Finding job lost: youth unemployment experiences and community life.
A qualitative study

Historically, research has studied the negative relationship between unemployment and physical and psychological well-being (McKee-Ryan et al., 2005). However, the last economic-financial crisis (in EU-28: unemployment rate = 6.3%; youth unemployment rate = 14.3%; NEET [people from 15 to 34 years old “Neither in Employment nor in Education or Training”] = 16.5%) and the characteristics of the actual western societies (globalization, new technologies, migration processes) lead to consider new concepts of work and unemployment: it is no longer possible today to talk about a single psychological experience of unemployment. These changes impact on unemployed people’s identity and their way to live community life in terms of social and psychological well-being.
This study is part of a wider research whose aim is to analyze the unemployment situation in Rovereto (a small city in Northern Italy). The first quantitative study allowed identifying and clustering different types of unemployed people.
Starting from that, the aim of the study was to explore different experiences of unemployment among young unemployed people in order to understand how it is related to daily community life.
Semi-structured interviews are conducted among 30 young people (18-35 years old; 15 males and 15 females; 8 of them were NEET). Interviews were mainly focused on participants’ unemployment experiences, job-search processes, community meanings and social relations.
Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) allowed to identify main topics and relationships between them.
We expect that there are many ways to live unemployment and there are different meanings and values attributed to work. Moreover, this affects the way people live their local context in terms of social relations, sense of belonging and well-being.
Participants’ point of view allows to think about bottom-up interventions not only focused on re-employment, but also on community life in order to promote social inclusion through an ecological perspective.

Participation in and after-school Film Club over three years: A case study

The aim of this research was to examine the role of an after-school film club for students in Years 5-8, and the long-term impact the program has for students involved for several years. The stated goal of the program is to support early adolescents in the middle years (Years 5-8) transitioning from primary through to secondary school, and this research explored the impact on school engagement and other areas of socioemotional development. Background: St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School is located in Collingwood, an urban area of Melbourne, Australia. The students at the school are from diverse ethnic and demographic backgrounds, with a majority of parents born outside Australia and from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The school collaborates with an outside community organisation called Polyglot Theatre, which employs program leaders to run an extracurricular weekly film-making program. In addition to the program leaders, there are artists and filmmakers who work with the children during the after-school meetings, as well as dedicate time outside the meetings to develop the films. The Film Club participants reflect the diverse demographics of the school, and each year about 20 students are involved. Students meet weekly to explore film-making as a creative medium and gain skills in all aspects of film-making, editing and production, including performance. Design: This research involved a qualitative case study focusing on one student who has been involved in Film Club for several years. The personal meaning she ascribed to her experience and how it has impacted her experiences in the classroom and beyond school were the focus. The students’ mother, and the lead artist were interviewed to gain a deeper understanding of the student’s development through Film Club. Conclusion: The contribution offered by the present study was to explore the long-term positive impact associated with Film Club.

Finding Calm in the Storm: Utilizing Yoga as a Tool for Student Empowerment and Academic Success

Rationale. Adolescent from marginalized communities battle additional barriers (e.g. marginalization, poverty) in achieving longitudinal academic success.

Objective. To evaluate the utility of the intervention as an empowerment tool, and assess its capacity for assisting participants in achieving longitudinal academic success.

Method. Study participants will be recruited from public schools in marginalized communities located in a U.S. mid-western, largely populated, metropolitan city. In an effort to provide a more in depth understanding of the intervention, this study will utilize a mixed-methodological approach. The randomized control trial of the yoga program will have two aims: The study will take place over a consecutive five year period of school attendance. All participant data will be de-identified to ensure confidentiality. Biannually, participants will receive a set of measures to assess their perception of empowerment in relation to their participation in the yoga intervention. While a secondary analysis will be performed on academic data acquired from the school district upon culmination of each school year to assess the intervention’s capacity for assisting participants in achieving academic success. At each year end, upon conclusion of quantitative analysis, a sub-sample of the participant population will be selected to participate in qualitative interviews. Grounded theory will be utilized as the foundation for the qualitative analysis component.

Implementation of a national mental health intervention in educational communities: What do successful teams do that the rest don’t?

Over the last few years, the field of school mental health (SMH) has expanded in connection with promotional and preventive initiatives. This is because schools are community settings that provide a suitable context for solving issues related to the psychological well-being of children and adolescents.
In this regard, it is not only relevant to evaluate the effectiveness of these interventions but also to properly transfer and maintain the contexts in which they were, to avoid any discrepancies between what studies report about effective interventions and the actual event. The evidence indicates that, for an intervention to succeed and achieve the expected results, certain elements must be present in executing teams. They are a major factor in intervention success, however, they can vary in terms of technical and academic abilities. Although teams are generally regarded as cooperative; their time constraints, aims, and strategies differ.
In this context, it is important to understand that programs are implemented in educational communities by teams composed of a variety of professionals, which may affect the execution due to a lack of shared competences. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the characteristics that teams must have for interventions to achieve their expected results.
This study aimed to identify the elements that characterize local teams which implement a nationwide preventive mental health intervention in schools and achieve better results. A mixed-methods sequential explanatory design was conducted in two phases: (1) teams were characterized according to their level of achievement in the preventive intervention through latent class analysis; and (2) case studies of three teams with different implementation results were conducted by performing content analysis on interviews, observations, and documents. It was established that the more effective teams have better planning, the more they are familiar with the intervention, and more aware of their strengths and weaknesses. This team also implement culturally pertinent actions aimed at increasing knowledge about the intervention, which causes schools to experience it as part of their community, since they include the intervention in their regular dynamics. Lastly, the importance and relevance of these elements when working in educational communities is discussed.