research report

Making the most of collaboration : an international survey of public service co-design (Demos report 23)

Discussion paper presenting the results of an international survey of public service co-design, a method whereby service users and providers work together to shape the content, form and delivery of services. It also highlights the advantages offered by co-design and describes its practical and political nature.

Realising Recovery : A National Framework for Learning and Training in Recovery Focused Practice

This Framework has been developed as one of the actions identified in Rights, Relationships and Recovery: the report of the national review of mental health nursing in Scotland (SEHD 2006). The Framework outlines the knowledge, skills and values mental health nurses require to work in a recovery focused way with people who use mental health services and their friends, family and carers. This Framework should be seen as part of a process in supporting the development of rights, values and recovery focused practice.

Closing the opportunity gap programme: phase 1 evaluation (Research findings no.1)

Paper summarising the main findings of an interim evaluation of the Scottish Executive's Closing the Opportunity Gap (CtOG) social inclusion strategy.

The study assessed initial progress towards achieving CtOG aims, objectives and targets up to 2007. The research encompassed secondary analysis of CtOG monitoring data, survey analysis and interviews with key stakeholders.

Parental mental health : messages from research, policy and practice

This review focuses on one particular aspect of parenting and family life. It is about children living in families where a parent has mental health problems. The aim of this review is to identify – from a range of publications – sources and messages that might help practitioners and managers improve their understanding of the circumstances of children and families living with parental mental health problems, and find responses that have the potential for achieving positive change.

Growing up in Scotland: maternal mental health and its impact on child behaviour and development

Longitudinal surveys afford a unique opportunity to study change over time for the same individuals and to explore the impact of prior circumstances on long-term outcomes.

Using longitudinal data over four sweeps of the Growing Up in Scotland (GUS) study, this report explores the impacts of poor maternal mental health on children’s emotional, cognitive and behavioural development and on their relationships with peers at ages three to four.

Drug education in schools

Report evaluating the quality of drug education programmes witnessed in schools during a survey. It sketches young people's use of drugs including alcohol and tobacco and identifies aspects of provision, e.g. teaching, which have improved since the last Ofsted report in 1997.

The Capability Approach : developing an instrument for evaluating public health interventions : final report

In view of increasing interest in the application of Sen's capability approach to the evaluation of health care programmes, this paper reports on a project which aimed to develop a questionnaire to measure outcome within the capabilities framework, to be used in the evaluation of public health and social interventions.

Child poverty in large families

The abolition of child poverty is key to the UK government’s social policy strategy. In 1999 the Prime Minister’s Toynbee Hall speech promised ‘to eradicate child poverty within a generation’. Subsequently the Treasury set out further objectives: to eradicate child poverty by 2020, to halve it by 2010 and ‘to make substantial progress towards eliminating child poverty by reducing the number of children in poverty by at least a quarter by 2004’ (HM Treasury, 2000). The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) published this report as the result of a project on child poverty in large families.