Street Happens!:A Youth Work response to young people's experiences of the street (original) (raw)
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How Young People Get off the Street: Exploring Paths and Processes
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The vast majority of literature concerning homeless young people has focused on street engagement and street culture. Although this focus is vital to understanding etiology and street life experiences, there has been a surprising neglect on the part of the academic community to complete the analysis of street youth career patterns. The literature has provided an impressive grasp on the causes and consequences of street life − including family dysfunction, abuse and trauma, exploitation and alienation, poverty, addiction, and mental health and child welfare inadequacies − but little acknowledgment of how some of these young people complete the cycle and move away from street culture (
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Detached youth work is at the most informal end of state sponsored interventions with young people outside school. As such it continues to reflect the core philosophy and principles of the traditions of English youth work, which emphasise voluntary involvement by young people. Detached youth work is therefore only possible with the clear and explicit consent of the young people who are worked with. The research was carried out in the context of both the emergence of the Connexions Service and the ‘Transforming Youth Work’ government policy. While the former was clearly committed to engaging a population of socially excluded young people who were not in education, employment or training (NEETs), the latter provided additional funding on the basis of a centrally defined curriculum of purposeful activities. As such the research highlighted the potential contradictions between engaging young people, particularly those groups who traditionally avoid engagement by state agencies - social ...
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Anthropologica, 2018
In public discourses, friendships among street-involved youth are often regarded as sources of delinquent or risky behaviour. Through interviews with street-involved youth in Victoria, BC, we explore youth's ideas about their friendships. Our analysis suggests that the youth we interviewed have created a “relational refuge,” that is, a social space and metaphorical home constituted through trust, proximity, and sharing of emotions and resources. Our research highlights how friendships can mediate some of the harmful aspects of street life for youth by enabling collective forms and practices of generalised reciprocity, acceptance and collaboration.
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Journal of Social Work, 2016
SummaryThis paper examines both the epistemological and practical limitations and challenges of data collection by reflecting on the experiences of a team of both junior and senior researchers engaged in such a longitudinal study.FindingsThis paper argues that longitudinal research with street youth challenges the boundaries and limits of the formal constructs of research and ethics that typically guide qualitative research by grappling with field issues such as navigating reciprocity, risk and authenticity within relationships with a vulnerable group.ApplicationThis paper calls for an explicit acknowledgement of the challenges researching populations such as street youth over time in our research ethics guidelines and encourages researchers to engage in dialogue leading to more reflective, transparent and accountable framing of how we collect data in the field with vulnerable youth populations.
Youth work with vulnerable young people
Aims and methods of the study The central objective of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of youth work with vulnerable young people — primarily between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. Four complementary methods were adopted: a survey of secondary school pupils, a series of focus group interviews with young people with experience of youth work, and individual interviews with particularly vulnerable young people and with key service providers. There was also a workshop session for providers and others to comment on the validity of the findings and to discuss evaluation strategies. The research focused on youth work activities in six geographical areas of Scotland where for different reasons, a significant proportion of young people might be seen as vulnerable. In broad terms three areas were characterised by urban deprivation and three by rural poverty and/or isolation. The researchers argued that in these areas young people are vulnerable to a series of risks and were...