Family support, social capital, resilience and adolescent

coping
John Pinkerton* and Pat Dolan†
*Professor of Child and Family Social Work, School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Queens University
Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK, and †Senior Lecturer, Child and Family Research Centre, Department of Political
Science and Sociology, NUI Galway, Galway, Ireland

Correspondence: A B S T R AC T
John Pinkerton,
School of Sociology, All too often young people are excluded in practice from the general
Social Policy and Social Work, policy and professional consensus that partnership and participation
Queen’s University of Belfast, should underpin work with children, young people and their families.
6 College Park, If working with troubled and troublesome young people is to be based
Belfast BT7 1LP, on family support, it will require not only the clear statement of that
Northern Ireland, policy but also demonstration that it can be applied in practice.
UK Achieving that involves setting out a plausible theory of change that
E-mail: j.pinkerton@qub.ac.uk can be rigorously evaluated. This paper suggests a conceptual model
that draws on social support theory to harness the ideas of social
Keywords: adolescents, coping,
capital and resilience in a way that can link formal family support
resilience, social capital, social
interventions to adolescent coping. Research with young people
support
attending three community-based projects for marginalized youth is
Accepted for publication: May 2007 used to illustrate how validated tools can be used to measure and
document the detail of support, resilience, social capital and coping
in young people’s lives. It is also suggested that there is sufficient fit
between the findings emerging from the study and the model to
justify the model being more rigorously tested.

to operationalize these goals continues to be a chal-

INTRODUCTION
There is a growing international consensus about the
need for professionals working with children and
young people to adopt a ‘whole child/whole system’
perspective. Within Ireland this was very clearly
expressed in the National Children’s Strategy: Our Chil-
dren,Their Lives (Government of Ireland 2000). It was
developed to provide an integrating child-centred
framework for all government policy affecting children
and young people. At the same time as taking a chil-
dren’s rights perspective, the National Children’s Strat-
egy followed the lead of the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child in giving rec-
ognition to the importance of family life (see Pre-
amble and Article 18). Accordingly, family support
through service user partnership and participation is
accepted as integral to Ireland’s ‘whole child/whole
system’ approach. However, the question of how best
lenge.This is particularly so in respect of working with
adolescents experiencing adversity.
All too often troubled and troublesome young
people are seen as being too difficult to work with and
beyond the reach of partnership and participation.
Rather than support, the goal of intervention becomes
at best containment and at worst punishment. This
paper aims to counter such assumptions and prac-
tices. It suggests that taking up the challenge to think
about young people holistically and in their systemic
context (Coles 2000) requires attention to the social
support systems that they are already a part of and to
the relationship between their formal and informal
supports. It argues that through a fuller understanding
of the networks of support available to adolescents, it
is possible to engage them in work that better equips
them to cope with their transition into adulthood.The
term ‘coping’ with its sense of a continuous unfolding

219 Child and Family Social Work 2007, 12, pp 219–228 © 2007 The Authors
Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
 Social support for young people J Pinkerton and P Dolan
process is used in preference to the finality of the now
much used term ‘outcomes’.
A conceptual model will be used to argue that
membership of social support networks is the connec-
tion between the external conditions of young peo-
ple’s lives, their ‘social capital’, and their internal
emotional worlds, their ‘resilience’, and as such social
support network membership should be the main site
for family support interventions with young people. It
will be suggested that this model is useful for both
service and research design. The model will be illus-
trated using empirical evidence from an ongoing Irish
study. The study is exploring the perceived social
support networks of adolescents attending three
community-based youth programmes in the west of
Ireland. Findings to date suggest that there is suffi-
cient verification of the model to warrant further more
rigorous testing of it in subsequent stages of the Irish
study.
L I N K I N G FA M I LY S U P P O R T TO
ADOLESCENT COPING
Despite family support having become a major stra-
tegic orientation (Katz & Pinkerton 2003), it is still at
a relatively early stage in establishing itself as a coher-
ent practice paradigm or theory of change (Gardner
1998; Pinkerton et al. 2000; Gardner 2003; Katz &
Pinkerton 2003; Featherstone 2004; Canavan 2006).
