ABSTRACT
Since 1998, in the United Kingdom, there has been an explosion of interest in social capital at both the policy and research levels. In the late 1990s, the Health Development Agency (then the HEA, the health promotion arm of the Department of Health in England and Wales) commissioned a series of qualitative and quantitative research projects designed to test, measure, or generally explore the relationship between social capital and health. The definition of social capital in this work was based on Putnam's early version of social capital, which consisted of: social and community networks; norms of cooperation, reciprocity, and trust; community identity and sense of belonging to one's community; and civic engagement or participation. 1 This chapter describes an empirical research project, conducted by the author, to investigate the different elements of social capital in relation to children and young people in deprived areas.
