Young people negotiating and maintaining boundaries in youth work relationships: findings from an ethnographic study of youth clubs

‘Professional boundaries’ set limits on appropriate behaviours in the relationship between the service users and practitioners. The professional literature often assumes boundaries are maintained by the practitioners, occupational bodies, or organisational policy. However in youth work this is under-researched. An ethnographic study of four youth clubs in the North East of England into ethical practice revealed that young people were surprisingly adept at maintaining boundaries with the youth workers. These boundaries were negotiated and maintained through the young people's use of space, their willingness to interact with the workers, the way they shared information with the workers, and their inclusion of youth workers into their social networking. Young people also showed a sophisticated awareness of the organisational boundaries youth workers were operating within, and often cooperated in maintaining them with the worker. The article concludes by arguing youth workers should take seriously young people's ability and willingness to set and work within boundaries, and see their negotiation and maintenance as a mutual endeavour. However, this may provide a challenge to organisations with rigid policy-defined boundaries.     

Adolescents’ experiences of therapeutic relationships at high and low levels of risk and resilience

Abstract

Engaging adolescents in treatment requires professionals to negotiate relationship boundaries in ways that young people experience as therapeutic. For this study, we used qualitative data from a mixed methods investigation of 85 young people ages 12-19 who were either clients of two or more human services (n=61) or selected from a convenience sample of young people attending school in the same communities as the service users (n=24). By sorting participants into four groups based on their risk and resilience scores calculated during the quantitative phase of the research, patterns emerged in the quality of the relationships young people reported as the most therapeutic. Findings show that youth at higher levels of risk exposure preferred looser professional boundaries (a real relationship) in their interactions with their workers while those with higher resilience scores described positive relationships with professionals that included more structure, greater expectations and firmer boundaries. Findings suggest that the quality of adolescent client-professional relationships should vary depending on the risk and resilience profiles of the youth.     

Promise and Problems: Aggression in Male Led Preadolescent Girls Group Treatment

This paper discusses different forms of aggression exhibited by children and challenges previous conclusions that boys are more aggressive than girls. After an analysis of how aggression manifests in girls who have experienced significant environmental deficits, transferential issues between male practitioners and female youth clients are considered. Finally, group psychotherapy is proposed as an appropriate modality for containing aggression and addressing the needs of girls who struggle with social disturbances.     

Bodywork Boundaries: Power,Politics and Professionalism in Therapeutic Massage

In the last decade or so, complementary and alternative medicine generally, and therapeutic bodywork in particular, has been attempting to enhance its professional status and standing. By focusing upon the sex/gender dimensions of therapeutic massage and the wider historical, cultural and legal contexts in which such work is situated, this article explores and analyses the discursive formations and practices which women therapeutic massage practitioners deploy in the course of their attempts to achieve professional recognition. Drawing upon both primary and secondary data, it is argued that particular difficulties pertain in the case of the professionalization of therapeutic massage. Because of the widespread elisions between massage and sex work, women therapeutic massage practitioners have to mark out their professional distance from clients by deploying professional identifications and by using boundary‐setting devices or techniques which act to distinguish them from sex workers. This article explores these discursive formations and practices and argues that they act to create near‐intractable problems for women massage practitioners. The article concludes that, because these issues are not commonly acknowledged in much of the academic, policy or practitioner‐orientated literature, the neglect of sex/gender in the case of therapeutic massage has consequences not only for the professionaliza‐tion project of this particular therapeutic modality but for the ways in which various body work occupations in which women predominate tend to be seen as marginal and illegitimate ‘professions’.     

Therapy with Transsexual Youth and Their Families: A Clinical Tool for Assessing Youth’s Readiness for Gender Transition

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care suggests a letter of recommendation be provided from a mental health professional if a transsexual desires hormone therapy or surgery. Therefore, transsexual clients have a unique dependence on therapists to obtain medical treatments needed to live life in their affirmed gender. Despite this need for therapeutic services, most therapists lack the training that is necessary to sensitively serve transsexual clients, particularly transsexual youth. While a published clinical assessment tool exists for therapists to determine readiness of adult transsexual clients for medical gender transition, no similar tool is available for therapists working with transsexual youth. This article discusses therapeutic issues specific to transsexual youth and families and presents a clinical assessment tool for determining transsexual youth’s readiness for medical treatments.     

