Search results for ‘Author:"audrey suzanne"’ Sort:
Results 1 - 2 of 2
Health, health behaviours health promoting services for care leavers: perspectives of young people and LAC nurses
- Authors:
- MORGAN-TRIMMER Sarah, SPOONER Suzanne, AUDREY Suzanne
- Publisher:
- Cardiff University. School of Social Sciences
- Publication year:
- 2015
- Pagination:
- 5
- Place of publication:
- Cardiff
Looked after children and adults with a prior history of being looked after tend to have poorer health and social outcomes, even when compared to populations with similar socioeconomic backgrounds. To investigate how looked after children view their own health, interviews were carried out with 16 young care leavers in south Wales. Focus group were also carried out with 14 looked after children’s (LAC) nurses. Young people identified emotional well-being as a primary health concern, with most interviewees having experience of mental health problems, stress and social isolation. A healthy diet, weight were all seen to contribute to good health and excessive alcohol consumption recognised as having detrimental effect. LAC nurses found that their work priorities were usually emotional and social care issues. The also felt that the area of emotional and mental health was one which could be improved and that those working directly with looked after children, such as carers, teachers, social workers would benefit from training and support from mental health professions. Barriers to services identified by LAC nurses included residential instability, long waiting lists, difficulties in transitioning to adult mental health services and the reluctance of some young people to engage in services. (Edited publisher abstract)
It's good to talk: adolescent perspectives of an informal, peer-led intervention to reduce smoking
- Authors:
- AUDREY Suzanne, HOLLIDAY Jo, CAMPBELL Rona
- Journal article citation:
- Social Science and Medicine, 63(2), July 2006, pp.320-334.
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
Although peer education has enjoyed considerable popularity as a health promotion approach with young people, there is mixed evidence about its effectiveness. Furthermore, accounts of what young people actually do as peer educators are scarce, especially in informal settings. In this paper, we examine the activities of the young people recruited as ‘peer supporters’ for A Stop Smoking in Schools Trial (ASSIST) which involved 10,730 students at baseline in 59 secondary schools in south-east Wales and the west of England. Influential Year 8 students, nominated by their peers, were trained to intervene informally to reduce smoking levels in their year group. The ASSIST peer nomination procedure was successful in recruiting and retaining peer supporters of both genders with a wide range of abilities. Outcome data at 1-year follow-up indicate that the risk of students who were occasional or experimental smokers at baseline going on to report weekly smoking at 1-year follow-up was 18.2% lower in intervention schools. This promising result was supported by analysis of salivary cotinine. Qualitative data from the process evaluation indicate that the majority of peer supporters adopted a pragmatic approach, concentrating their attentions on friends and peers whom they felt could be persuaded not to take up smoking, rather than those they considered to be already ‘addicted’ or who were members of smoking cliques. ASSIST demonstrated that a variety of school-based peer educators, who are asked to work informally rather than under the supervision of teaching staff, will engage with the task they have been asked to undertake and can be effective in diffusing health-promotion messages. Given the serious concerns about young people's smoking behaviour, we argue that this approach is worth pursuing and could be adapted for other health promotion messages.