Accordingly, secure ground needs to be sought based
on clarifying what exactly family support means in
terms of practice, services, policy and organizational
context. To help to do that, it is necessary to have a
clear descriptive definition of family support, however
provisional or contingent on context. Underpinning
that definition should be an exposition of relevant
theory. Social support provides just such a theory.
Everyone needs some degree of social and emotional
sustenance to cope with the challenges of daily life.
This social support is particularly important during
adolescence because it is a time of transition during
which a young person must cope with a range of major
physical, emotional and social changes.
There is strong research evidence gathered over the
last 30 years that social support plays a crucial part in
successful coping (Eckenrode & Hamilton 2000). It is
well established that social support assists resiliency,
has a buffering effect in dealing with stress and aids
positive mental health (Rutter et al. 1998). In the
main, people access support from the informal
sources of the nuclear and extended family and, to a
lesser extent, friendships (Pinkerton & Monteith
220 Child and Family Social Work 2007, 12, pp 219–228
1997; Cutrona 2000; Canavan & Dolan 2003). Whit-
taker & Garbarino (1983, p. 4) in the 1980s neatly
described social support within families as being the
‘bread and butter’ source of help. Informal social
support between family members and amongst
friends creates a ‘central helping system’ (Canavan &
Dolan 2000). It is generally only when that support is
perceived or experienced as weak, non-existent or
incapable of offering the type or extent of help
required, that a person needing help will turn, or be
directed, to formal sources of support.
This is not to counterpoise the informal and the
formal as an ‘either/or’ choice. Informal support may
appeal as generally offered at no cost, as non-
stigmatizing, and available outside of office hours, but
there are types and degrees of need where professional
help is clearly required (Gardner 2003). Formal
support can both supplement and complement the
informal. In addition, it is now well documented that
families can be the main source of stress and indeed
abuse in children and young people’s lives (Belsky
1997; Gardner 2003). In such cases, direct interven-
tion from professionals is certainly necessary. Thus,
the key question is, which type of support best meets
that need and how to manage the mix?
There are specific kinds and qualities of support
available to families. Four main types of support have
been identified (Cutrona 2000):
• Concrete support relates to practical acts of assistance
between people, for example, childminding a sis-
ter’s young baby whilst she goes shopping. It has
been noted that too often this need for basic prac-
tical help is either missed or underestimated by
professionals (Cochran 1996; Jack 2001; Dolan &
Holt 2002).
• Emotional support comprises acts of empathy, listen-
ing and generally ‘being there’ for someone when
needed (Cutrona 2000), for example, when a young
person is bereaved by the untimely death of a parent
and needs the comfort and understanding of close
friends. It can be difficult to gauge the need and
appropriate fashion in which to offer emotional
support, but it has particularly strong currency, and
is generally perceived as helpful even when offered
as an alternative to other types of identified need
(Cutrona 1996).
• Advice support goes beyond the advice itself to the
reassurance that goes with it (Cotterell 1996); for
example, when a young man in dealing with a close
family member with an illness, such as cancer, seeks
advice and is told that what is being done is in line
with what is required, the information can provide
© 2007 The Authors
Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

emotional reassurance as much as a guide to action
(Aymanns et al. 1995).
• Esteem support centres on how one person rates and
informs another of their personal worth, for
example, when a young person is preparing for an
examination, the way in which parents assert their
continued love irrespective of the result. For fami-
lies, this unconditional regard and commitment is
the foundation stone of their personal social
support system (Cutrona 2000).
In addition to noting the different types of support,
it is important to recognize that there are variations in
the quality of support.
• Closeness expresses the extent to which support can
be assumed and given because of mutual affection
between partners, near family members and long-
established friends. For example, research in
Ireland and the USA (Cutrona & Cole 2000;
Riordan 2002) shows that this is particularly the
case in respect of teen parents.
