Gavin Davidson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3937001 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gavin Davidson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gavin |
| FAMILY NAME | Davidson |
| SIGNATURE | DAVIDSON G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen's University Belfast |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6003-0170 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 56 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 89 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 56 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
How trauma-informed are we? A comparative framework analysis of early intervention service guidelines for psychosis and trauma-informed principles
Background This study assessed the extent to which early intervention guidelines for psychosis align with trauma-informed care principles and identifies gaps in integration.Methods Clinical guidelines were sourced through literature reviews and principles of trauma-informed care were identified from previous literature. Using a deductive approach to framework analysis, four overarching themes and sub-themes were developed from existing guidelines…
Restraint in health and social care settings
The use of restraint in health and social care settings, particularly for individuals who lack capacity, remains a complex and contentious legal and ethical issue. Restraint encompasses a range of interventions, including but not limited to physical, chemical, mechanical, and psychological methods, each requiring stringent safeguards to prevent misuse and ensure compliance with human rights standards. The phased implementation of the Mental Capac…
Best Interests decision-making processes in learning disability services in Northern Ireland
Online mental health peer support use among young people in Northern Ireland and China
Online mental health peer support is a developing approach which appeals to young people and also contributes to central challenges and possible opportunities for social work practice. This quantitative study explored the use of online peer support and youth mental well-being in Northern Ireland and China and examined potential factors associated with the selection of online peer support. The findings revealed a country-specific disparity in the …
Identifying Researchers’ and Professionals’ Priorities for Interventions and Outcomes with Families with Parental Mental Illness
Children in families where a parent has a mental illness (FaPMI) have increased risk for a range of negative outcomes. Despite increasing recognition of the need for support for these families, there is still little consensus regarding the goals and outcomes services should work towards. This paper reports on a cross-sectional online survey, analysed using template analysis, exploring the perspectives of an international sample of academic (n = 3…
Factors Associated With Adult Mental Health and Children's Social Care Professionals' Family‐Focused Practice When Parents Have Mental Illness
While family focused practice can improve outcomes for families affected by parental mental illness, globally there is limited understanding regarding associated factors and enablers. This mixed methods study aimed to identify associated factors and enablers of family focused practice. A range of adult mental health and children's social care professionals in Northern Ireland completed the Family Focused Mental Health Practice Questionnaire (n = …
Parental Mental Ill‐Health
Background Families in which a parent experiences mental ill‐health often face complex and evolving challenges, with individual family members’ needs impacting one another across generations. Accessing appropriate support frequently requires the navigation of multiple services and systems, which can be overwhelming for both families and professionals, potentially leading to barriers in care. To address the challenges inherent with navigating comp…
Personality disorder, mental capacity and compulsory intervention
In Northern Ireland, the current main legal framework for compulsory intervention is the Mental Health (Northern Ireland) Order 1986. It is a traditional mental health law which enables detention in hospital if mental disorder and risk criteria are met. However, under Article 3(2), it states that people should not be detained "by reason only of personality disorder". There has been a process of law reform in Northern Ireland to create a non-discr…
A social prescribing model for tackling the health and social inequalities of people living with severe mental illness
Codesigned and community-based participatory interventions may be crucial in tackling the health and social inequalities experienced by people with severe mental illness. However, given the complexity of such interventions, the social prescribing model that we describe in this paper, requires considerable implementation data prior to a full trial
Typology of online mental health peer support for young people
Exploring past research to move forward
Introduction: As parental mental illness is a global public health concern, rigorous qualitative research is central to understanding families' experiences, needs and outcomes to inform optimal service provision in adult mental health and children's social services. Methods: The current review identified, appraised and synthesized international qualitative research exploring Families and Parent Mental Illness (FaPMI) research to determine the foc…
The mental health needs of social work students
It is important to consider the mental health of social work students to promote their wellbeing and to ensure they are prepared for the potential stressors of practice. This cross-sectional survey of social work students (n = 240), the first of its kind on the island of Ireland, provides findings on mental health and a range of associated issues which can help to improve student welfare; the content of social work courses; social work practice; …
Social support and trauma experiences of imprisoned men in Northern Ireland
