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I've spent a good part of the last two years writing articles for the Community Care site Inform. Each article is approximately 7-8000 words, and they can all be accessed by subscribers to the site at: http://www.ccinform.co.uk/Home/Default.aspx
They are as follows:
(2009) A Guide to Cultural Competence in Health and Social Care Practice
(2011) A Research Review on Emotional Abuse.
(2010-2011) A series of Guides on the impact of emotional and psychological abuse, exploring the adverse consequences of abuse on differing stages of development:
- Guide I Foetal and 1st Year
- Guide II 2nd-4th year
- Guide III 5th-11th year
- Guide IV 12 15 years old
- Guide V 16-19 years old
That 16-19 year-old group was quite challenging, and my research led me into a subject area that I had never considered before: the emotional and psychological impact of youth unemployment. This impact can be catastrophic for some young people. I tell the true story of Matt, a 17-year-old lad, who was acting bizarrely and self-destructively in the college he attended. When his tutor enquired, Matt told him that he just didn’t care any more, he just wanted to die. The tutor asked him why? Matt told him he couldn’t get a job….any kind of job. H had tried over many months to find work, and he had given up. It sounds very extreme, but only from the perspective of those of us who haven’t experienced long term unemployment. There are six young people chasing every available job; repetitive failure therefore, is the norm for most of them.
I don’t really believe that politicians or the public realise what’s happening out there. They know all about the unprecedented levels of youth unemployment, but they don’t know anything about its potentially disastrous emotional and psychological consequences. We may all inherit the legacy of this scandal in various ways.
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