• Reciprocity involves activity whereby help is
exchanged equally between people, and ensures
that a person does not feel beholden to another.
There is a comfort and security that goes with
knowing that the exchange of support is available if
and when it is needed (Eckenrode & Hamilton
2000).
• Durability relates to the contact rates and length of
time people are known to each other. Ideally, reli-
able members are those who are known for a long
period, are nearby to offer help, and typically are in
no way intrusive (Tracy & Biegel 1994).
Thus, social support theory draws on a considerable
body of research to clearly identify the types and
qualities of relationships that provide support in a way
that can be concisely demonstrated and easily under-
stood. As such, it can be directly applied in the field of
family support, including work with young people.
From a social support perspective, the ultimate goal
of family support is to achieve the rights of young
people through meeting their needs within the family
and is dependent on ensuring a nested set of social
supports (see Fig. 1). The young person requires
the support of immediate family. Family rests on the
support of extended family, which in turn draws on a
wider informal network of friends, neighbours and
community. These various sources of informal
support in turn need to be able to access a wide range
of formal institutions within the statutory, commu-
nity, voluntary and private sectors to meet young peo-
ple’s educational, health and recreational needs and
give expression to their rights in these areas. It has also
221 Child and Family Social Work 2007, 12, pp 219–228
Social support for young people J Pinkerton and P Dolan
YOUNG PERSON
Achieving rights & Meeting Needs
Immediate
Family
Extended Family
Friends / Neighbourhood
Formal Organisations
Statutory / Voluntary / Community/Commercial
National Policy / Legislation
Figure 1 Achieving rights and meeting needs through
family support: a nested model of family support.
to be recognized that the statutory, community, vol-
untary and private sectors require support from
national policy and legislation.
The nested model in Fig. 1 has been used by policy-
makers in Ireland to help distil a clear and detailed
definition of family support.
Family support is recognized as both a style of work and a set
of activities that reinforce positive informal social networks
through integrated programmes. These programmes combine
statutory, voluntary, community and private services and are
generally provided to families within their own homes and
communities. The primary focus of these services is on early
intervention aiming to promote and protect the health, well-
being and rights of all children, young people and their fami-
lies. At the same time particular attention is given to those who
are vulnerable or at risk.
In addition, a set of 10 practice principles have been
identified to promote family support defined in that
way.
• Work in partnership with children, families, profes-
sionals and communities.
• Adopt a strengths-based, resilience perspective.
• Facilitate self-referral and a wide range of referral
paths.
• Ensure needs-led assessment and plan for the
minimum intervention required.
• Focus on the wishes, feelings, safety and well-being
of children and young people.
• Strengthen positive informal support networks.
• Provide accessible and flexible services that can
incorporate both child protection and out-of-home
care.
© 2007 The Authors
Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
 Social support for young people J Pinkerton and P Dolan
• Involve service users and front-line providers in
planning, delivery and evaluation.
• Promote social inclusion, addressing such issues as
ethnicity, disability and rural/urban communities.
• Undertake outcomes-based evaluation to support
quality services based on best practice.
From the nested model it is clear that social support
is more than just the immediate network to which a
young person belongs. It involves the entire social
ecology in which they are located, including commu-
nity, school/work and the general political, economic
and cultural context. To acknowledge this range of
resources, it is helpful to introduce the concept of
‘social capital’ (Jack & Jordan 1999; Field 2003; Catan
2004). Although still a contested and developing
concept (Baron et al. 2000), social capital is under-
stood here as ‘the set of resources that inhere in family
relations and in community social organization and
that are useful for the cognitive or social development
of a child or young person’ (Coleman quoted in Field
2003, p. 24). For young people in need, the support of
parents (Biehal 2006) and, to a lesser extent, school
and communities (Dryfoos et al. 2005; Katz 2006) are
expressions of useful social capital (Coleman 1988;
Catan 2004). It is also important to recognize that
there can be negative features to social capital. It can
exclude as well as include and reinforce oppressive
hierarchies of power within social networks based, for
example, on age, gender and class. However, the
development, or ‘banking’, of social capital as personal
assets has been highlighted as a possible part of the
solution to helping people access positive and durable
support in their lives as and when they need it. In that
sense, family support interventions can be seen as a
form of social-capital building.
