Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- Introduction
- One Parental mental illness and young caring: research and prevalence
- Two The effects of mental illness on parents and relationships with their children
- Three Children’s experiences of caring for parents with severe and enduring mental illness
- Four The role and responsibilities of professionals: services and support for young carers and parents with mental illness
- Five Towards a systemic approach: ways forward and conclusions
- Bibliography
- Appendix A Identifying parents with mental ill health and young carers in research procedures: a methodological discussion
- Appendix B Young carers and parents with severe mental illness: a chronology and guide to relevant law and policy
- Index
- Also available from The Policy Press
Appendix A - Identifying parents with mental ill health and young carers in research procedures: a methodological discussion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- Introduction
- One Parental mental illness and young caring: research and prevalence
- Two The effects of mental illness on parents and relationships with their children
- Three Children’s experiences of caring for parents with severe and enduring mental illness
- Four The role and responsibilities of professionals: services and support for young carers and parents with mental illness
- Five Towards a systemic approach: ways forward and conclusions
- Bibliography
- Appendix A Identifying parents with mental ill health and young carers in research procedures: a methodological discussion
- Appendix B Young carers and parents with severe mental illness: a chronology and guide to relevant law and policy
- Index
- Also available from The Policy Press
Summary
A number of small-scale studies in the late 1980s and early 1990s pointed to young caring as a growing social issue, rather than a private one. Although later research tried to estimate the extent of the problem using quantitative research methods, this often proved problematic in identifying and gaining access to large numbers of ‘vulnerable’ respondents.
Increasingly, researchers adopted qualitative methods aimed at smaller numbers of young carers in order to gain further insight into hitherto neglected areas of study and to provide “information to guide future developments” (Page, 1988, p 32). These qualitative approaches complemented the conclusions of some of the earliest studies on young carers where an emphasis on ‘the numbers game’ (O’Neill, 1988) was seen as less useful than looking at particular cases in some depth:
One has to look at the size of the problem in the context of the severity of impacts on individuals …. It is arguably more important to identify each individual case than might be true for the [survey] as a whole. (O’Neill, 1988, p 3)
Adopting qualitative methods of investigation proved useful for our purposes, not just because such methods have been tried and tested in the field over some considerable time, but also because qualitative approaches place more emphasis on context and process rather than a reliance on preordained tools or instruments. In this case, questionnaire surveys would have been unlikely to uncover the kind of information needed to guide our further understanding of the nature of young caring in the context of parental mental ill health. Furthermore, qualitative approaches give priority to “the perspectives of those being studied rather than the prior concerns of the researcher” (Bryman, 1989, p 135).
Our intention was to conduct in-depth semi-structured individual interviews with three respondent groups:
• young carers;
• co-resident relative(s) with a severe and enduring mental health problem;
• key welfare professionals in contact with these families.
We made the decision to approach children (and their families), not with questionnaires or structured research instruments, but with open-ended questions using semi-structured interview techniques (what Bryman refers to as ‘type 3’ interview-based studies). Here, the interviewer “uses a schedule but recognises that departures will occur if interesting themes emerge from what respondents say and in order to get their version of things” (Bryman, 1989, p 149).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Children Caring for Parents with Mental IllnessPerspectives of Young Carers, Parents and Professionals, pp. 165 - 174Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2003