BACKGROUND: Social Support has multiple benefits for health and mental wellbeing. Its existence, and the extent to which it can be beneficial, is dependent upon the context in which it is provided, and the recipients' view of it. Social support has long been established as a 'buffer' to the negative impact of stressful life experiences. Trauma can negatively impact upon social support, reducing the extent of social networks and ability of some tr…
Comparing mental health and mental capacity law data across borders
The island of Ireland is partitioned into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In both jurisdictions, there have been important developments in mental health and mental capacity law, and associated policies and services. This includes an emphasis on developing more comprehensive approaches to collecting data on outcomes and so there is an opportunity to align these processes to enable comparison and shared learning across the border. Thi…
Parental physical activity, parental mental health, children’s physical activity, and children’s mental health
These findings suggest that including support for parental physical activity and children's physical activity should be a routine component of family focused mental health interventions. It is important to acknowledge that there may be additional barriers to engaging in physical activity for families where a parent is experiencing mental health problems, and these should also be explored and addressed
Identifying core measures to be used in mental health research with care experienced young people
What can we learn about mental health from 10,933 patient lived experiences using a novel quantitative-qualitative network analysis
Objective: The study aims to build a comprehensive network structure of psychopathology based on patient narratives by combining the merits of both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. Research methods: The study web-scraped data from 10,933 people who disclosed a prior DSM/ICD11 diagnosed mental illness when discussing their lived experiences of mental ill health. The study then used Python 3 and its associated libraries to run n…
Behind closed doors
Increasingly people in prison are sharing cells but little is known about how cell-sharing may influence wellbeing. This research explores this issue using a random stratified survey of 569 imprisoned adult men in Northern Ireland. The findings reveal a relationship between cell-sharing and wellbeing but indicate that cellmate relationships may be more important than cell type in influencing wellbeing. Depending on the nature of cellmate relation…
Legal capacity, developmental capacity, and impaired mental capacity in children under 16
When people of any age, despite all possible support being provided, are unable to make a necessary decision, then it is important to have a legal framework which promotes and protects their rights. There is ongoing debate about how this can be achieved, in a non-discriminatory way, for adults but it is also an important consideration for children and young people. In Northern Ireland, the Mental Capacity Act (Northern Ireland) 2016, when fully i…
‘Lifts your spirits, lifts your mind’
INTRODUCTION: Mental health problems are a considerable public health issue and spending time in nature has been promoted as a way to access a range of psychological benefits leading to the development of nature-based interventions for people with severe and enduring mental health problems. Less, however, is understood about the potential benefits and efficacy of day-to-day routine access to outdoor green and blue spaces for mental health service…
Inequalities and mental health during the Coronavirus pandemic in the UK
The pandemic is taking a long-term toll on the nations' mental health which will continue to have impacts for years to come. It is therefore crucial to learn the vital lessons learned from this pandemic. Specific as well as whole-government policies need to respond to this, address inequalities and the different needs across the life-course and across society, and take a holistic approach to mental health improvement across the UK
Supporting Service Recipients to Navigate Complex Service Systems
This scoping review aimed to identify potential factors from across eight disciplines’ approaches to complexity that could be positively applied to supporting services users to navigate health and social care. The illustrative example of families where a parent has mental health challenges is used as those families often have a wide range of complex needs both for the parent/s and children. These complexities can result in the involvement of mult…
An agenda for future research regarding the mental health of young people with care experience
Young people who are currently or were previously in state care have consistently been found to have much higher rates of mental health and neurodevelopmental difficulties than the general youth population. While a number of high-quality reviews highlight what research has been undertaken in relation to the mental health of young people with care experience and the gaps in our knowledge and understanding, there is, until now, no consensus, so far…
Screening children with a history of maltreatment for post‐traumatic stress disorder in frontline social care organizations
The use of standardized screening tools to identify trauma exposure and associated symptoms is commonly recommended as a key component in the development of trauma informed services and is seen as integral to facilitating access to evidence‐based therapies. However, there is limited evidence in the UK about the factors influencing the adoption of such tools into routine practice in children's social care. This paper presents the findings from a p…
The mental health experiences of ethnic minorities in the UK during the Coronavirus pandemic
Background Worldwide, the Coronavirus pandemic has had a major impact on people's health, lives, and livelihoods. However, this impact has not been felt equally across various population groups. People from ethnic minority backgrounds in the UK have been more adversely affected by the pandemic, especially in terms of their physical health. Their mental health, on the other hand, has received less attention. This study aimed to explore the mental …
Untangling child welfare inequalities and the ‘Inverse Intervention Law’ in England
Cuts both ways
Child Welfare as Justice