Reflected in the listed practice principles is the
assumption that service users, whether adults, young
people or children, are the active subjects of their own
lives, with wishes and feelings, knowledge and skills.
These inner resources can be captured in the concept
of ‘resilience’. Resiliency is the ability to overcome
personal difficulties and withstand stress and is a key
factor in adolescent coping (Rutter et al. 1998;
Howard et al. 1999; Gilligan 2001; Daniel & Wassell
2002). Strongly resilient adolescents are those who
can cope not only with everyday life stress but also
with sudden major crises. Such resilience is most likely
to be present where young people are well supported
by their families and the other informal and formal
social networks they have access to – in other words
where social capital is strong. These internal and
external resources are brought together where young
222 Child and Family Social Work 2007, 12, pp 219–228
Social
Capital
(SNQ)
Family Social
Support Support COPING
Intervention (SPS) (APES)
Resilience
(AWS)
Figure 2 Realizing personal potential: family support,
social support, social capital, resilience and coping.
APES, Adolescent Perceived Events Scale; AWS, Adoles-
cent Wellbeing Scale; SNQ, Social Network Question-
naire; SPS, Social Provisions Scale.
people have both the various kinds and the quality of
social support described earlier. When connected,
these internal and external factors act together in a
mutually reinforcing manner, allowing successful
coping with the psychosocial challenges of the transi-
tion to adulthood (see Fig. 2; the acronyms associated
with each component are explained later in the
paper). Both social capital and resilience can be
viewed as ‘developmental assets’ realized through
effective social support. For some young people, real-
izing this personal potential will require additional
formal family support interventions aimed at bolster-
ing the type and quality of social support available to
them.
Although we know that about 80% of young people
cope well with the challenges of adolescence
(Schonort-Reichl 1994; Coleman & Hendry 1999),
because of a lack of research on their social networks
and the processes involved within them, our under-
standing of how adolescents are supported in their
successful transitions is relatively limited. In particu-
lar, there is insufficient knowledge about how best to
provide additional support through formal services for
those teenagers experiencing difficulties. The weak-
ness in knowledge about adolescents’ social networks
may stem in part from research tending to be ‘one
point in time’ focused rather than longitudinal
(Cotterell 1996). Few studies have focused on the
impact of life events on adolescents’ support network
performance or their own perceptions of how they are
coping. Such information would clearly be very useful
in designing and timing helpful complementary and
supplementary formal support, particularly for more
vulnerable populations of adolescents (Dryfoos et al.
2005).
© 2007 The Authors
Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Adolescence is a time of general developmental
change and so it is to be expected that young people’s
social networks will shift in terms of the amount, types
and quality of support required and available. Mem-
bership and the ways in which members are perceived
as positive providers will inevitably change over time.
Thus, if the conceptual model presented in Fig. 2 is to
be used in considering a young person’s individual
potential, this must be done at more than one point in
time. Consideration needs to be given to the impact of
change over time on the configuration of factors. Mea-
sures used to assess any or all of the components of the
model need to be used repeatedly to factor in change.
Understanding how sources, types and qualities of
support fluctuate and the implications of this for a
young person’s developmental assets of resilience and
social capital as determinants of his or her coping
requires recurring attention.
I L L U S T R AT I V E R E S E A R C H
In order to explore the extent to which the conceptual
model presented in Fig. 2 connects with the actual
experiences of young people, it will now be considered
in relation to a study of three Neighbourhood Youth
Projects (NYPs) located in two counties in the west of
Ireland. NYPs are community-based daycare support
projects for adolescents assessed as being on the
threshold of formal justice or welfare interventions.