The reality of relationships with young people in caring professions: A qualitative approach to professional boundaries rooted in virtue ethics

The rigidity of professional boundaries have been critiqued in previous work and alternative models and metaphors have been offered, however few are rooted in empirical research that highlights normative practices. In this article, professional boundaries are examined in light of an ethnographic study into youth work practice in the UK. The quasi-quantitative language around boundaries (e.g. someone is ‘too close’ to a client) can be considered unhelpful and fail to reflect the complex reality of youth workers' practice (and those of wider caring professions), where relationships between youth worker and young person are based on multiple interrelated aspects. It is suggested, therefore, that a qualitative approach to boundaries is adopted based on interactions that differ in kind rather than quantity. This approach to boundaries is then rooted in virtue ethics to provide a framework that makes the adoption of qualitative professional boundaries plausible.     

Mental Health Practitioners’ Experiences During the Shared Trauma of the Forced Relocation from Gush Katif

The study examined the experiences of 48 Israeli mental health practitioners who helped the residents of Gush Katif during the forced relocation. The practitioners spent between 1 week and a year-and-a-half assisting these residents. Shortly after the relocation, they participated in one of four debriefing groups, which aimed to process and summarize their work. Phenomenological analysis revealed three main themes: (1) Who are our clients: the government or the residents? (2) Blurring boundaries between professional and personal self; and (3) Returning home. The study highlighted the challenges associated with intervening in shared trauma, especially in realities of political conflict.     

Sexuality,Boundaries, Professional Ethics,and Clinical Practice

Abstract

Gay male therapists often practice in milieus where it is virtually impossible not to have contacts with clients outside of the therapy room. The necessity of maintaining appropriate boundaries can be strained when client-therapist contacts occur in situations that are overtly or even potentially sexual. This Practice Note addresses professional challenges and various approaches to these situations while maintaining necessary therapeutic appropriateness.     

Youth workers' use of Facebook for mediated pastoralism with juvenile delinquents and youths-at-risk

Youth work seeks to rehabilitate juvenile delinquents for re-entry into mainstream society and to prevent youths-at-risk from falling into delinquency, thus necessitating that youth workers assiduously monitor their clients. With the avid use of social media by youths, youth workers must also adopt these communication platforms to reach out to their young clients. Drawing from interviews with youth workers, this study analyses how they use Facebook to communicate with their clients and monitor their activities. Surveillance forms a key thrust of youth workers' professional use of Facebook, enhancing their ability to oversee these youths' personal development for the purposes of mentoring and rehabilitation. Contrary to dystopian, power-centric conceptions of surveillance, the study finds that the youth workers' surveillance of their clients is undergirded by care and beneficence, better understood using Foucault's concept of pastoralism. Through mediated pastoralism via Facebook, these youth workers can derive a more extensive picture of their clients, including their emotional state and peer interactions. With this knowledge, the youth workers can then calibrate their interventions more strategically and only step in when their clients engage in behaviour that poses significant risks or danger. In so doing, the youth workers foster sustainable social capital with their clients that they can still leverage over time. Facebook communications also help the youth workers to bridge communication gaps with these youths. The study also examines how the youths resist the youth workers' oversight in various ways.     

“It just crept in”: The Digital Age and Implications for Social Work Practice

Today’s generation of youth and adults relies on communication technologies for entertainment, information, and social connections and more and more, for personal help and advice. With cyber technology having permeated the ways in which individuals seek support for a wide range of issues, the purpose of this paper is to report on a study that examined practitioners’ experiences and views of whether and how online communication has entered their face-to-face practice and of the implication for the therapeutic work. Using qualitative methodology, 15 social work practitioners participated in focus groups and interviews exploring their perspectives about the impact of cyber technology on their traditional face-to-face social work practice. The prevailing finding was that cyber communication has dramatically changed the nature of professional relationships. This key finding was supported by four major inter-related themes arising from the data: (1) client driven practice; (2) Pandora’s box; (3) ethical grey zone; and (4) permeable boundaries. Implications for practice are provided.     

