Claire Mccartan
Biographic Data
| ID | 3936999 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Claire Mccartan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Claire |
| FAMILY NAME | Mccartan |
| SIGNATURE | MCCARTAN C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen's University Belfast |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2341-9715 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 61 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
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…
Attitudes of U.S. Adults Towards Coercive Control as a Function of Victim and Perpetrator Gender and Respondent Sexual Orientation
Intimate partner violence research has overwhelmingly focused on women victims of men perpetrators, yet men and LGBTQ + individuals similarly remain at risk of victimisation. There is limited evidence regarding what factors influence attitudes toward coercive control. The current study explored the associations of victim and perpetrator gender, victim-perpetrator sexual orientation, and respondent sexual orientation with attitudes toward coercive…
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; …
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
A Common Purpose? Social Work Students’ Social Justice Related Views in Finland and the island of Ireland
Exploring social work students’ views to understand how equipped they are to pursue the social justice mission of the profession should be of central academic and practical interest. There are, however, surprisingly few empirical studies focussing on social work students’ views on social justice-related issues from a comparative viewpoint. Such knowledge is thought to be of a wider international interest from a number of perspectives, including s…
‘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…
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…
The Role of Social Work Education in Relation to Empathy and Self-Reported Resilience
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of people’s lives worldwide, including the work of social workers and the education of social work students. Field placements are a significant part of social work education, but during the pandemic they were cut short and most teachings moved online. The current mixed methods study examined the effects of social work education on social work students’ empathy and resilience during the COVID-19 pande…
Social work students on the island of Ireland
Understanding the characteristics, motivations, and experiences of student social workers is important to inform their professional education and support needs. To date, there has been relatively little research about social work students in Ireland, both North and South. This study reports on an all-Ireland survey of students beginning their social work course in Autumn 2018 in the six Universities delivering social work education. It describes …
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…
Child welfare inequalities in the four nations of the UK
Comparative international data on patterns of inequality in child welfare interventions, for example, the proportion of children about whom there are substantiated child protection concerns or who are in out-of-home care, are far less developed than data about inequalities in health. Few countries collect reliable, comprehensive information and definitions, methods of data collection and analysis are rarely consistent. The four UK countries (Engl…
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…
Untangling child welfare inequalities and the ‘Inverse Intervention Law’ in England
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…
Looking After Children in the UK—Convergence or Divergence
Comparative child welfare administrative data from each of the four jurisdictions of the UK (Scotland, England, Northern Ireland (NI) and Wales) were analysed over a ten-year period to examine rates and patterns of public care. Scotland followed by Wales has the highest rates of children in out-of-home care, followed by England and NI with similar lower proportions. Despite strong links between deprivation and higher chances of becoming looked af…
Trends in Child Protection Across the UK
Although numerous international studies point to large variations in child welfare interventions, comparative analysis has tended to focus either solely on England or the UK as a whole, discounting differences across the four UK countries. This paper compares trends in national statistics relating to the operation of child protection systems across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland between 2004/05 and 2013/14. Despite a number of legi…
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…
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…
PP42 The Influence of Parental Monitoring and School Environment on Adolescent Alcohol Use
Background The importance of social determinants of adolescent health behaviour such as alcohol use has stimulated interest in family and school environments that may act as risk or protective factors. This study looked at characteristics of schools and parents, and how they influence young people’s alcohol use. Methods The Belfast Youth Development Study began in 2000. It surveyed secondary school children annually for five years of compulsory s…
Prevalence of self-harm and help-seeking behaviours among young people in Northern Ireland
Background Compared to other parts of the British Isles, until recently there has been little information on rates of self-harm in Northern Ireland. Objectives To investigate the rates of self-harming among adolescents, help seeking behaviour among self-harmers, and risk factors associated with these behaviours in Northern Ireland. Design Two large scale surveys based on the Northern Ireland adolescent population were undertaken that contained qu…
Damaged youth
As Northern Ireland transitions to a post‐conflict society the nature of violent victimization and its influence on adolescents following the “Troubles” becomes an even more important area of interest. Adolescents are particularly at risk of victimization and associated social, emotional, and psychological health problems. In this analysis of the fifth year of the Belfast Youth Development Study (BYDS), the prevalence and implications of exposure…
Untangling child welfare inequalities and the ‘Inverse Intervention Law’ in England
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…
Trends in Child Protection Across the UK
Although numerous international studies point to large variations in child welfare interventions, comparative analysis has tended to focus either solely on England or the UK as a whole, discounting differences across the four UK countries. This paper compares trends in national statistics relating to the operation of child protection systems across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland between 2004/05 and 2013/14. Despite a number of legi…
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…
Looking After Children in the UK—Convergence or Divergence
Comparative child welfare administrative data from each of the four jurisdictions of the UK (Scotland, England, Northern Ireland (NI) and Wales) were analysed over a ten-year period to examine rates and patterns of public care. Scotland followed by Wales has the highest rates of children in out-of-home care, followed by England and NI with similar lower proportions. Despite strong links between deprivation and higher chances of becoming looked af…
