This paper utilises qualitative and quantitative findings from the Facilitating Inclusive Education and Supporting the Transition Agenda (FIESTA) project that carried out a survey of professionals and focus groups/interviews with parents and children to understand the context of transition, inclusion and collaborative working. The paper contrasts…

Bullying remains a significant issue in the lives of many children and young people at school and can have serious negative implications for emotional health and well-being in the short and longer term. This paper reports on an impact evaluation of the effectiveness of a school counselling intervention in promoting positive change in the peer…

For too many years the phrase "after care, an after thought" summed up the lack of attention given to preparing young people in care for adult life and to the development of leaving-care and aftercare services. That stance has changed in the United Kingdom, however, and indeed has shifted positively and dramatically over the last decade. In 2010…

EPIC is an independent voluntary organisation in the Republic of Ireland that advocates for the rights of children in care and young people who have care experience. One aspect of EPIC's work is the Aftercare Advocacy and Support Service, which provides confidential advice and support to young people who are preparing to leave care, those in…

The aim of this study was to conduct a preliminary evaluation of a mental health consultation process provided to staff working in residential care settings for young people. Using a semi-structured interview approach, qualitative information was gathered from six participants about their experiences of the consultation. A thematic analysis of the…

Discourses of child development hold that the experience a child gains from being at school is crucial to the child's development and well-being. The option of home education challenges such discourse. There is little practice-related literature specific to home-educated children. This article first describes a context and then reviews aspects of…

This paper describes an action research project aimed at enhancing resilience in young people in a residential children's home. Two core areas were explored, namely: the needs of the young people as captured through a resilience framework; and the experiential and role-related issues arising from the attempts to enhance the young people's…

Ireland's second periodic report to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) presents the government's case that it is succeeding in protecting and promoting the rights of all children in Ireland. This article presents a critical discourse analysis of the government's Report to the CRC. Using a refined critical discourse…

The focus of this article is to provide a child rights analysis of the equity of educational experience afforded to young people outside mainstream schools by alternative providers. The dilemma for policy and existing practice is that alternative education supports children's right to an education as stated in Article 28 of the United Nations…

Early childhood education has increasingly been identified as a mechanism to alleviate educational disadvantage in areas of social exclusion. This study aims to add to the understanding of the nature and distribution of long-term benefits from early childhood intervention programmes and provides a detailed analysis of both the cognitive and…

An innovative crisis intervention programme was created at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Canada in order to provide emergency assessments for youth presenting with mental health crises. The current investigation presents an overview of the programme and examines the emergency staff's perception and satisfaction with it.…

Research reported in recent years highlights that many children and young people living in Northern Ireland are struggling to cope with a range of complex issues in their daily lives. The lack of accessible and appropriate professional support means that many children and young people carry these issues to school, where their struggle to cope…

In Northern Ireland, young people exist in a health environment where the experience of social disadvantage is translated into serious risks to health and personal development. The years of political conflict have tended to obscure these health problems, and it is important that the difficulties faced by young people are examined and…

Although violence in Northern Ireland has been "neither halted or prevented" (Tomasevski, 2003a, p. 7), few would deny that the scale of the conflict has been reduced. This paper argues that a vital purpose of education in Northern Ireland should be peacebuilding and the promotion of social cohesion. In particular, the paper looks at the lessons…