This theoretical paper addresses fundamental questions raised by a four-nation comparison of child welfare interventions in the UK, the Child Welfare Inequalities Project, which has highlighted differences between and within countries. The project analysed administrative data to examine the relationship between deprivation and state intervention. This project builds on research by Coventry University which established both a social gradient in ch…
An Examination of the Use of Coercion by Assertive Outreach and Community Mental Health Teams in Northern Ireland
In mental health services over recent decades, the positive move away from hospital-based care to community-based services has entailed that people with higher levels of need are being supported by community mental health services. This paper begins by reviewing the literature on coercion in the field of community-based mental health care and treatment. It is argued that the lack of a critical understanding of the concept and how it is used by pr…
A Four-Nation Comparison of Kinship Care in the UK
The practice of extended family and friends helping to care for children when their parents are unable to is an enduring tradition in many cultures. Kinship care provides the largest proportion of out of home care in Western society but many of these carers experience poverty and deprivation, and do not receive comparable levels of support, financial or professional, to other placement types. This study provides UK evidence for the relationship b…
Stripping the Wallpaper of Practice
The relationship between deprivation and health and educational inequalities has been well evidenced in the literature. Recent UK research has now established a similar social gradient in child welfare interventions (Bywaters et al. 2018) with children living in the most deprived areas in the UK facing a much higher chance of being placed on the child protection register or in out-of-home care. There is an emerging narrative that poverty has beco…
Risk, Recovery and Capacity
Mental health social workers have a central role in providing support to people with mental health problems and in the use of coercion aimed at dealing with risk. Mental health services have traditionally focused on monitoring symptoms and ascertaining the risks people may present to themselves or others. This well-intentioned but negative focus on deficits has contributed to stigma, discrimination, and exclusion experienced by service users. Eme…
Raising the profile of care leavers with mental health and/or intellectual disabilities
Understanding out of Home Care Rates in Northern Ireland
Research exploring inequalities in UK child welfare interventions has produced counter-intuitive findings with respect to Northern Ireland (NI). Despite experiencing the highest levels of deprivation, NI also displays the lowest rates of children in care of all the UK nations. With reference to wider evidence in the field of child welfare inequalities, this article details the findings of two exploratory mixed methods case studies, located within…
Attaining Theoretical Coherence Within Relationship-Based Practice in Child and Family Social Work
Social work practice has an essential, yet ambiguous, relationship with theory. This state of affairs is currently evident in the range of contemporary relationship-based practice (RBP) models being applied within Child and Family Social Work. This article argues that there is an urgent need for a theoretically coherent conceptualisation of these models to enable social work practitioners to embrace their common precepts and so enable more effect…
An evaluation of mental health service provision in Northern Ireland
Although Northern Ireland has high levels of mental health problems, there has been a relative lack of systematic research on mental health services that can provide an evidence base for legal, policy, and service developments. This article aims to provide a review of the central issues relating to mental health service provision in Northern Ireland, and to gather the perceptions of different stakeholders of these services. The study utilised in-…
An Audit of Assessment and Reporting by Approved Social Workers (ASWs)
This paper examines the routine practice of Approved Social Workers (ASWs) in adult mental health services in Northern Ireland. It begins with a review of existing literature on the ASW role before describing how a retrospective audit, using a mixed methods approach, was used to collect data on eighty-four assessments carried out to determine whether compulsory admission to hospital was needed. Respondents were also asked to consider how such ass…
An agenda for future research regarding the mental health of young people with care experience
Young people who are currently or were previously in state care have consistently been found to have much higher rates of mental health and neurodevelopmental difficulties than the general youth population. While a number of high-quality reviews highlight what research has been undertaken in relation to the mental health of young people with care experience and the gaps in our knowledge and understanding, there is, until now, no consensus, so far…
Using Adverse Childhood Experience Scores to Better Understand the Needs of Young Carers
We report the results of research into the experiences of young carers in Barnardo’s Young Carers and Action for Children Young Carers projects. The study involved in-depth interviews with young carers, with the aim of better understanding, from their perspective, the impact of caring on their lives. We employed the ten-item Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire in secondary analysis of the data. Results reveal that numbers of adverse child…
Coercion in the Community
Increasingly, mental health social workers in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the world are employing coercive interventions with clients. This paper explores this trend in the context of community-based settings, using national and international research literature on this subject. It begins with a discussion about the complex, contested nature of ideas on coercion. The authors then explore debates about how coercion is perceived and applied…
Getting our voice heard
