras and a brief introduction of the photovoice methodology, six adolescents took photos (n = 66) in their community and discussed their photos guided by the revised SHOWeD framework. Abridged transcripts were used to match photos with corresponding discussions. Thematic analysis was conducted by the research team.

This study identified four main themes related to adolescents’ safe perceptions, including community protective factors (n = 22 photos) such as safe physical environments and community cohesion; family protective factors (n = 14 photos) including safe home and caring parents; traffic safety (n = 14 photos), such as proper road signs, seat belts for car safety and helmets and locks for bicycle safety; and public safety (n = 8 photos), such as emergency numbers, fire departments and police cars and officers.

Due to the limited number of participants, this study did not compare the similarities and differences of safety perceptions between adolescents living in high crime areas (urban communities) and those in low crime areas (suburban and rural communities). Future photovoice studies are recommended to further explore the influential factors associated with adolescents’ perceived community safety in urban and rural areas with different levels of crime rates to provide more evidence on targeted strategies for community safety promotion in each area.

By exploring the reasons for adolescents’ safe feelings in their community using photovoice, this study provides insights for future intervention programs to promote community safety for children and adolescents from the community, family, traffic and societal perspectives.

This photovoice study not only empowers adolescents to identify community assets related to their safe perceptions but also illustrates valuable insights for researchers and public health professionals for safety promotion.

This study has used a broad research question to explore the reasons that make adolescents feel safe, providing them the opportunities to express their opinions by photo taking and photo discussions. Moreover, rich information at the community, family and societal levels has been collected as related to factors contributing to adolescents’ safe perceptions, adding to the literature on community safety. In addition, this photovoice study has offered both in-person and online participation. Such combination not only provides adolescents with an opportunity to choose a participation method that works best for them but also adds to the photovoice methodology by extending the data collection from in-person to online.