They are funded by the local statutory Health Service
Executive. All three NYPs work with adolescents (11–
18 years) residing in their respective local towns and
environs. The numbers attending the NYPs are
approximately 60 in each one. They are formally
referred to the projects by professionals such as social
workers, teachers and community police or by
parents. In addition, each project has about 25 infor-
mal attendees at any one time, including young people
who have finished with the formal programme but
who keep up regular weekly contact.
NYP staff work to achieve the aims of their projects
through supplying adolescents and their families with
a range of supports suitable to their needs; including
individual and group counselling, self-esteem building
and outdoor pursuits or leisure programmes. The
inputs used with adolescents are aimed at addressing
the primary reason for their referral to the project, as
indicated by the referrer, the parent and the adoles-
cent himself or herself. Typical problems include
school failure, homelessness, delinquency, addiction,
family discord and social marginalization. The
projects are adolescent-centred and non-stigmatizing
223 Child and Family Social Work 2007, 12, pp 219–228
Social support for young people J Pinkerton and P Dolan
in their approach, and young people who come to the
projects are treated by staff as ‘members’ or ‘partici-
pants’. Similarly, the adolescents who attend do not
refer to their group work sessions as ‘therapy’ but
rather as their ‘club’.
The NYPs run around 13 different types of group
each week.These include informal early-evening open
groups and a range of activity-based groups such as
photography, hill walking, pottery, arts and crafts,
canoeing and various sports. A 10-week programme,
which includes two overnight trips away from the
centre, known as the ‘Intensive Discussion Group’, is
a core component of the NYP work programme. The
projects also host life- and social skills groups as well
as groups focusing on adolescent-health issues run by
outside agencies. In addition, as part of the develop-
ment of community addiction teams, the local Health
Service Executive has placed addiction counsellors
within the NYPs. These counsellors offer one-to-one
support to the young people, usually as part of the
wider NYP programme. All three NYPs work closely
with the main primary and secondary schools that
service the three local communities. Many of the chil-
dren in these schools who are a cause of concern to
their teachers because of disruptive behaviour or
truancy are also a cause of concern to social work
services. NYP and school staff work together with
this identified groups through school group work
programmes.
Community-based daycare support services such as
the NYPs, though focused on marginalized youth, can
usefully be considered sites for the delivery of family
support as described above within the Irish context.
Thought of in that way, the work of the NYPs can be
further reframed in accordance with Fig. 2. The
desired result of the work is to enhance the coping
capacity of those attending.This is achieved through a
combination of mobilizing the young people’s internal
personal resources (e.g. problem solving ability, moti-
vation, social skills and leisure interests) along with
their external sources of support within the immediate
and extended family, friendships, school and commu-
nity networks. In other words, the young people’s
resilience is being brought into play alongside their
social capital through supplementing and comple-
menting their social support with family support pro-
vided by NYP staff.
As with family support provision generally, it has
proved difficult to provide convincing research evi-
dence of the NYPs’ effectiveness.Thus, a central ques-
tion is whether this reconceptualizing can provide a
basis for more rigorous evaluation. A second question
© 2007 The Authors
Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
 Social support for young people J Pinkerton and P Dolan
is whether the research instruments used in the study
can also provide practice tools for staff in their assess-
ment and monitoring of young people’s personal
potential and progress (Dolan 2006). The aim of the
research is to measure the adolescents’ own percep-
tions of their social networks, their emotional well-
being and how they were coping with the range of life
challenges they were facing, big and small. The com-
bination of reliable and validated tools that were
selected can be matched to the different aspects of the
model shown in Fig. 2. These tools are indicated by
the acronyms shown in the figure as associated with
particular components of the model. A further inten-
tion in doing the research is to move beyond a single-
point-in-time study and build up a developmental
record over time by assessing these factors over at least
a 3-year period.
The key objectives of the study were
• to identify and measure the sources, types and levels
of perceived social support among all 172 young
people attending the three NYPs over a 9-month
period;
• to compare over the 9 months and annually there-
after for at least 3 years, changes in the source, level
and quality of self-assessed social support; and
• to correlate over this time period the young people’s
perception of their own level of social support with
their self-rated emotional well-being.
