Evaluation of the Welsh School-based Counselling Strategy : Final Report

The Welsh Government's School-based Counselling Strategy (the Strategy), implemented from April 2008 in secondary schools across Wales and a pilot selection of primary schools, was evaluated. A range of research tools were used, including desk research, analysis of client outcomes, qualitative interviews and surveys of key stakeholders' views. Implementation of the Strategy and its counselling services was generally perceived as successful by all stakeholders, including counselling clients, with evidence that all key recommendations for its development were implemented. Across six terms, 11,043 episodes of counselling were attended. Participation in counselling was associated with large reductions in psychological distress; with levels of improvement that, on average, were somewhat greater than those found in previous evaluations of UK school-based counselling. Key recommendations are that permanent funding mechanisms should be established to embed counselling in the Welsh secondary school sector, with consideration given to its roll-out into primary schools. Service managers and schools should also look to ensuring equal opportunities of participation in school-based counselling from all sectors of the community, that adequate accommodation is available in schools for the delivery of counselling, and that a system of regular outcome monitoring is established

The influence of perceptual and cognitive factors in the development of food preferences

Despite a considerable amount of research investigating factors that influence the development of food preferences, there is very little research considering factors associated with food items themselves and the cognitive processes used by children to determine acceptance or rejection of a novel food. When offered a new food, children will see what colour, size and shape it is and may be able to determine its texture. In addition, they will be able to smell the food and may even be informed of what the food is called by their parents labelling it. Hence children will have a significant amount of knowledge of what the food they are being offered is like. It may therefore be reasonable to suggest children will use this knowledge and make comparisons to prior experience with 'similar' foods. This thesis presents three experimental chapters which aim to explore the role of perceptual (e.g. colour, texture and size) and cognitive (categorisation) factors on the development of food preferences. Chapter 2 presents an Explicit Preference Task, which enables children to self-report on their food preferences, complemented by parental report Food Preference and Frequency questionnaires. Chapter 3 presents a Longitudinal Food Diary method exploring the relationship between preference and exposure. Finally in Chapter 4 using a series of match-to-sample experiments to consider if children use colour as a basis for categorisation of food objects, a comparison is made against non-food objects. Results indicated children to dislike food colours particularly associated with vegetables more so than other food colours. This was found to be related to the amount of exposure they had to those foods and specifically results indicated children to use food colour as a basis for rejection of novel foods. It was also observed that whilst children use shape as a basis for categorisation of non-food objects, they are more inclined to categorise foods on the basis of colour

The nature of emotional support and counselling provision for people with sight loss in the United Kingdom

People with sight loss in the United Kingdom are known to have lower levels of emotional wellbeing and to be at higher risk of depression. Consequently ‘having someone to talk to’ is an important priority for people with visual impairment. An on-line survey of the provision of emotional support and counselling for people affected by sight loss across the UK was undertaken. The survey was distributed widely and received 182 responses. There were more services offering ‘emotional support’, in the form of listening and information and advice giving, than offered ‘counselling’. Services were delivered by providers with differing qualifications in a variety of formats. Waiting times were fairly short and clients presented with a wide range of issues. Funding came from a range of sources, but many felt their funding was vulnerable. Conclusions have been drawn about the need for a national standardised framework for the provision of emotional support and counselling services for blind and partially sighted people in the U

Can financial uncertainty forecast aggregate stock market returns?

Peer reviewe

The influence of perceptual and cognitive factors in the development of food preferences

Despite a considerable amount of research investigating factors that influence the development of food preferences, there is very little research considering factors associated with food items themselves and the cognitive processes used by children to determine acceptance or rejection of a novel food. When offered a new food, children will see what colour, size and shape it is and may be able to determine its texture. In addition, they will be able to smell the food and may even be informed of what the food is called by their parents labelling it. Hence children will have a significant amount of knowledge of what the food they are being offered is like. It may therefore be reasonable to suggest children will use this knowledge and make comparisons to prior experience with 'similar' foods. This thesis presents three experimental chapters which aim to explore the role of perceptual (e.g. colour, texture and size) and cognitive (categorisation) factors on the development of food preferences. Chapter 2 presents an Explicit Preference Task, which enables children to self-report on their food preferences, complemented by parental report Food Preference and Frequency questionnaires. Chapter 3 presents a Longitudinal Food Diary method exploring the relationship between preference and exposure. Finally in Chapter 4 using a series of match-to-sample experiments to consider if children use colour as a basis for categorisation of food objects, a comparison is made against non-food objects. Results indicated children to dislike food colours particularly associated with vegetables more so than other food colours. This was found to be related to the amount of exposure they had to those foods and specifically results indicated children to use food colour as a basis for rejection of novel foods. It was also observed that whilst children use shape as a basis for categorisation of non-food objects, they are more inclined to categorise foods on the basis of colour