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present an examination of the development of adult safeguarding policy from the perspectives of both policymakers and those who have sought to influence policy, to empower individuals with a learning disability to have a say in how policies, that influence their life and impact their right to independence, are developed. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on a project which was led by a UK-wide…
Service users' experiences and views of support for decision‐making
This article presents the findings from a qualitative, participatory research project which explored how people with intellectual disabilities and/or mental health problems have, or have not been, supported to make their own decisions. The aim of the research is to help inform how supported decision-making, as required by Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, can be effectively operationalised. The project pr…
Young Carers in Northern Ireland
This paper reports findings from a qualitative study undertaken with twenty-two young carers across Northern Ireland aged between eight and eighteen. It focuses on their experiences as informal care-givers in households where at least one family member was living with an illness and/or disability. While much has been written about the quantifiable aspects of informal care including the number of hours spent caring and the physical nature of carin…
Living with Life-Limiting Illness
Lung cancer is common in males as well as females and is one of the most common causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide. To gain an in-depth understanding of the ‘pedagogy of suffering’ (Frank, 1995, p. 145), the lived experiences of twelve adult patients in Northern Ireland diagnosed with advanced lung cancer were captured during two qualitative interviews with each patient (one month apart), which were audio recorded. This article outlines an…
An Examination of the Use of Coercion by Assertive Outreach and Community Mental Health Teams in Northern Ireland
In mental health services over recent decades, the positive move away from hospital-based care to community-based services has entailed that people with higher levels of need are being supported by community mental health services. This paper begins by reviewing the literature on coercion in the field of community-based mental health care and treatment. It is argued that the lack of a critical understanding of the concept and how it is used by pr…
Coercion in the Community
Increasingly, mental health social workers in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the world are employing coercive interventions with clients. This paper explores this trend in the context of community-based settings, using national and international research literature on this subject. It begins with a discussion about the complex, contested nature of ideas on coercion. The authors then explore debates about how coercion is perceived and applied…
An Audit of Assessment and Reporting by Approved Social Workers (ASWs)
This paper examines the routine practice of Approved Social Workers (ASWs) in adult mental health services in Northern Ireland. It begins with a review of existing literature on the ASW role before describing how a retrospective audit, using a mixed methods approach, was used to collect data on eighty-four assessments carried out to determine whether compulsory admission to hospital was needed. Respondents were also asked to consider how such ass…
Motivators and deterrents of bicycling
Sexuality and Dementia
This article explores the current law, policy and practice issues relevant to sexuality and dementia, particularly in care home settings. These issues include: the assessment of the sexual needs of people with dementia; how decision-making capacity about sex is considered and supported; the rights-based issues for service users and carers; how sexual relationships within care homes may be facilitated; and some of the complexities in practice. It …
Risk, Recovery and Capacity
Mental health social workers have a central role in providing support to people with mental health problems and in the use of coercion aimed at dealing with risk. Mental health services have traditionally focused on monitoring symptoms and ascertaining the risks people may present to themselves or others. This well-intentioned but negative focus on deficits has contributed to stigma, discrimination, and exclusion experienced by service users. Eme…
Child Welfare as Justice
This theoretical paper addresses fundamental questions raised by a four-nation comparison of child welfare interventions in the UK, the Child Welfare Inequalities Project, which has highlighted differences between and within countries. The project analysed administrative data to examine the relationship between deprivation and state intervention. This project builds on research by Coventry University which established both a social gradient in ch…
A Four-Nation Comparison of Kinship Care in the UK
The practice of extended family and friends helping to care for children when their parents are unable to is an enduring tradition in many cultures. Kinship care provides the largest proportion of out of home care in Western society but many of these carers experience poverty and deprivation, and do not receive comparable levels of support, financial or professional, to other placement types. This study provides UK evidence for the relationship b…
An evaluation of mental health service provision in Northern Ireland
Although Northern Ireland has high levels of mental health problems, there has been a relative lack of systematic research on mental health services that can provide an evidence base for legal, policy, and service developments. This article aims to provide a review of the central issues relating to mental health service provision in Northern Ireland, and to gather the perceptions of different stakeholders of these services. The study utilised in-…
Living with Life-Limiting Illness
Lung cancer is common in males as well as females and is one of the most common causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide. To gain an in-depth understanding of the ‘pedagogy of suffering’ (Frank, 1995, p. 145), the lived experiences of twelve adult patients in Northern Ireland diagnosed with advanced lung cancer were captured during two qualitative interviews with each patient (one month apart), which were audio recorded. This article outlines an…