Each adolescent respondent was requested to com-
plete a set of validated tools to gather the required
information. One tool measured respondents’ per-
ceived level of social support by using the Social Pro-
visions Scale (SPS) (Cutrona & Russell 1987; Dolan
2006). The SPS was found by the researchers to be
particularly useful in that it was adolescent-friendly
and could be administered with a young person
speedily (taking no more than 20 minutes to com-
plete).The make-up of their social network was estab-
lished through use of the Social Network
Questionnaire (SNQ), which gets the subject to nomi-
nate members of their network (Cutrona & Russell
1987). One particularly helpful aspect of the SNQ was
that it enables the young people to consider who are
the most central actors to them. The tool encourages
differentiation between friendships that are close and
those that are casual. All respondents were also invited
to complete the 18-item Adolescent Wellbeing Scale
(AWS) (Birleson 1980) as a means of measuring their
emotional well-being. The AWS is an 18-item check-
list that affords a young person the opportunity to
reflect on and measure their emotional state. How
social networks and emotional well-being play out in
224 Child and Family Social Work 2007, 12, pp 219–228
terms of their coping was measured by the use of the
Adolescent Perceived Events Scale (APES) (Compas
et al. 1987). The APES is a practice-friendly tool that
enables a professional to identify with a young person
positive and negative events and issues in his or her life
and how she or he is affected by those experiences.
Indeed, all the tools would seem to lend themselves to
use by practitioners in identifying and exploring over
time with young people these various aspects of their
lives.
Participants in the study included all young people
referred to and actively attending the NYP pro-
gramme at the time of the study (n = 174). Adoles-
cents chosen for the study were approached initially
by project staff and asked for informal agreement to
participate in the study, subject to parental approval.
Each adolescent who agreed to participate in the
study was given a small reward; not money but a
voucher for a local sports shop or bookshop to the
value of €10. In addition, respondents were reassured
that if they chose not to participate in the study, they
would not be excluded from the NYP programme at
that time or in the future.
Preparations for the fieldwork involved discussion
with the NYP staff, service user leaflet distribution,
obtaining informed consent from parents and young
people, notification to respondents to attend for inter-
view, and coordination of data collection across the
three projects. The rate of attendance for interview
and successful completion of the interviews was con-
sistently good across the three projects. Data were
collected from the 172 who agreed to participate out
of a total possible sample of 174. Furthermore, with
very few exceptions, all forms were completed suc-
cessfully and with little difficulty. There was some
attrition over time. Of the original 172, 147 took part
for the final follow-up. However, it did become appar-
ent from the first round of data collection that the
young people needed sufficient time to complete all
the forms. All the tools taken together, the average
completion rate was about 45 minutes. Data collec-
tion generally took place on site in the NYP premises,
with a few taking place in local schools. Generally,
data collection took place in the evening either before
or just after a group work session.
Results from respondents’ completed SNQ, SPS,
AWS and APES were analysed through the SPSS sta-
tistical analysis program. In addition, more qualitative
data collected in field notes by the researchers were
analysed by the research team.The analysis centred on
five key areas directly connected to the objectives of
the study: the characteristics and general social profile
© 2007 The Authors
Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

of the study population; the sources, types and levels
of perceived social support among respondents; the
respondents’ self-perceived mental health; any corre-
lation between respondents’ self-rated mental health
and their perceived social network support; and
change over time in the perceived social networks,
levels of support, mental health and self-reported life
events.
Overall, respondents reported consistently high
social network membership containing plentiful
sources of support, and this remained so over time,
although there was some variation within the popula-
tion both in levels and patterns of change. Despite the
fact that many of the young people were known to
have a strained relationship with their parents, it was
parents who were the most often nominated source of
support – the core of the young person’s social capital.
