Psychological Processes in Case Consultations for Care Experienced CYP
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Psychological Processes in Case Consultations for Care Experience Children and Young People: A Grounded Theory Project.
IRAS ID
349267
Contact name
Marc Colgan
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Edinburgh
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
NA, NA
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 6 days
Research summary
Children and Young People who have been a part of the care system (e.g. foster care, kinship care, adoption, residential or state care) experience disproportionately poorer life outcomes such as health, housing, education and employment. The complexity of how these children and young people can present and express distress can make engagement with services challenging. These young people often experience several additional barriers to accessing services including stigma, lack of involvement in decision making and lack of understanding.
One approach to improve access is using consultations with psychologically informed mental health professionals and carers of care experienced children and young people. This approach is based on applying psychologically informed evidence-based advice, specific to an individual’s circumstances and shared understanding of their difficulties and experiences. It builds on helping the person with an established relationship to tailor support for the child or young person. Despite being used frequently, research has not yet well defined or understood how this works and if it helps.
This project aims to better understand the psychological processes of these consultations in terms of what happens between individuals to create, maintain, or prevent the way they think, act or feel. It seeks to understand intentional and unintentional processes and explore the involvement of all parties. It will explore processes through interviews with health and care professionals and use these findings to generate a model of understanding. This model will then be looked at in the context of a recorded consultation to see similarities and differences in people’s perceptions and in real-life examples. Participants will be recruited via NHS Lothian service.
The value of doing this therefore is to understand and improve this core psychological intervention, which can help to improve what mental health services can offer care-experienced young people and carers when they present in need of evidence-based support and intervention.
REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 2
REC reference
25/NS/0057
Date of REC Opinion
22 Jul 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion