Working with Parents of Young People: Research, Policy and Practice
| Pages | 81-82 |
| Published date | 01 December 2007 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/17466660200700038 |
| Date | 01 December 2007 |
| Author | Angie Bartoli |
| Subject Matter | Education,Health & social care,Sociology |
81
Journal of Children’s Services
Volume 2 Issue 4 December 2007
© Pavilion Journals (Brighton) Ltd
The focus of this book is parenting young people, a
task rarely envied and much scrutinised. It is aimed at
a wide range of professionals working with parents
and young people. Each chapter ends with a section
called ‘Learning for practitioners’, which readers will
find either useful or tedious depending on their need
for familiarity or variety.
The book is divided simply into four parts, with 12
chapters from 13 different contributors drawing on
the findings of the research projects undertaken over
the last five years by the Trust for the Study of
Adolescence (TSA), an organisation that has arguably
been ‘more active than most’ (p18) in researching
parenting support for parents of teenagers. Chapters
cover a range of areas, including ‘team parenting’ in
foster care, parenting during young people’s
transition to secondary school, how schools can
support parents and parent–parent mentoring.
Part 1 (Chapter 1, Coleman and Roker) will provide
any researcher, policy-maker, manager, practitioner,
academic or student with a comprehensive contextual
background. This ‘sets the scene’ in terms of the socio-
political, historical and legal framework of the last 17
years and relevant research over the same period. It
describes young people as being at best forgotten and
at worst ignored when services are being planned and
delivered; this is contrasted with, for example,
significant financial investment for families of the
under-5s through initiatives such as Sure Start. The
section explores how young people and their parents
are being sanctioned by punitive measures such as the
Parenting Orders introduced in the Crime and Disorder
Act 1998. It also discusses the contradictory messages
emitted through public policy, where on the one hand
parents have responsibilities and on the other are
punished within the blame culture depicted in the
media and reinforced in statute. The exploration of
new research and implications for practice is
contained in Part 2 of the book, while Part 3 focuses
on new ways of working with parents (it is somewhat
surprising to find that working with schools (Chapter
7, Roker and Richardson Foster) is still being
considered as innovative).
With a keen professional interest in evaluation, I
was particularly drawn to this aspect of the book. As
acknowledged in the conclusions, the evaluation of
new initiatives or projects is ‘patchy’ (Chapter 12,
Roker & Coleman, p115). Disappointingly, the
evaluations reported in the book concentrated on the
process of the delivery of the service rather than the
outcomes and so focused on the ‘how we did it’ and
‘what happened’. Consequently, the description of the
methodology is somewhat predictable and repetitive
in terms of questionnaires, interviews and so forth.
There is an absence of analysis about the effectiveness
of interventions and for me the evaluation and
research within the book lacked detail and quantitative
data. For example, the review by Roker and Shepherd
(Chapter 6) on supporting children and parents during
the transition to secondary school describes how fliers
were sent to ‘a very wide range of local and national
organisations’ (p104); here I would have welcomed a
breakdown of such organisations in a table.
As a reader and academic interested in theory and
research, I was left with unanswered ‘why’ and ‘how’
questions that longitudinal studies address. This is
probably because a number of the projects evaluated
were innovative and we have yet to learn about their
longer-term effectiveness. Much of the research
focused on an understanding of key concepts in
parenting and family dynamics (eg. monitoring and
supervision in Chapter 2, and alcohol use in Chapter
4) rather than on the effectiveness of the intervention.
However, as the editors note, with the exception of
the Joseph Rowntree Foundation funding for such
‘basic’ (p214) research is rare. This is disheartening,
as a study of 50 young people and their parents on
how monitoring and supervision work in families
(Chapter 2, Roker and Stace) and an analysis of family
communication about alcohol (Chapter 4, Cox et al)
are rich in qualitative data and narrative. This is
where the ‘real’ voices of the forgotten are heard and
the key concepts addressed; as Roker and Coleman
state, this information ‘can then be used to inform
the support offered to parents and the policies that
are implemented in the area’ (p214).
Book reviews
Working with Parents of Young People: Research, Policy and Practice
Debi Roker and John Coleman (Editors)
London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2007
224 pages, £18.99
ISBN: 1 84310 420 2
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