Viewing psychopathology through a trauma lens

Many symptoms and behaviors associated with a range of psychiatric disorders, including those not designated as trauma- or stressor-related, result from unprocessed and unintegrated traumatic experiences, requiring therapeutic assessments and interventions that consider the complex dynamics brought on by trauma. While the focus on symptoms in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) may lead practitioners away from a consideration of etiology when choosing interventions, the exclusions of “disorders of extreme stress not otherwise specified” in DSM-IV and “developmental trauma disorder” from DSM-5 may further predispose practitioners to disregard traumatic etiology and symptoms when assessing, diagnosing, and treating clients. Because a majority of recipients of public mental health services suffer deleterious effects from trauma exposure, social work and other mental health professionals have an ethical responsibility to incorporate trauma-based screenings, assessments, and interventions with clients. Thus, trauma-informed evaluation and treatment approaches must be included in graduate curricula, practitioners must seek continuing education to supplement their knowledge and practice skills, and agency administrators must provide inservice training to professional staff.     

Therapeutic alliance between youth and staff in residential group care: Psychometrics of the therapeutic alliance quality scale

Therapeutic alliance has been frequently studied in individual counseling sessions; however, research on therapeutic alliance in residential settings for youth with mental health diagnoses has been limited. This may be due, in part, to the presence of multiple service providers often in caregiving roles. The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric quality of a widely utilized measure of therapeutic alliance used in psychotherapy with youth in residential care where the treatment is provided by a trained married couple. We also compared the relationship between youth ratings of their male and female service providers, as well as examined correlations in ratings between youth and staff on therapeutic alliance. Finally, we investigated the direction, magnitude, and trajectory of change in therapeutic alliance over a 12-month period following admission into residential care. The method was a longitudinal assessment of 135 youth and 124 staff regarding therapeutic alliance over the course of 12 months or discharge from services. Results indicated strong psychometric properties and high correlations for youth ratings of both their male and female service providers. However, the correlation was low between youth and service provider ratings of alliance. Longitudinal analyses indicated that rates of therapeutic alliance changed over time.     

Exploring the Youth and Parent Perspective on Practitioner Behaviors That Promote Treatment Engagement

Treatment engagement is critically important to child and family social work practitioners, given its documented relationship with youth and family outcomes. Despite this, little is known regarding the practice behaviors youth and parents perceive as important for promoting their engagement in treatment. The purpose of this study was to explore the perspective of youth and parents regarding practitioner behaviors important for fostering treatment engagement. Three semistructured focus groups were conducted with 30 youth and parents. Using a constant comparative analysis procedure, two domains of practice behaviors emerged: developing the therapeutic alliance and collaborative service delivery. Specific alliance-building behaviors included building rapport and demonstrating care, acknowledging and listening to the youth and family perspective, asking questions, not judging youth and parents, allowing youth and family input to direct care, and supporting motivation to change. Collaborative practice behaviors included providing culturally competent services, sharing treatment information, demonstrating awareness of other services/supports, and engaging other meaningful adults. Youth and parents both discussed the importance of these practice behaviors. Youth, however, seemed to emphasize the therapeutic alliance more than parents in the sample. Clinical implications for family social work practitioners regarding these key practice behaviors are discussed.     

Spiritual Competence: What It Is,Why It Is Necessary,and How to Develop It

Various professional standards underscore the importance of providing effective services to all people, including those from diverse religious backgrounds. Yet despite these standards, studies have repeatedly found that most social workers receive little training in navigating this aspect of diversity during their graduate educations. To address this lack of training, the present article discusses a concept that is foundational for effective service provision with spiritual clients from diverse religious backgrounds—spiritual competence. More specifically, this article outlines what spiritual competence is and why it is important in therapeutic work, and then offers a number of strategies for developing spiritual competence. As such, this article helps equip practitioners to provide more ethical, effective services in a nation characterized by increasing religious diversity.     

Professional Relationship Boundaries: A Social Work Teaching Module

Social workers are often challenged by the complex and ever‐changing dynamics within their relationships with clients, and struggle to find ethical responses within professional boundary grey zones where boundaries with clients can be difficult to identify, yet easy to cross. Social work educators attempt to prepare students for these complex situations, yet in the United States research reveals rates of social work boundary violations that lead one to question the efficacy of social work ethics education. This article describes the educational competencies and instructional strategies that comprise an adaptable course module which was developed in response to this challenge, and intended to increase students' self‐awareness, motivation and professional judgment‐making abilities related to their professional boundaries. The educational competencies for this course include the abilities to: identify boundary violations, apply critical thinking skills to complex professional relationship contexts, increase awareness of self and other, and initiate prevention strategies. In contrast to traditional approaches to education, this article describes instructional strategies that are based on adult‐learning principles, which have the purpose of effectively and creatively teaching topic areas in such a way as to produce behavioural change. These course topic areas include a ‘Professional Relationship Boundaries Continuum’ conceptual framework, boundary violation impacts, personal boundary vulnerabilities, blurring boundary indicators, and risk‐minimizing strategies.     