Using Adverse Childhood Experience Scores to Better Understand the Needs of Young Carers
We report the results of research into the experiences of young carers in Barnardo’s Young Carers and Action for Children Young Carers projects. The study involved in-depth interviews with young carers, with the aim of better understanding, from their perspective, the impact of caring on their lives. We employed the ten-item Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire in secondary analysis of the data. Results reveal that numbers of adverse child…
Stripping the Wallpaper of Practice
The relationship between deprivation and health and educational inequalities has been well evidenced in the literature. Recent UK research has now established a similar social gradient in child welfare interventions (Bywaters et al. 2018) with children living in the most deprived areas in the UK facing a much higher chance of being placed on the child protection register or in out-of-home care. There is an emerging narrative that poverty has beco…
Young Carers in Northern Ireland
This paper reports findings from a qualitative study undertaken with twenty-two young carers across Northern Ireland aged between eight and eighteen. It focuses on their experiences as informal care-givers in households where at least one family member was living with an illness and/or disability. While much has been written about the quantifiable aspects of informal care including the number of hours spent caring and the physical nature of carin…
Key components of supporting and assessing decision making ability
“It's about how much we can do, and not how little we can get away with”
An exercise intervention for people with serious mental illness
BACKGROUND: People with severe mental illness (SMI) often have poorer physical health than the general population. A coproduced physical activity intervention to improve physical activity for people with SMI in Northern Ireland was evaluated by co-researchers (researchers with lived experience of SMI) and academic researchers using a new approach to participatory data analysis called participatory theme elicitation (PTE). OBJECTIVE: Co-researcher…
Response to Commentary on ‘Attaining Theoretical Coherence within Relationship-Based Practice in Child and Family Social Work
We welcome the opportunity to respond this commentary on our article. As we read it, there seem to be three main points, and we will respond briefly to each in turn. 1. The ‘hybrid’ comment regarding the combined use of systemic and psychodynamic concepts is disputed. The bulk of the commentary seems to present a long argument to dispute our comment that Hingley-Jones and Ruch (2016) are adopting a ‘hybrid’ combination of systemic theory for unde…
Service users' experiences and views of support for decision‐making
This article presents the findings from a qualitative, participatory research project which explored how people with intellectual disabilities and/or mental health problems have, or have not been, supported to make their own decisions. The aim of the research is to help inform how supported decision-making, as required by Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, can be effectively operationalised. The project pr…
Untangling child welfare inequalities and the ‘Inverse Intervention Law’ in England
Cuts both ways
Attaining Theoretical Coherence Within Relationship-Based Practice in Child and Family Social Work
Social work practice has an essential, yet ambiguous, relationship with theory. This state of affairs is currently evident in the range of contemporary relationship-based practice (RBP) models being applied within Child and Family Social Work. This article argues that there is an urgent need for a theoretically coherent conceptualisation of these models to enable social work practitioners to embrace their common precepts and so enable more effect…
Differing knowledges
Much has been written about service user involvement in social work education with the literature recognizing the value of this particular type of experiential knowledge in helping students understand key competences and concepts. There is also extensive literature highlighting the role of simulation in assisting social work students to develop key insights in regard to skills and knowledge through role-plays. Using a Cross-Over design, this pape…
Covid-19 and Families With Parental Mental Illness
The COVID-19 emergency has affected us all, but not equally. Families where parents have mental illness (PMI) are potentially at increased risk, but little is known about how they or their support services managed under lockdown/restrictions. We harnessed our existing partnerships with adult and child mental health services in the Republic of Ireland (RoI) and Northern Ireland (NI) to investigate the qualitative experiences of service users and f…
An Exploratory Survey of Mental Health Social Work in Europe
This article reports on an exploratory study comparing mental health social work (MHSW) in Europe. There has been very limited previous research comparing approaches to MHSW in Europe and so the aim of the study was to develop a better understanding of the similarities and differences between and, where relevant, within countries (referred to as jurisdictions). An online survey was distributed mainly through existing European networks and social …
Getting our voice heard
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present an examination of the development of adult safeguarding policy from the perspectives of both policymakers and those who have sought to influence policy, to empower individuals with a learning disability to have a say in how policies, that influence their life and impact their right to independence, are developed. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on a project which was led by a UK-wide…
Psychology (37 works) · Mental health (33 works) · Political science (29 works) · Sociology (29 works) · Medicine (28 works) · Psychiatry (25 works) · Nursing (15 works) · Psychological intervention (15 works) · Public relations (15 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (13 works)