%0 Thesis
%9 Doctoral
%A Swaffield, Sheena
%B Psychology and Language Sciences
%D 2025
%F discovery:10205192
%I UCL (University College London)
%P 125
%T External battles and internal struggles: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of the lived experience of kinship grandmothers
%U https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10205192/
%X Background: There is global recognition that grandparents taking on primary care of  grandchildren is an increasing phenomenon. Whilst this has benefits, kinship carers also  navigate myriad losses.  Aims: To explore the literature as it pertains to different types of loss in three key roles  and consider implications for support for these families and for society as a whole.  Methods: PsycINFO and Ovid databases were used to identify 31 English language, peer  reviewed papers from the past 30 years.  Results: Feelings associated with grief and loss were found to be common across  kinship family roles.  Discussion: There are many gaps in existent research, particularly with regard to kinship  children and birth parents, but also pertaining to grandfather-carers, and other minority  groups. Acknowledging that grief is not necessarily defined by actual death, other losses  and intergenerational trauma may be pertinent to kinship families and may need to be  mourned as part of the process of adjustment.
%Z Copyright © The Author 2025.   Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).  Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms.  Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request.