With gap year activities, including expeditions, for young people worth an estimated £2 billion annually, the subject of transfer (or ensuring that outcomes offer positive benefits to participants' general lives) from these experiences is an important topic in outdoor education. This paper argues that many of the claims for a positive…

As mental health services for young people develop, the need for evaluation and audit to justify expenditure follows suit. Counselling is being provided in more and more schools and community settings across the country, and there is an increasing focus on evidence-based funding. Practice-based evidence has an important role to play in fulfilling…

The riots in English cities in August 2011 have brought debates on behaviour of young people into sharper focus. Criticism of softly-softly approaches and the lack of power for head teachers to discipline is a reoccurring theme within the debate on behaviour in schools. Regaining adult authority is also reflected in the tenor of the government's…

This case study records the voices of a group of young people from an isolated rural community as they reflect on their experiences of secondary school. The study was driven by a desire to develop an understanding of the human connections young people make (or not) at school, to help develop understandings of how schools can be better places for…

This paper reports the findings of a small-scale qualitative inquiry into risk in the lives of children and young people. Conducted over a 12-month period in Birmingham and the Black Country in the United Kingdom, the study sought to elicit perceptions of risk from the perspective of children and young people in primary and secondary school…

This paper reports findings from an exploratory study of mainly young people's verbally articulated perceptions of urban life in Glasgow, Scotland. The focus is upon areas of deprivation where territory and social capital is contested and whose meanings are possibly only partially grasped by our informants. Their personal knowledge of violence and…

This article outlines the use of Human Givens (HG) therapy with adolescents reporting poor subjective well-being. HG therapy is based on the assumption that human beings have innate needs, which, if unmet, lead to emotional distress and mental health problems. Hitherto, there has been no independently published empirical research into the efficacy…

As health professionals in an educational setting, nurses in schools occupy a unique place in the spectrum of children's services. Yet the service is often overlooked and has been described as invisible. This paper draws on findings from a study, funded by the Scottish Government's National Programme for Improving Mental Health and Well-being,…

This project explored the prevalence of self-harm by cutting in a geographically circumscribed area of the North of England, using a school-based survey. Twenty-three per cent of the young people reported they had cut themselves at least once, with no major changes evident at different age groups or with gender. There were clear differences in…

Over the past 10 years, mentoring of children and young people has become an increasingly important feature of social policy in the United Kingdom. This is evidenced in the rapid growth in the number of mentoring schemes operating in a range of educational settings. In 2006 the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation was contracted by the Department…

In 2002, the UK Government set the target of increasing participation in higher education to 50% of 18-30 year olds by 2010, with a particular focus on young people from "non-traditional backgrounds". In order to increase this participation, a range of initiatives have been introduced in an effort to encourage young people to enter post-16…

Previous case-study research has explored the efficacy of motivational interviewing (MI) as a therapeutic approach for supporting young people in schools. This article considers how MI may additionally be used as an assessment and consultation tool for ascertaining the needs of disaffected young people and identifying appropriate support…

Mentoring as a means of supporting young people perceived as having difficulties or being at risk of disaffection has become an important feature of pastoral support approaches in and around schools in recent years. The provision of support that is based upon a highly personalised relationship and founded upon principles of unconditional positive…

The impact of parental mental health difficulties on the developing child is well evidenced and documented. In this article Kate Olliver-Kneafsey, Ev Thornton and Wendy Williamson suggest that despite the difficulties young people face when parental mental illness is a feature of family life, it is not all gloom and doom, and give some important…

Twenty-five years since the onset of HIV/AIDS, young people aged 15-24 now make up half of new HIV infections. This paper advocates for comprehensive sexuality education as an effective panacea to reverse this, with teachers stepping up and embracing their role as sexuality educators. The exploration of this challenge is informed by a small-scale…