Placerad utanför sitt sammanhang : En uppföljningsstudie av 46 institutionsplacerade ungdomars privata och formella relationer

Sammanfattning: AbstractDegner, Jürgen & Henriksen, Anna (2007) Placed outside the Context: A Follow-Up Study of 46 Institutionalized Youths’ Formal and Private Relationships. Örebro Studies 8.When young people are placed in residential treatment centres (RTCs), it is important that facility staff involve parents and other social network members (PSMs) (private relations) in the residential treatment program. This involvement process depends on both PSMs’ willingness and capability to take part in the youths’ treatment, as well as the residential staffs’ attitude towards promoting this process. The overall aim of the dissertation is to explore obstacles to and opportunities for involving PSMs in the youths’ treatment process. One key question is to investigate how the youths describe their parents’ emotional attitude, and support from other significant members of their network. At times of tension between youth and family, other formal relations with professional and non-professional support persons could serve as mediators between the youth and his or her family of origin. Accordingly, the aim is to investigate whether, and if so how, these support persons are included in the treatment process. Further, a positive treatment alliance between residential staff and the youth (resident) is important for the treatment outcome. Two further issues are to explore how the residents view the staffs’ personal involvement with the resident, and, from a gender perspective, to investigate the residents’ descriptions of the treatment received at the facility. Semi structured interviews, including a social network map and a Feeling word checklist, were conducted with 46 youths (23 girls/23 boys) placed at 10 different state RTCs run by the Swedish National Board of Institutional Care (SiS). The residents were interviewed three times, at approximately one-year intervals. This thesis is based on material from the first and second interview with the residents. Interviews were also conducted on one occasion with 23 support persons. Paper I deals with the PSMs’ involvement in the residents’ treatment process. Paper II explores obstacles to and opportunities for establishing a therapeutic alliance between key staff members and residents in a one year perspective. Papers III and IV investigate the residents’ (paper III) and support persons’ (paper IV) views of possibilities for the support persons to take part in the treatment program. Finally, Paper V aims, from a gender perspective, to study the residents’ descriptions of their psychosocial problems, their need for help, and their experiences of the help received from the staff at the facility. The main results show that the majority of the youths describe their parents as having a negative emotional attitude, with a desolate or family-oriented social network system. At the first interview the residents described the key staff members as mainly having little personal involvement, but this staff involvement had increased, according to the residents, by the one-year follow-up. Obstacles to and possibilities for involving PSMs as well as support persons is mainly related to staffs’ encouraging, or not encouraging attitude, attitudes of social welfare agency personnel (regarding support persons), and PSMs’ capability and willingness to participate in the program. With regard to gender, data indicate that there is reason to nuance the proposition of girls being more relationship oriented, and boys autonomous – at least in treatment settings – since, for example, the boys in the study to the same extent as the girls desired more trustful conversations with the staff. The importance of making an inventory of the youths’ social network and focusing on support persons’ involvement in the treatment program is discussed.