This result highlights the importance of working with
parents despite the tendency to see adolescence as a
time when children turn away from those who have
been their primary carers as their ties to peers
strengthen. Siblings were also frequently nominated as
network members. Extended family and other adults
were seen to be important too. Although friendships
were important to fleshing out the young people’s
networks, rather surprisingly one in five respondents
did not have a close friend. When they were nomi-
nated, friends were consistently seen as a strong pro-
vider of social support. Only a few professionals were
nominated, but where they were, they were seen as
very positive figures. The important point here is that
when focused on, a high rate of support with the
capacity to be improved over time became apparent,
even within a group that is seen to be socially
excluded. Exclusion from formal networks, for
example, school and employment, should not distract
professional attention from the informal networks that
young people are included in. Practice needs to focus
on enlisting greater positive support from those
sources as much as on engaging or re-engaging other
forms of help. Attention also needs to be given to
discouraging unhelpful support for self-harming and
anti-social behaviours from the informal networks.
Despite perceiving certain close relationships as
poor, generally the young people reported the quality
of their relationships with most of their nominated
network members as good. Respondents saw them-
selves as having access to plentiful positive support
and particularly so from parents and friendships.
Based on the categories suggested earlier, concrete
help was deemed to be what was most available to the
young people. They also reported high rates of emo-
225 Child and Family Social Work 2007, 12, pp 219–228
Social support for young people J Pinkerton and P Dolan
tional support. Advice support was less plentiful and
esteem support was noticeably the weakest type of
support. However, perceived esteem support did show
marked improvement over time and particularly so
from parents. It was noted that friends offered higher
than expected levels of support and this tended to be
concrete support. Increase in advice support was
more mixed across sources and difficulty in offering
and receiving advice support was generally reported
by the respondents. Surprisingly, despite their high
nomination rate, siblings were consistently seen as the
poorest source of support both in quality of relation-
ships and levels of support. This may be as a result of
siblings experiencing their own difficulties given the
nature of the family circumstances of many of the
respondents. At any rate, this finding shows the impor-
tance of giving attention not only to the membership
of a young person’s network but also to the quality of
the relationships involved.
It was notable that over a third of young people were
above the threshold score for the AWS indicating a
mental health problem. There was a statistically sig-
nificant relationship between perceived social support
and well-being in line with what is already known to
be the link between social support and mental health.
There was also evidence of a positive link between
having a variety of supporters and having better per-
ceived well-being. That can be taken as at least sup-
porting the suggested link between social capital and
resilience in these young people’s lives. Also at a time
when there is growing concern over meeting the emo-
tional well-being and mental health needs of young
people, these results reinforce the importance of pro-
fessionals not seeing this as primarily about access to
formal mental health services but as a part of increas-
ing general support to adolescents in need – building
their social capital.
Those young people who reported higher levels of
support at the commencement of the study main-
tained this perception, and those who initially had the
weakest support at the initial baseline measurement
generally indicated an increase in sources and levels of
support over the time that they were attending the
project. There was also an association between length
of time on the project and positive social networks. As
anticipated, there was an association between the
existence and quality of these networks and the self-
reported emotional well-being. Those young people
who self-reported most positive emotional well-being
at the first measurement continued to maintain that
just as they maintained their strong networks of
support. In addition, those who increased their
© 2007 The Authors
Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
 Social support for young people J Pinkerton and P Dolan
sources and levels of support whilst attending the
project also reported improved emotional well-being.
From reviewing the NYP programme activity
records and from field notes gathered by the research-
ers during one-to-one interviews with respondents, it
clearly emerges that there were specific ways in which
young people deemed the projects supportive. These
can usefully be considered by using the typology of
helping discussed earlier. Concrete support was rated
very highly by the young people attending the pro-
gramme. The young people valued the project pre-
mises as a physical space that was theirs and
particularly so when it rained! They expressed a sense
of belonging and responsibility towards the project as
a place that was theirs to hang out in and listen to
music turned up loud.The young people also reported
a range of other tangible help they received and appre-
ciated. For instance, staff helped with travel arrange-
ments by providing lifts to social occasions such as
dances or sports events. On occasions they would even
organize outings, for example to Dublin for an inter-
national soccer match. Young people also appreciated
it when staff accompanied them to medical appoint-
ments, and in some cases to counselling, family
therapy sessions or court appearance. The projects
were also valued for providing concrete support in the
form of skills through providing kayaking and cooking
courses and offering help with completing home-
work through an after-school one-to-one education
programme.