Damaged youth
As Northern Ireland transitions to a post‐conflict society the nature of violent victimization and its influence on adolescents following the “Troubles” becomes an even more important area of interest. Adolescents are particularly at risk of victimization and associated social, emotional, and psychological health problems. In this analysis of the fifth year of the Belfast Youth Development Study (BYDS), the prevalence and implications of exposure…
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…
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…
The Role of Social Work Education in Relation to Empathy and Self-Reported Resilience
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of people’s lives worldwide, including the work of social workers and the education of social work students. Field placements are a significant part of social work education, but during the pandemic they were cut short and most teachings moved online. The current mixed methods study examined the effects of social work education on social work students’ empathy and resilience during the COVID-19 pande…
Damaged youth
As Northern Ireland transitions to a post‐conflict society the nature of violent victimization and its influence on adolescents following the “Troubles” becomes an even more important area of interest. Adolescents are particularly at risk of victimization and associated social, emotional, and psychological health problems. In this analysis of the fifth year of the Belfast Youth Development Study (BYDS), the prevalence and implications of exposure…
Prevalence of self-harm and help-seeking behaviours among young people in Northern Ireland
Background Compared to other parts of the British Isles, until recently there has been little information on rates of self-harm in Northern Ireland. Objectives To investigate the rates of self-harming among adolescents, help seeking behaviour among self-harmers, and risk factors associated with these behaviours in Northern Ireland. Design Two large scale surveys based on the Northern Ireland adolescent population were undertaken that contained qu…
PP42 The Influence of Parental Monitoring and School Environment on Adolescent Alcohol Use
Background The importance of social determinants of adolescent health behaviour such as alcohol use has stimulated interest in family and school environments that may act as risk or protective factors. This study looked at characteristics of schools and parents, and how they influence young people’s alcohol use. Methods The Belfast Youth Development Study began in 2000. It surveyed secondary school children annually for five years of compulsory s…
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…
Looking After Children in the UK—Convergence or Divergence
Comparative child welfare administrative data from each of the four jurisdictions of the UK (Scotland, England, Northern Ireland (NI) and Wales) were analysed over a ten-year period to examine rates and patterns of public care. Scotland followed by Wales has the highest rates of children in out-of-home care, followed by England and NI with similar lower proportions. Despite strong links between deprivation and higher chances of becoming looked af…
Trends in Child Protection Across the UK
Although numerous international studies point to large variations in child welfare interventions, comparative analysis has tended to focus either solely on England or the UK as a whole, discounting differences across the four UK countries. This paper compares trends in national statistics relating to the operation of child protection systems across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland between 2004/05 and 2013/14. Despite a number of legi…
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…
Child welfare inequalities in the four nations of the UK
Comparative international data on patterns of inequality in child welfare interventions, for example, the proportion of children about whom there are substantiated child protection concerns or who are in out-of-home care, are far less developed than data about inequalities in health. Few countries collect reliable, comprehensive information and definitions, methods of data collection and analysis are rarely consistent. The four UK countries (Engl…
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…
Untangling child welfare inequalities and the ‘Inverse Intervention Law’ in England
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…
Social work students on the island of Ireland
Understanding the characteristics, motivations, and experiences of student social workers is important to inform their professional education and support needs. To date, there has been relatively little research about social work students in Ireland, both North and South. This study reports on an all-Ireland survey of students beginning their social work course in Autumn 2018 in the six Universities delivering social work education. It describes …
‘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…
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…
The Role of Social Work Education in Relation to Empathy and Self-Reported Resilience
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of people’s lives worldwide, including the work of social workers and the education of social work students. Field placements are a significant part of social work education, but during the pandemic they were cut short and most teachings moved online. The current mixed methods study examined the effects of social work education on social work students’ empathy and resilience during the COVID-19 pande…
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; …
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
A Common Purpose? Social Work Students’ Social Justice Related Views in Finland and the island of Ireland
Exploring social work students’ views to understand how equipped they are to pursue the social justice mission of the profession should be of central academic and practical interest. There are, however, surprisingly few empirical studies focussing on social work students’ views on social justice-related issues from a comparative viewpoint. Such knowledge is thought to be of a wider international interest from a number of perspectives, including s…
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…
Attitudes of U.S. Adults Towards Coercive Control as a Function of Victim and Perpetrator Gender and Respondent Sexual Orientation
Intimate partner violence research has overwhelmingly focused on women victims of men perpetrators, yet men and LGBTQ + individuals similarly remain at risk of victimisation. There is limited evidence regarding what factors influence attitudes toward coercive control. The current study explored the associations of victim and perpetrator gender, victim-perpetrator sexual orientation, and respondent sexual orientation with attitudes toward coercive…
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…
Psychology (20 works) · Medicine (15 works) · Political science (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Psychiatry (11 works) · Mental health (10 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Psychological intervention (8 works) · Welfare (8 works)