Managing a moral identity in debt advice conversations

Views of services users and staff on a combined money advice and psychological therapy service within IAPT

BACKGROUND

Research has indicated that having financial difficulties may increase mental health problems and prevent recovery when receiving psychological treatment. A combined approach within the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) service could help clients by tackling their financial difficulties alongside supporting their mental health.

AIMS

We aimed to explore the experiences and views of a potential combined intervention by speaking to IAPT service users who have/had experiences of money worries, as well as IAPT therapists and Citizen's Advice (CA) money advisers.

METHOD

We conducted online semi-structured interviews with 16 IAPT service users, 14 IAPT therapists/practitioners, and 6 CA money advisors. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically.

RESULTS

Themes discussed including the impact of money worries and mental health, the benefits of a combined intervention, how and when it should be introduced to clients and delivered, and how information should be shared between the services. It was felt by most participants that such an intervention would improve mental health and provide a more holistic service with a better referral pathway.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings provide a blueprint for a combined money advice and psychological therapy service within IAPT, which both service users and staff identified would be beneficial.

Poor mental health is associated with the exacerbation of personal debt problems: A study of debt advice adherence

BACKGROUND

It is known that there is an association between debt and poor mental health. However, much of the literature is observational and focuses on how debt may lead to poor mental health. Here, we are interested in how poor mental health may be associated with debt advice adherence.

AIMS

The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between mental health and debt advice adherence in individuals applying for a formal debt resolution mechanism (an Individual Voluntary Arrangement, IVA).

METHOD

Eighty-six participants completed a survey measuring mental health (MHI-5), memory for information discussed during the appointment, attitudes towards IVAs, and trust in the advisor shortly after having a debt advice appointment. Adherence to the advice (whether participants completed the IVA application) was measured 10 weeks later.

RESULTS

The study found that the sample demonstrated poor levels of mental health overall but that non-adherent participants had significantly poorer mental health than those who adhered to the advice.

CONCLUSION

These results suggest that (a) mental health needs to be considered when advising people with problem debt and (b) future research might examine if mental health support should coincide with important decision points in the debtor's journey out of debt.

Loneliness in older people and COVID-19: Applying the social identity approach to digital intervention design

The COVID-19 pandemic is worsening loneliness for many older people through the challenges it poses in engaging with their social worlds. Digital technology has been offered as a potential aid, however, many popular digital tools have not been designed to address the needs of older adults during times of limited contact. We propose that the Social Identity Model of Identity Change (SIMIC) could be a foundation for digital loneliness interventions. While SIMIC is a well-established approach for maintaining wellbeing during life transitions, it has not been rigorously applied to digital interventions. There are known challenges to integrating psychological theory in the design of digital technology to enable efficacy, technology acceptance, and continued use. The interdisciplinary field of Human Computer Interaction has a history of drawing on models originating from psychology to improve the design of digital technology and to design technologies in an appropriate manner. Drawing on key lessons from this literature, we consolidate research and design guidelines for multidisciplinary research applying psychological theory such as SIMIC to digital social interventions for loneliness.

Motherhood in Context—Life Course Interviews with Young Mothers in Contact with Child Welfare

Background: The purpose of this article is to explore how a sample of young mothers in contact with child welfare services in Norway narrate their transition to motherhood and their relation with child welfare services. Methods: The article is based on life-course interviews with the mothers, on which we have conducted a content analysis inspired by narrative theory. Results: Results show that whereas the mothers deviated from common expectations of predictability and orderliness before they became mothers, they strived to provide a “good enough” situation for their children in line with expectations in larger society ever after. Nevertheless, the complex disadvantages that the mothers said they had in several life domains concerning social networks and family support, education, working life, housing, and that were apparently already in their transition to adulthood, were likely to increase even after the mothers had decided to enter the mothering role in socially acceptable ways. Conclusions: The article concludes that child welfare services may contribute positively by acknowledging the complexity of young mothers’ living context when assessing mothering practices.

Advising without personalising: how a helpline may satisfy callers without giving medical advice beyond its remit

Callers to telephone helplines often seek advice beyond the authorisation of those staffing the service. On health helplines, this poses a problem to the call-taker. How do they manage the dilemma between, on the one hand, exceeding their competence and authority to give medical advice, and, on the other, leaving the caller unsatisfied with the service? We offer a framework in which to set newly identified practices along with those identified in previous studies. Using a set of calls to a medical helpline run by Parkinson's United Kingdom, we show that the call-taker manages the problem by (i) only suggesting courses of action highly marked for impersonality or contingency (displaying a 'low deontic stance', Stevanovic and Peräkylä 2012), and (ii) limiting the interactional risks of tailoring the advice to callers' personal circumstances. We show how our suggested framework of 'advising without personalising' may guide research into the difficult job of delivering advice where the service provider must observe a limit on what they can say.