This paper draws on a qualitative interview-based study that explored online mental health and wellbeing interventions and services for care-experienced young people. The study involved young people ( n = 4), foster carers ( n = 8), kinship carers ( n = 2) and social care professionals ( n = 9) in Wales, UK. The paper reflects on the complexities of online communication in the space of ‘the home’. It documents the ways in which care-experienced young people’s living arrangements can restrict access to services and complicate confidentiality within portals to the virtual world, creating an environment where young people and their carers ‘wouldn’t want to talk about anything too personal’. Drawing on data generated in a study focused on services and interventions to support the mental health and wellbeing of care-experienced children and young people, the paper considers privacy, confidentiality and surveillance in the home and reflects on how associated relational practices impact on care-experienced young people. While the data discussed in this paper was generated during the Covid-19 pandemic, its findings have implications for how care-experienced young people and their carers can be supported to engage with the digital world in the future.

Understanding how different forms of supervision support good social work practice and improve outcomes for people who use services is nearly impossible without reliable and valid evaluative measures. Yet the question of how best to evaluate the quality of supervision in different contexts is a complicated and as-yet-unsolved challenge. In this study, we observed 12 social work supervisors in a simulated supervision session offering support and guidance to an actor playing the part of an inexperienced social worker facing a casework-related crisis. A team of researchers analyzed these sessions using a customized skills-based coding framework. In addition, 19 social workers completed a questionnaire about their supervision experiences as provided by the same 12 supervisors. According to the coding framework, the supervisors demonstrated relatively modest skill levels, and we found low correlations among different skills. In contrast, according to the questionnaire data, supervisors had relatively high skill levels, and we found high correlations among different skills. The findings imply that although self-report remains the simplest way to evaluate supervision quality, other approaches are possible and may provide a different perspective. However, developing a reliable independent measure of supervision quality remains a noteworthy challenge.

Identifying which approaches can effectively reduce the need for out-of-home care for children is critically important. Despite the proliferation of different interventions and approaches globally, evidence summaries on this topic are limited. This study is a scoping review using a realist framework to explore what research evidence exists about reducing the number of children and young people in care. Searches of databases and websites were used to identify studies evaluating intervention effect on at least one of the following outcomes: reduction in initial entry to care; increase in family reunification post care. Data extracted from papers included type of study, outcome, type and level of intervention, effect, mechanism and moderator, implementation issues and economic (EMMIE) considerations. Data were coded by: primary outcome; level of intervention (community, policy, organisation, family or child); and type of evidence, using the realist EMMIE framework. This is the first example of a scoping review on any topic using this framework. Evaluated interventions were grouped and analysed according to system-level mechanism. We present the spread of evidence across system-level mechanisms and an overview of how each system-level mechanism might reduce the number of children in care. Implications and gaps are identified.

This study aimed to address knowledge gaps related to the prevention and management of mental health responses among those with a condition that presents risk of severe COVID-19 infection. A scoping review that mapped English and Chinese-language studies (2019–2020) located in MEDLINE (Ovid), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PsycInfo, Sociological Abstracts, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Data, and Airiti Library was undertaken. Search terms related to COVID-19, mental health, and physical health were used and articles that included all three of these factors were extracted (n = 77). With the exception of one hospital-based pilot study, there were no intervention studies targeting mental health in those at risk of severe COVID-19 infection. Promising practices such as integrated care models that appropriately screen for mental health issues, address health determinants, and include use of digital resources were highlighted. Patient navigator programs, group online medical visits, peer support, and social prescribing may also support those with complex needs. Future policies need to address digital health access inequities and the implementation of multi-integrated health and social care. Furthermore, research is needed to comprehensively assess multi-integrated interventions that are resilient to public health crises.

The 2020 global outbreak of COVID-19 exposed and heightened threats to mental health across societies. Research has indicated that individuals with chronic physical health conditions are at high risk for suffering from severe COVID-19 illness and from the adverse consequences of public health responses to COVID-19, such as social isolation. This paper reports on the findings of a rapid realist review conducted alongside a scoping review to explore contextual factors and underlying mechanisms or drivers associated with effective mental health interventions within and across macro–meso–micro systems levels for individuals with chronic physical health conditions. This rapid realist review extracted 14 qualified studies across 11 countries and identified four key mechanisms from COVID-19 literature—trust, social connectedness, accountability, and resilience. These mechanisms are discussed in relation to contextual factors and outcomes reported in the COVID literature. Realist reviews include iterative searches to refine their program theories and context–mechanism–outcome explanations. A purposive search of pre-COVID realist reviews on the study topic was undertaken, looking for evidence of the robustness of these mechanisms. There were differences in some of the pre-COVID mechanisms due to contextual factors. Importantly, an additional mechanism—power-sharing—was highlighted in the pre-COVID literature, but absent in the COVID literature. Pre-existing realist reviews were used to identify potential substantive theories and models associated with key mechanisms. Based on the overall findings, implications are provided for mental health promotion policy, practice, and research.