Integrating a youth participation model in a youth mental health service: Challenges and lessons learned

Youth participation in mental health settings is fundamental to service design and delivery, and is beneficial for the young people involved as well as the organisation. This paper presents the findings of an evaluation of a youth participation model where tiered participation was attempted in a clinical youth mental health setting. To inform the ongoing development and improvement of a youth participation model, an evaluation was conducted consisting of three focus groups with the youth consultants, consultations with management about the implementation of the tiered participation model, and a review of records. The purpose of this evaluation was to identify possible barriers to implementation early on so these could be addressed and a youth participation model that meets the needs of all key stakeholders could be developed. The findings of this evaluation and the way in which these findings informed the model's development are discussed.     

A Defense of Professionalism: A Response to Fusco and Baizerman

Fusco and Baizerman (2013) criticized professionalization efforts for assumptions about improved outcomes, “reducing” youth work to skills, “controlling behavior,” bureaucratization, depersonalized services, a neoliberal focus, removing practice wisdom, and a “telos of …scientifically based youth work” (p. 189). They do not provide evidence or arguments for these claims. Academics benefit from professionalization, and it is curious to oppose efforts to provide those benefits to others. We believe that they and their colleagues, in the same issue, have misread other authors on key ideas and present an incomplete and rather one-sided representation. They conflate professionalization and professionalism. They conflate the industrial aspects of professionalization with the ethical aspects. They have overestimated the potential harm of professionalization and underestimated the harm being done by uninformed youth work practices. They misinterpreted social history—and Aristotle. They have incompletely cited other writers about professionalization. Professionalization and professionalism are not guarantees of anything, but our critique of them needs to be coherent, consistent, and based on arguments and evidence.     

Gender,money and professional identity: medical social work and the coming of the British National Health Service

The arrival of the British National Health Service (NHS) in 1948 heralded significant changes for all health workers, but the establishment of a ‘free’ health service was especially meaningful for the hospital almoners—or medical social workers, as they were starting to be known—who had previously been responsible for the assessment and collection of patient payments. It was on this basis they had gained a foothold in the hospital, capitalising on gendered assumptions of financial understanding and behaviour. Yet what might have caused an identity crisis was embraced. This was a dual strategy of both repositioning the profession in alignment with the planned NHS and of asserting an enhanced professional status by distancing themselves from the handling of payment. It was an episode in the history of this distinctly female profession that speaks to women’s historic relationship with money.     

Contextualizing Not-Knowing: Terminology and the Role of Professional Identity

This chapter provides a context for the concept of not-knowing, including a discussion of how the concept was framed. The experience of not-knowing in professional youth work is framed in relationship to other concepts explored by the social work and therapeutic literature (including vicarious trauma, helplessness, secondary trauma, and burnout), as well as those offered by the limited youth work and nursing literature discussing similar concepts (disruption and hurt, suffering, commitment in spite of conflict, and the struggle to go along when you do not believe). The standing of youth work in the professions and its own struggles to professionalize are explored, with attention to how not-knowing affects and is affected by these efforts.     

The influence of sense of coherence,self-care and work satisfaction on secondary traumatic stress and burnout among child and youth residential care workers in Switzerland

The present study aimed to investigate the incidence of post-traumatic and secondary traumatic stress as well as burnout symptoms among child and youth welfare workers in residential care in Switzerland and to assess the predictive value of sense of coherence, self-care, and job satisfaction. A sample of 319 child welfare professionals in Swiss child and youth residential care was assessed using questionnaires that addressed sense of coherence, perceived collective efficacy, self-care, and work satisfaction, as well as symptoms of traumatic stress and burnout. Linear regression analyses were conducted to determine the influence of sense of coherence, self-care and job satisfaction on symptoms of burnout and traumatic stress. Enhancing sense of coherence, work-related self-care and work satisfaction could reduce stress symptoms and increase the well-being of child and youth welfare staff. The authors discuss how child and youth residential care institutions could improve these factors among their staff.     

Guidelines in Child and Youth Care Family Work

SUMMARY

There are many paths that can be taken with the families we encounter in our work. It is this richness in options that can make the child and youth care approach so powerful. However, amongst each potential path there are a number of common guideposts that serve as markers for our interactions with families. These guiding principles are described through the use of examples from a family in a program for teens who are parenting.