As regards emotional support, the young people
reported that having staff who would listen and give
them time when they were upset was an important
part of what the projects offered. They saw staff as
being ‘on their side’ and as adults who could be non-
judgemental. Although there was a gender difference,
in that more girls than boys reported themselves as
seeking emotional support, young people of both
sexes indicated that having staff as empathetic listen-
ers was very important to them. This was most
strongly valued when the young person was in a crisis
at home or at school.
Advice support was also valued by the young
people. Interestingly, the advice they most appreciated
was in relation to making decisions rather than in
providing guidance in relation to how to do some-
thing. For example, many young people reported that
they would seek advice on school or career decisions;
some said that they would ask what to do when faced
with difficulties in a friendship or with a family rela-
tionship. An important characteristic of the advice
support from the staff was that it was available when
226 Child and Family Social Work 2007, 12, pp 219–228
needed. Young people did not have to make an
appointment but would seek out staff for advice very
informally, for example, during a hill-walking trip or
when a young person would drop into the project for
coffee on the way home from school.
The main way in which esteem support was pro-
vided by the NYPs was the celebration of the skills
and talents of young people. Many young people
reported how ‘chuffed’ they were when their project
organized an exhibition of their artwork in a local
shopping centre or when photographs of them canoe-
ing were framed and placed on the wall of the project.
This was perceived by young people as the project
praising and valuing them. A number of respondents
noted that such praise was harder to come by from
other sources within their family, school and commu-
nity networks.
Although these findings from the study all provide
some validation for the model in Fig. 2, and the effi-
cacy of the NYP as a family support/social support
intervention, it must be stressed that the study has not
tested the model in any rigorous sense. The Irish
research was not designed to trace causal chains
between attendance at the NYPs and building up
social capital and resilience as developmental assets
that can make for improved coping. However, there is
sufficient fit between the data and the model to
suggest it is worth using it to further explore the data
gathered to date and consider whether the existing
research design can be tightened for further work with
the projects in a way that will be more testing of the
model.
CONCLUSION
If working with troubled and troublesome young
people is to be incorporated within a policy commit-
ment to a ‘whole child/whole system’ approach based
on family support, it will require not only the clear
statement of that policy, as already exists in Ireland,
but also demonstration in practice that it can be done.
Achieving that will involve setting out a plausible
theory of change that can be rigorously evaluated.
This paper suggests that by drawing on social support
theory it is possible to harness together the ideas of
social capital and resilience in a way that can link
formal family support interventions to coping. These
interventions can be seen as a way of supplementing
and complementing the social support already in
young people’s lives that sustains and expresses their
resilience and social capital. It has also been suggested
that validated tools, such as those used in the Irish
© 2007 The Authors
Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

study discussed, can be used to measure and docu-
ment the detail of support, resilience, social capital
and coping in young people’s lives.
The tools used in the study yielded plentiful and
appropriate information that allowed for tracing
changes over time and could provide the data required
for a rigorous evaluation. As already stated, there
appears to be sufficient fit between the data from the
Irish study and the model to suggest it is worth testing
more fully. Building on the work already done, an
evaluation could be designed in such a way as to draw
more fully on social support theory and on the subtle-
ties of understanding contained within the ideas of
social capital and resilience so as to engage with the
rich complexity of young people’s lives as they unfold
in changing contexts over time. It was also noted that
the tools used were found by the researchers to be
both adolescent- and practitioner-friendly. They have
the potential to be useful practice tools whilst gener-
ating data for research. In that way they open up not
only possibilities for convincing evaluation but also for
meeting one of the 10 family support practice prin-
ciples: involving service users and front-line providers
in planning, delivery and evaluation.
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