Professionals' Accounts for Work‐related Deceptions

Using interview and observational data, this article analyzes how private detectives account for using work‐related deceptions, I place special emphasis on how practitioners' accounts draw on professional affiliations and organizational resources that are less available to individuals in their private lives. These affiliations and resources include economic and demographic characteristics of employers, practitioners, clients and investigative targets, state licensing, the profession's social repute, and asymmetries in specialized knowledge between practitioners and laypersons. The conclusion addresses how accounts for work‐related deceptions benefit professionals through advantaging them over targets, obscuring harmful consequences of work, and helping them and their clients to avoid negative labeling. If you call someone up and say, “Hi, would you mind telling me where your brother is, so that I can put his ass in jail for the next five years,” you won't last too long in the private detective business. —Anonymous private detective     

Traversing the Margins: Intersectionalities in the Bullying of Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth

SUMMARY

This study explores the perspectives of service providers and youth advocates on bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth and intersectionalities in LGBT peer victimization. In depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine key informants (4 male, 4 female, 1 transgender male; 4 gay, 3 lesbian, 2 non-identified; 6 white, 1 South Asian, 2 Middle Eastern) recruited using purposive sampling from diverse education and social service settings. Narrative thematic analysis and a constant comparative method were used to identify themes. Five themes emerged from the data: (1) “transgressing gender norm boundaries”; (2) homophobic sexism vs. sexist homophobia; (3) “you choose sexuality or you choose race”; (4) newcomer youth and citizenship; and (5) “multiple wires together … create the cage.” Findings suggest the importance of an intersectional approach to conceptualizing and addressing LGBT bullying and to uncovering the differential experiences of bullying among LGBT youth. Bullying related to sexual orientation should not be assumed to be the only or primary form of violence shaping the lives of LGBT youth.     

Almost Like a Real Band: Navigating a Gendered Jazz Art World

Professional jazz has been organized around two contradictory cultures. Historically, the jazz art world has followed norms of meritocracy, which promote equality across boundaries of race and class. At the same time a culture of exclusivity, anchored in gendered essentialism, has severely limited female participation. By analyzing interview data with artists from the Hamilton College Jazz Archive, we illustrate how these contradictory cultures of inclusion and exclusion operate to channel women into feminized roles in the jazz world. We then discuss how women employ a number of strategies to work around the culture of exclusivity and capitalize on the norms and values of musical meritocracy. Despite institutional openings in professional jazz that emerged following the women’s movement, female jazz artists continue to face strong barriers toward full equality in the jazz world. Although female artists consistently demonstrate that they possess equal musical skills to male musicians according to the norms of meritocracy that guide professional jazz, women remain on the margins of the jazz art world.     

Peace education with refugees: case studies

The authors suggest the possibility of using concepts and practices drawn from peace education to assist in the treatment and education of refugees suffering from post-traumatic stress. They introduce four basic principles of peace education, which permit students/clients to work through memory and present conflicts, and calls on therapists/teachers to be flexible in their approaches. Three case studies are offered: Bosnian youth in a community center in Chicago, adult male Bosnian refugees in Berlin participating in a social integration project and recently arrived Syrian and Afghani youth living in a transitional setting in Leipzig. There is potential for work undertaken with refugees using principles of peace education to resolve ongoing internal conflicts, while helping to prevent the creation of new social conflicts in the process of integration.     

Should There Be Mentoring Efforts to Help Retain and Recruit More Males Into Baccalaureate and Master's Social Work Programs?

Social work programs need to actively set mechanisms in place to attract more men into a predominately female academic major through mentoring, recruitment, and retention efforts. This article conducts a review of the literature to examine whether mentoring efforts should be directed at male social work students. It is inconsistent for the social work profession to embrace the concept of providing culturally competent practices to clients but fail to address and combat a significant gender gap in the delivery of services to male clients.