OP60 Supporting young Bradford: exploring familial emotional support for young people growing up in Bradford

Lockyer, Bridget, Badrick, Ellena, Webber, Ruth and Islam, Shahid (2025) OP60 Supporting young Bradford: exploring familial emotional support for young people growing up in Bradford. In: Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, A30-A30. Presented at Society for Social Medicine and Population Health (SSM) Annual Meeting, 10 September - 12 September 2025, Bradford, UK.

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Abstract

Background There is good evidence that confirms the importance of familial emotional support in adolescence on health across the life course and may protect from other disadvantages experienced during adolescence. This mixed methods study explores these enablers and barriers for families providing emotional support within Bradford, a young, multi-ethnic urban area with high deprivation. Methods Nine appreciative inquiry community workshops with parents and young people across Bradford; 39 in-depth interviews with parents and young people aged 12–16 (20 families) in the Born in Bradford (BiB) cohort and a cross-sectional analysis of the BiB Age of Wonder survey, completed by 3495 people aged 12–15 in 2022/23. Workshops used a participatory Ketso kit to gather responses. Interview transcripts were analysed thematically. We used ordinal logistic regression to test for association between emotional support (ES) and participant characteristics in cross-sectional survey data. Integration of the analysis from all data points occurred over a number of meetings between the research team and an external steering group. Results Young people were facing a range of adverse emotional experiences and needed parental support. Cross-sectional analysis showed 54% of girls and 72.6% of boys reported high levels of ES (ordinal logistic regression boys were less likely to report lower ES compared to girls [OR 0.43, 95% CI 0.37–0.50]). In the year groups there was a trend for worsening emotional support in each year as children age. The workshops and interviews found that parental availability was a key enabler of emotional support. A key barrier to parental availability was their working patterns, including shift work, inflexible hours, multiple jobs and working away from the home. Better parental support was enabled by family activities such as daily mealtimes, days out and holidays but also passive, unstructured time as well as living nearby to (or sometimes with) extended family. Conclusion If parents are less available their relationships with their children can be more distant and less supportive. This risks the creation of further inequalities for young people growing up in low-income households, where availability is more keenly tied to financial insecurity. The workshops and interviews work found mitigations to this, including the support of nearby family members and making the most of passive time together. Governments and employers need to recognise the continued importance of flexible working for parents as their children reach adolescence, as well as other contributors to job quality such as pay and working hours.