Practitioners’ experiences of learning and implementing Counselling for Depression (CfD) in routine practice settings

Aim: Counselling for Depression (CfD) is a person-centred experiential therapy developed for implementation in the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. Training in this model has been available across England since 2011. This study aims to investigate counselling practitioners’ experiences of learning the CfD model and implementing CfD in practice settings. Method: Participants were recruited by an email sent to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy’s (BACP) CfD Practice Research Network (PRN). Of the 53 CfD practitioners belonging to BACP’s CfD PRN, 18 participated in this mixed-methods piece of research. All 18 participants completed an online questionnaire, and one hour follow-up semi-structured interviews were conducted with six of the participants. Results: Descriptive analyses from the online questionnaire indicated a positive experience of CfD training, with practitioners indicating a positive impact on sense of self, practice and skill set. Although a degree of challenge was encountered when training in the CfD model, thematic analysis from the six semi-structured interviews revealed factors contributing to the positives and challenges experienced on the course. Themes also revealed a predominately negative experience of CfD in practice and service settings, although this was service dependent. Conclusions and implications for practice: The findings can inform future recruitment of trainees to CfD training programmes and the training programme itself. They can also be used to achieve greater congruence between training in CfD and the delivery of the model. Future research may need to focus on the service level factors influencing practitioners’ experiences, and whether this experience is specific to the CfD modality in IAPT

Can financial uncertainty forecast aggregate stock market returns?

We investigate the role of financial uncertainty in forecasting aggregate stock market returns. Our results suggest that financial uncertainty, along with its change, are more powerful predictors of excess US monthly stock market returns than 14 macroeconomic predictors commonly used in the literature. Financial uncertainty is shown to outperform short interest, which has been suggested to be the strongest known predictor of the equity risk premium. These results persist using robust econometric methods in-sample, and when forecasting out-of-sample

Can we forecast better in periods of low uncertainty? The role of technical indicators

We examine the importance of periods of high versus low financial uncertainty when forecasting stock market returns with technical predictors. Our results suggest that technical predictors perform better in periods of low financial uncertainty and should be avoided due to poor forecasting performance in periods of heightened uncertainty. In-sample, we report disentangled statistics, and out-of-sample we show these results continue when forecasting the equity risk premium. We show similar results when forecasting the volatility of returns with technical predictors. We measure periods of heightened and low financial uncertainty in a regime switching framework. Overall, our results provide insight into the mechanism that suggests that, when uncertainty rises, investors’ opinions polarize leading to a breakdown of predictability based on technical indicators

The comparative effectiveness and efficiency of cognitive behaviour therapy and generic counselling in the treatment of depression: evidence from the 2(nd) UK National Audit of psychological therapies.

BACKGROUND: Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is the front-line psychological intervention for step 3 within UK psychological therapy services. Counselling is recommended only when other interventions have failed and its effectiveness has been questioned. METHOD: A secondary data analysis was conducted of data collected from 33,243 patients across 103 Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services as part of the second round of the National Audit of Psychological Therapies (NAPT). Initial analysis considered levels of pre-post therapy effect sizes (ESs) and reliable improvement (RI) and reliable and clinically significant improvement (RCSI). Multilevel modelling was used to model predictors of outcome, namely patient pre-post change on PHQ-9 scores at last therapy session. RESULTS: Counselling received more referrals from patients experiencing moderate to severe depression than CBT. For patients scoring above the clinical cut-off on the PHQ-9 at intake, the pre-post ES (95% CI) for CBT was 1.59 (1.58, 1.62) with 46.6% making RCSI criteria and for counselling the pre-post ES was 1.55 (1.52, 1.59) with 44.3% of patients meeting RCSI criteria. Multilevel modelling revealed a significant site effect of 1.8%, while therapy type was not a predictor of outcome. A significant interaction was found between the number of sessions attended and therapy type, with patients attending fewer sessions on average for counselling [M = 7.5 (5.54) sessions and a median (IQR) of 6 (3-10)] than CBT [M = 8.9 (6.34) sessions and a median (IQR) of 7 (4-12)]. Only where patients had 18 or 20 sessions was CBT significantly more effective than counselling, with recovery rates (95% CIs) of 62.2% (57.1, 66.9) and 62.4% (56.5, 68.0) respectively, compared with 44.4% (32.7, 56.6) and 42.6% (30.0, 55.9) for counselling. Counselling was significantly more effective at two sessions with a recovery rate of 34.9% (31.9, 37.9) compared with 22.2% (20.5, 24.0) for CBT. CONCLUSIONS: Outcomes for counselling and CBT in the treatment of depression were comparable. Research efforts should focus on factors other than therapy type that may influence outcomes, namely the inherent variability between services, and adopt multilevel modelling as the given analytic approach in order to capture the naturally nested nature of the implementation and delivery of psychological therapies. It is of concern that half of all patients, regardless of type of intervention, did not show reliable improvement